COMMENT | Books and music – is the MCO hastening the inevitable?

COMMENT | I live in a condo that to some extent resembles a library.

It’s lined wall-to-wall with collections of books and music CDs. Thousands of them, most sorted out alphabetically, chronologically, by genre and in some cases, all three.

In fact, I used to have another large collection of video/DVDs but that eventually gave way to streaming/torrent downloads and the likes of Netflix.

Having spent the better part of my life building up these collections – which I view as gateways to worlds of knowledge and imagination – I am at loathe to think of ever giving them up. When I was growing up, my mother’s rule was “I will always buy you books if you want them, but toys – only once in a while”.

Thus I underwent that cycle – Peter and Jane and Mr Men to Enid Blyton and the Hardy Boys. Shoot magazine, Tintin and Agatha Christie before going through all sorts of phases like John Irving and Jeffrey Archer novels, science fiction and fantasy, Beatnik literature, rock star biographies, works of history and socialist works.

I must confess that quite some time ago, my rate of buying books far surpassed the rate at which I read them, particularly when presented with mass warehouse sales like the Big Bad Wolf sales. Nonetheless, I was bitten by the collector’s bug.

Similarly, my music collection was a reflection of a passion inherited from my father. I remember being fascinated by the intense sounds that would jump out of the cassette player when you pressed play. And mind you, there was a long line - my grandfather had gramophone records and when I was growing up I saw my father and uncles go through LPs, 8-tracks, Akai tape decks and then cassettes.

At some point in the 1990s, I decided to just focus on the CD format. After all, we were promised it would last forever (CD rot anyone?) and it was more practical for storage. My collection has been obsessively put together – from Miles Davis to Bob Marley, OMD to Suzanne Vega – and there are basically 20 classic rock bands from the 1960s and 1970s whose every album I own.

Aside from collecting, browsing for material has also always been a pleasure. Aside from the endless hours spent in Tower Records, Victoria Music, Rock Corner and the like, I also recall "digging" in places like Saturn in Munich, Real Groovy in Wellington, Fnac in Paris, Avatar Mall in Seoul. I even remember when trips to Singapore were planned around HMV and CD shopping along Orchard Road.

However, for the last decade or so, we have been swimming against the tide. Everyone’s gone digital and I won’t deny that Spotify, Netflix and YouTube are like vast libraries that I am grateful for – offering art to the masses. But believe me, a struggling musician will only get a few hundred or a couple of thousand listens on Spotify or YouTube so it is such that to create new material, one actually ends up losing money.

Let’s be clear about this – people are still listening to music and reading books. It's just that the format has changed in such a way as to impact upon the royalties of minor artistes. The medium of sales has also changed so that people are ordering specific titles online instead of going through the middle person, that is the CD or book store.

The axe has been falling for many years. Borders began 2010 with nearly 20,000 employees in 511 stores in the US but ended up filing for bankruptcy. The HMV Group entered administration in 2013, got taken over and then fell into administration yet again in 2018. On March 22, this year it announced that all stores would close due to the Covid-19 pandemic with only selected stores reopening on June 15.

Similarly in March when Barnes & Noble closed 400 of its 627 US outlets, CEO James Daunt warned that layoffs may be inevitable in a letter to its 23,000 plus employees on March 17.

There’s even a documentary out produced by Tom Hanks’ son Colin, called All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records.

Locally, there are signs that the new normal is going to see fewer outlets. Speedy Video just announced on June 14 that all its outlets will cease operations. Readers Paradise in Ampang Point was another that said it was closing down. There is also an indication that some MPH outlets may be affected as it has been spotted with closing down sales (at its Subang Parade outlet, for example).

BookXcess is one chain that is trying to turn things around quickly. I had a quick chat with CEO Andrew Yap who has overseen a massive success story since BookXcess opened in 2007 and the Big Bad Wolf warehouse sales started in 2009. The latter expanded all across the region, making its profit on heavy volumes of discounted books.

“With our regional warehouse sales, we built it up to being the biggest book warehouse sales in the world with revenue of around RM250 million,” he told me on Friday.

“Unfortunately we are more like an events company and suddenly we were hit by a unique worldwide phenomenon. Not just one country where we do our sales but all of them. Our sales dropped nearly 95 percent overnight.”

“We had to streamline and we retrenched about 15 percent of employees from BookXcess and about 30 percent from Big Bad Wolf but we didn’t have to close any outlet and we are even looking at opening one more within a couple of months,” he added.

Yap said his company has decided to refocus its priority on building up online sales to hold the fort.

“During the MCO we had a 15-fold increase in sales and fortunately, we have been able to carry that on ever since,” said Yap who declined to reveal the base number from which the 15-fold increase had sprung.

Veteran journalist Thor Kah Hoong has been the proprietor of Skoob Books for more than two decades and he sees a gloomier picture.

“The MCO is the final nail in the coffin for a lot of shops, many of which were dead or dying long before it came along. It’s a far cry from the past when a new record or book came out and you raced to the shops to buy it. Nowadays with Spotify playlists, people don’t even listen to albums,” he noted.

Thor lamented that for every store like Kinokuniya, many others have struggled while watching customers switch to ordering online from Amazon.

“Skoob, which I took over in 1993, is practically dead. We got driven out by the high rental in Bangsar and later on in Brickfields. We tried to soldier on but there have been a few factors. The second-hand market is also flooded now as many people sell off their collections so that means the profit margin is low.”

“People don’t realise that the record or music store experience is more than just buying, it’s about interacting with staff who really know their stuff and they recommend you other titles. It’s about forming a little community. It’s one of those sad things that we just have to accept, technology changes things but not always for the better.”

Kling Chang of Trans Music Express in Amcorp Mall helped open up his store the week before MCO and he is quite optimistic that there is a still a market for CDs and LPs and that smaller stores can thrive while giants feel the pinch.

“Big corporate book and music stores have failed because they couldn't scale back, they tried evolving by moving to games and lifestyle elements but the sheer scale they have trapped themselves on with all the high overheads, they were doomed.

“I think small stores will be able to come up, grow and thrive in the shadow of those dead giants. Filling in the large gaps coupled with online and worldwide connectivity too. These small stores have relatively low overheads, lesser floor space and cheaper rental.

“Adapting fast and adopting new trends can be the trick to survive. Add to that good old customer face-to-face relationships and it can be a winning formula,” he tells me.

“Now, it’s not about huge numbers but going back to small scale 'quality service' with lower profit margins, of course. Creativity with added passion and dedication sure is more interesting than a faceless corporate institution," he adds.

Nick Mun has been operating the Hard Graft Records in PJ for the last eight years and he’s also not about to throw in the towel.

“I think stores need to be lean to be able to adapt to the challenges. I don’t think they are under any threat any more than before. How people (in general) consume music has changed irrevocably but physical formats will survive because there will always be music fans that want that more tangible experience of enjoying music,” he said.

Personally, I really do miss the good old days of sniffing out a great bargain – I remember the day Tower Records opened at KL Plaza and I walked away proudly with some Nick Drake and Quicksilver Messenger Service. Or getting hold of a brand new Ursula Le Guin Earthsea compendium when MPH Midvalley first opened its doors.

Times have changed, and they are a-changing still – I do hope that these treasured works which have so enriched my life will find a way to survive. 

MARTIN VENGADESAN is a Malaysiakini team member.

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