Santa's elves couldn't fulfill my order

Back on Saturday, November 22, 2008, while some people were thinking of a sad anniversary, I was thinking about getting stuff.

Specifically, I was assembling a Christmas list, and I even blogged about it. You'll recall that I was going to place two CDs on my Christmas list: Dystopia by Midnight Juggernauts, and Melody A.M. by Röyksopp.

As I thought about my Christmas list a little bit more, I realized that it might be difficult for people to find those particular CDs. While I'd be willing to bet that a large number of last.fm users are comfortable with ordering music online (some of them probably don't even order CDs any more, but I am not trendy), the people who would be shopping for me tend to be more comfortable in traditional retail music establishments. (That is, when you can find them.)

So I came up with a wonderful idea - why not add a CD to the list that was actually popular among the general public? So (especially considering the day) it probably comes as no surprise that I added the CD Dare by Human League.

Now that Christmas (and my birthday) have both passed, I can now officially announce that, while I received a number of wonderful presents (including my Gold Toe socks), I did not get any CDs.

Why? Because the people who were shopping for me were unable to location them at any brick-or-mortar store. Even the one that I thought would be easy to locate, "Dare," simply can't be found in your average Barnes & Noble. Which Barnes & Noble shopper is going to go to the music area and look for a CD that includes music released over a quarter century ago?

Take a look at the Record/CD Stores for the DJ list, which has a serious gap:

This list is mostly from 2003, with some updates in 2007. Due to the paradigm shift in the music sales model many of the brick-and-mortar stores have closed.

But back in September 2007, The Finest Kiss noted an exception:

This summer the Seattle Weekly has had a couple of profiles of the owners of both Easy Street Records and Sonic Boom Records....I wonder how it can be that the music industry is in such peril and the demise of the cd is just around the corner. Something doesn’t add up. Or maybe it does, it seems like the mall stores, Tower included, are dying off one by one because they relied on people buying major label fodder at inflated prices. The smaller indie stores have a broader customer base, servicing lots of little musical niches, and sell cd’s for a whole lot less.

For the record, both stores still exist. Of course, there's a bit of a distance between Ontario and Seattle.

Maybe it's time for me to pay a visit to Claremont's Rhino Records again. Although I can't imagine my father-in-law going in to the place.