“Where the hell do I have to go in Tampa to buy a new CD, anyway?”
The question is flung my way by News and Politics Editor Mitch Perry as he strides purposefully over to my desk. At first, I take it as a hypothetical since it’s followed by a tirade on the demise of Vinyl Fever (a place he not only frequented but featured in a December story about how local indie record stores were successfully maintaining their viability), and the bankruptcy of his big-box fallback, Borders, which is closing all three of its Hillsborough County locations [empty shelves photo by Todd Bates].
But he expects an answer from me, so I give him one – “Mojo?” – that ultimately turns out to be wrong. While Mojo Books and Music does carry an impressive array of new and used vinyl, the store doesn’t offer new CDs at all, only used trade-ins.
He enlightens me about this fact after he returns from his fruitless trip to the North Tampa store and as we’re jiving on the dire future of CD sales, I begin pondering just how much our listening habits have evolved.
In a little under a half a century, we've jumped from vinyl to 8-track to cassette tape to CD to a range of digital formats and back to vinyl as technology has advanced and our needs and desires have changed. Nowadays, we tend to choose convenience over sound quality, digital downloads over hard-copy discs. We want our music faster, we want more of it, and we want to be able to store it all in one easy-to-transport place.
This article appears in Mar 31 – Apr 6, 2011.