Rock around the shops

Independent record stores are keeping their doors open by beating the drumfor those hard-to-find albums. Jim Carroll goes in search of the shops with music at their hearts

Every city or town needs a Championship Vinyl. For many music fans, Rob Fleming's dusty, crowded, rundown record store in Nick Hornby's High Fidelity would be their idea of hog heaven. Located far from the main shopping streets, stocking albums and singles on CD and vinyl by acts you wouldn't necessarily find in brightly-lit music megastores and staffed by shabby desperados with an unhealthy knowledge of reggae, country and soul trivia, the independent record store truly is a community centre for musical lost souls.

But if you think that these outlets are flirting with extinction, slowly succumbing to recession and facing ruin because of changes in the retail world, think again. While the giants are cutting jobs and streamlining operations - Virgin Megastore in Dublin closed its doors in Dublin earlier this year, while Tower Records announced the closure of six of its eight UK stores in August - the Irish independent record store sector appears to be in rude health.

There were some casualties this year, most notably in the capital city where the likes of Disque and Trinity said goodbye, yet the state of the independents throughout the rest of the land can be gauged by how many are not only still in business but are also actively seeking to expand.

There may not be quite one in every town, but there's certainly plenty of choice. Mini-chains, such as Heartbeat City in the midlands, Zhivago in Galway and Roxy in Kerry, are slowly becoming the new Golden Discs in terms of profile and sales, while stores such as Black Spot (Limerick), Sureshot (Cork) and, in Dublin, Road, Final Vinyl, Caroline, Claddagh, Freebird, Spindizzy and Abbey Discs are obviously meeting the cravings of their clientele.

In an industry where the talk is usually of doom, gloom and the evils of MP3 technology, it's heartening some old-fashioned behaviour still remains when it comes to acquiring new music.

As marketing director at Sony Music Ireland, Eleanor McCarthy is a keen observer of changes and developments in the retail landscape. "The arrival of UK chains like HMV and Virgin has grown the market rather than eaten into the independent sector," she says. "Competition is good because it makes shops more aware and more professional. Record retailers have to be on their toes, because if you are not offering the service, knowledge and catalogue people want, they will go elsewhere."

In fact, many would-be record store owners took the plunge in the first place because they just weren't getting what they wanted from existing stores. Accountant David Faughnan opened Universal Records in Letterkenny on the back of a "love of good music and not being able to get enough of it in chart-shops". Thanks to contacts in England who knew about importing records, he began selling out of cardboard boxes in 1996. Today, Universal is an Aladdin's Cave of musical delights off the town's main drag which has "taken off bigger and faster than expected", thanks to the diverse range of sounds you'll find in the racks.

Faughnan still applies an admirably DIY ethic to running a record shop. "Every time I go on holidays, I end up bringing back tons of records for the shop. There was loads and loads of reggae in the racks after a trip to Jamaica, and I just came back from America with 700 albums for the shop." There are trips planned later this year to Holland and Milan, while "there's a woman in Kingston who has a couple of hundred reggae singles she wants to send me". As soon as they arrive in Donegal, word-of-mouth will ensure they quickly find new homes.

In Galway, Mike Larkin at Mulligan Records believes there's no point starting a record shop unless you have that enthusiasm for what you're doing. "There's no way I could do it, working ridiculous hours, taking only a few days off here and there, unless I was enjoying it. But the satisfaction you get when you see a smile on someone's face who has just found a record they've been after for years makes it all worth while." Established in 1990 in conjunction with the Mulligan label, it was initially intended to cater for a huge untapped market for traditional releases.

"Despite the fact that Galway was this big tourist attraction, no one in the city was meeting the demand for trad music. Shops might have a couple of Christy Moore albums, one Mary Black release and Planxty if you were lucky but no one behind the counter knew how to sell it or buy it, so we jumped in."

These days, there's still a huge trad collection, but Mulligan is also the best stocked shop in the country when it comes to jazz, soul, world, country and much, much more. Larkin was always interested in non-mainstream music ("the stuff that was difficult to get") so it was a logical progression. The result of all this sonic diversity, deadpans Larkin, is that "people leave more money behind than they often intend to".

As with other independent operations, there seems to be an unspoken agreement between Mulligan and the other Galway shops as to who does what.

"We've slotted in quite nicely with the other shops here. We don't touch any of the mainstream stuff, like Atomic Kitten or any of the metal stuff, but then, the people who come here are not after that. We didn't have a market to begin with, but it was increased every single year."

Larkin's experience mirrors that of the overall Irish market for music sales. Acquiring accurate figures is somewhat difficult, given the reluctance of all concerned (particularly the majors) to come clean, but industry reports - such as the 1996 "Music In Europe", by the European Music Office, to "Raising The Volume", issued by the Music Industry Group of IBEC in 1998 - value the Irish retail sector at between €40 million and €60 million, with a steady single-digit, year-on-year increase.

Some of this increase can be attributed to the growth in non-traditional outlets such as supermarkets, but it's obvious these retailers are only interested in flogging blockbusters and big sellers, the Corrs and Celine Dions of this world who go well with whatever else you'll find in the aisles.

"You will always need dedicated record stores, whether they are independents or chains, when you want to break new artists," points out McCarthy.

"Someone like Tesco will not help you break an artist. When you have a dedicated record store, they're in the business to sell music, not beans. You can work with them, targeting people who are coming into the shop because they're buying music or actively interested in music."

That said, many independent record stores are diversifying, too. At Universal, David Faughnan sells record decks and DJ equipment. "It was a natural move because we were selling so much dance music - we have people coming from Sligo because they can't get the records anywhere else."

Faughnan has some interesting views on new technology, though many may not necessarily agree with his thoughts on the emergence of recordable CD. "When the blank CD came in, it was a huge boost for us, believe it or not. People used to say that home-taping would kill music, but we find that people get a CD from a friend, hear something on it and come straight in the door looking for more by that act."

While the likes of Universal and Mulligan are relatively well established, there always seems to be new-comers keen to make their mark. In Cork, a city already well served by music outlets of all hues, Ronan McCall has been running Plugd Records for the last seven months, having spotted an opening for a store dealing in all shades of indie and dance. Despite problems with certain suppliers looking for huge advances, an unexpected slump due to the World Cup and some bad weeks for the cash-till, the young Dubliner, like countless other record retailers around the country, is still there.

"There will always be room for independents," he firmly believes. "I used to always try to avoid giving money to big shops back in Dublin, and I think there's a lot of other people like that. What people get with independents is a real personal service - it's people who are doing this because they're into music, because they have a passion for music. They haven't just applied for a job, they've signed up for the whole deal."