Palma loses six record shops

Joan Collins PALMA lost a total of six record shops last year with consecutive closures of two shops of the Discos Gong chain, another two of Rock-Daily Price, one more of Tipo and the specialist shop Runaway, which closed yesterday. These closures are added to the others which went in 2004, such as Discos Born, Zona Discos, Stereo Discos, all of them in Palma, while there has been no new record shops opening during the last three years. According to the head of Runaway, Pere Terrassa, the main causes of the closure of his shop are the same as the others. “It is the downloading from the Internet and the sale of records on-line, as a lot of customers prefer to buy from home”, he said. In his case, pirating comes in third place, because it mainly affects the shops with more commercial records but he added that the top companies have withdrawn somewhat from shops and “everything is the same”, referring to the fall in sales. Because of this situation Terrassa decided to close his “physical” businesses and concentrate on the on-line business which he opened a year ago. It has the same name, logo and offers but with the difference that now you can't hear the records before buying and all questions have to be asked by e-mail and not personally. In the opinion of this expert, who is also one of the organisers of the Record Fair through his participation in the company Ensaimada Musical, we have a “change of customs” and the average customer chooses not to buy records at the prices in the shops. In fact, Terrassa preferrs to direct his attention to the collectors sector or to followers of specific music genres as these customers are more loyal.