by SHANE SINNOTT

An ongoing (and obvious) theme here at the Loaddown is that the recording industry—that is, the folks who make money manufacturing and selling the work of music artists—are more or less screwed these days, and have been for many years. It’s fairly easy for almost anyone to download any music they want for free, and so convincing them to pay for it has become a big part of what the music “business” is. The general rule seems to be either to go so cheap that people feel guilty, or make a crazy box set, a verifiable “thing,” that people think is worth paying for (see Radiohead’s In Rainbows, which does both of these). Often forgotten, then, is the independent record store and the bearded men running it, whose livelihood depends on you buying regular old CDs that you can (usually) download for free elsewhere.

In response, we get thinkindie.com, launched by the Coalition of Independent Music Stores last month. In an attempt to grapple with the above problem, the CIMS is trying to be an alternative to iTunes. Right now, it’s simply an online music store, but eventually, says the press release, “Each brick and mortar store will have its own homepage inside the site with its own recommendations... once a customer registers, they are assigned to their local store and each time they make a purchase, that store is rewarded.” So I suppose, instead of a fraction of your purchase going to Project RED or whatever, it will go to your local store. This is what we’ve come to, an open acknowledgment that a record store has few options other than asking to be a middleman—one that you ultimately don’t need.

The site doesn’t do itself any favours by going for a “black sheep” (literally) motif. Nor is it very impressive to go to the “hand-picked” category for freak-folk and see that the first seven titles are by Devendra Banhart. I like independent music stores, but an independent online store? What’s the point? Everything an independent store gives you—the unrelenting opinions, the copy of Exclaim!, the often hot people —is gone the moment you purchase online.