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November 16, 2018

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So long to the last of the musical dinosaurs

It has been quite the hustle in the narrow dead-end at Lane 64, 3 Fenyang Rd over the past few days. Music fans and record collectors, young and old, have come to bid farewell to an old friend.

Classic Music Store, a record shop that has been there for 14 years, closes for good on Sunday.

Fenyang Road, a tranquil street in Xuhui District, is sometimes called “the street of music.” Shanghai Conservatory of Music is to be found here and it was once home to many music shops.

But Classic is the last record shop standing in the street, perhaps one of the last privately owned record stores in the city, a dinosaur, struggling to survive with an out-of-date shopping style in the face of the rise of the smart little mammals of e-commerce.

First DZMZ (Dazimingzhong) market, a sacred place for album lovers, was demolished in 2008. Then, more and more record stores hidden in backstreets and lanes disappeared. Copyright regulations tightened, digital music rose and the tiny bright lights of “real” music, were snuffed out, one by one.

Classic is justly famed among grassroot music lovers for its variety of genres and low prices. A goodly number of pirate CDs and DVDs stood back-to-back and shoulder-to-shoulder with their legal cousins. If you couldn’t find what you wanted at Classic, you just asked, and a few days or weeks later your needs were often mysteriously met.

It is not hard to find the store, especially in recent days. According to its owner, who insists on being called A Jiu (Mr Nine), the lease will end soon and he has no desire to sign a new one.

The store sells LPs, CDs, and DVDs, some legal copies, many not. It prints musical scores for students at the conservatory.

“We sold whatever I was interested in,” A Jiu said in a telephone conversation with Shanghai Daily, yesterday.

A Jiu claims sales volume is good, but he has bigger fish to fry. “Fourteen years is long enough,” he said.

Yesterday, Mr Nine was not in the store he opened when he graduated from college in 2004, and visitors found many of the racks already empty. What was left was piled up higgledy-piggledy on the floor, making it difficult even to find a place to stand.

Customers with their heads in piles of CDs and DVDs were crammed into the tiny store. The air was musty, stale and stuffy.

“I started directing commercials for CCTV and others several years ago,” he said, but he resigned from CCTV in May and joined a startup. “Since then I have been pretty busy. I have no time for the store.”

“Don’t touch that pile of DVDs. They are already sold. Look at the tags! What is wrong with you people?” an old lady yelled at two customers eying a pile of DVDs of a Japanese TV series. “No bargains here today, or tomorrow!” she shrieked. It is Liang Ping, Mr Nine’s mother.

She and her husband have been left in charge of the clearance. They know very little about music or movies. Whenever a customer tried to buy something, they took photos of the CDs or DVDs and sent them to A Jiu. A Jiu would reply with a price.

Old Zhou, A Jiu’s father, said his son has no intention of opening another record store. “Everything must go,” said Zhou. “We are exhausted.”

Many of the discs have been sold through WeChat. A Jiu’s WeChat Moments have been constantly updated with lists of what’s available for weeks.

“My friend told me the shop was clearing out, so I came to take my chances and see if I could find anything interesting,” said Huang Chenghao, a Japanese Showa music fan, and a movie buff. He bought a couple of DVDs.

Lily Zhang came to the store with her little daughter and bought a pile of LPs for 720 yuan (US$104). “It is always sad to see a record store shutting down,” said Zhang. “Fewer and fewer people appreciate physical music products.”

When it first opened, people of different occupations, ages and classes congregated in the poky little store, looking for treasure among what appeared to be piles of trash. As e-commerce boomed, that treasure—generally original, legal copies of music from overseas—has become quite easy to come by. Getting your hands on an original disk in China has never been less hassle, and much of the joy and kudos of ownership has been lost.

“I haven’t been hunting for discs in stores for quite a while. You can find everything online,” said Qiu Yeliang, a dedicated collector. “Which, to some extent, explains why the quality and variety of discs in stores keeps declining.”

Nonetheless, people kept filing in and out of the store. Some took home piles of discs, some just took pictures. Liang yelled some more and screamed at those who weren’t buying to get out. “It is really cramped here, please make some space.”

Mr Nine confirmed that he will neither open another store nor start an online business, but will “keep selling discs.” Whatever that may mean, he refused to say.

“It is a forlorn farewell,” said A Jiu. “But it’s alright. Tomorrow is another day.”




 

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