Casa Del Disco, Corso Mazzini, 38, Faenza, Italy

How many times have you read an article about the future of record stores where someone is quoted as saying something like: ‘I can’t remember the last time I set foot in a record shop’.

Nowadays, even if you craved the hands on experience of browsing through discs you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere still open.  What was once taken for granted as a feature of any High Street has all but disappeared.

Online shopping and the download culture sounded the death knell for megastores. Tower Records ceased trading in 2006, Virgin Megastore / Zavvi group closed in 2009, HMV closures were announced earlier this year.  However large these stores were, they just couldn’t  hope to compete with the vast range and diversity on offer in cyberspace.

So, are all record stores doomed and if so, does it matter?
My answer to each of these questions would be – ‘No – not yet’ and ‘Yes – most definitely’.

Of course, in London the chances of an independent record store surviving  should be higher than in smaller cities since music addicts would still visit a shop like Rough Trade  as a kind of pilgrimage; a piece of living history. Stephen Godfroy, the shop’s director says : “Rough Trade will continue to evolve public and trade perception of a ‘record store’ into something relevant and rewarding for any community, breaking rules and expectation along the way. To that end, the future for independent record stores is very bright”

Does this optimism extend to smaller and  less fashionable locations?

In the Italian city of Faenza near where I live in Emilia-Romagna,  there is a record store with a history of a wholly different nature to that of Rough Trade. It’s called Casa del Disco  (The house of discs) and it has been open since 1954.

Three years ago it was on the brink of closure; the owner retired and she was all set to sell up. Her daughter had other ideas. Livia had inherited a passion for music dating back to her grandfather who was a violinist and seller of early sheet music. She decided to take over the shop and, in so doing, rejected those who argued that this was tantamount to commercial suicide. She has proved these naysayers wrong and, while you wouldn’t go as far as to say business is flourishing , it is ticking over very nicely and she remains positive and enthusiastic about the shop’s future. Continue reading →