{"id":52984,"date":"2026-08-21T01:32:49","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T08:32:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=52984"},"modified":"2026-08-21T01:32:49","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T08:32:49","slug":"i-miss-music-stores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2026\/08\/21\/i-miss-music-stores\/","title":{"rendered":"I Miss Music Stores"},"content":{"rendered":"

This has been coming to mind as I travel through Germany on our vacation this year: I really miss music stores. Just like scrolling through Amazon or Netflix is a pale shadow of browsing through a bookstore or a Blockbuster, the convenience of online music shopping (specifically purchasing, though choosing something to stream fits as well) just doesn\u2019t give the same satisfaction as browsing through the bins of a good music store.<\/p>\n

I last visited Germany in the summer of 1991, and was here the summer before that in 1990 as well. Both times, part of what I blew my hard-earned (\u2026ahem\u2026provided by my parents\u2026) money on was music that I wouldn\u2019t have found in the United States. These are also the only souvenirs that have survived the decades from those trips.<\/p>\n

I discovered Poems for Laila<\/a>, a German folk\/pop band, and brought home their first two albums, Another Poem for the 20th Century<\/cite><\/a> and La Filette Triste<\/cite><\/a> on CD, both of which I still count among my favorite albums, and I\u2019ve picked up the rest of their albums digitally over the years.<\/p>\n

I got several CD samplers, the first two in the Techno Trax<\/cite> series (Vol. 1<\/a> and Vol. 2<\/a>) from ZYX Records and the first two of Zillo Jubilaum\u2019s German Mystic Sound Sampler<\/cite> series (Vol. 1<\/a> and Vol. 2<\/a>), and a lot<\/em> of those tracks were in regular rotation when I started DJing a few years later.<\/p>\n

Most painfully in retrospect, on that second trip in \u201891 I remember seeing in-store displays for The KLF<\/a>\u2019s just-released The White Room<\/cite><\/a>, listening to bits of it at listening stations, and thinking it sounded neat but then choosing something else and leaving it behind. The KLF, of course, soon became huge<\/em>, and I\u2019ve always good-naturedly regretted having missed the chance to have been among the first to play them in the U.S. (and possibly the first in Anchorage).<\/p>\n

Listening to any of those albums immediately brings me back to those first European trips; the trips themselves, but also the experience of finding a music store filled with music I didn\u2019t know, browsing through, trying listening stations, and taking chances on things that caught my ear.<\/p>\n

\n\"Collage
So much good music on these. I can easily recommend any of them.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sadly, with online purchasing and streaming having taken its toll, music stores are much fewer and harder to find, and generally cater more to the vinyl collector. Which is fine, and I\u2019m glad they\u2019re able to hang on in some form, but as I\u2019m backpacking around on this trip, picking albums up on vinyl isn\u2019t a terribly realistic plan.<\/p>\n

Yes, it\u2019s just an aspect of the modern age, and in many ways, the online purchasing options are both more convenient and (if you actually go for purchasing through storefronts like iTunes<\/a>, Bandcamp<\/a>, Qobuz<\/a>, or the like) better for the artists. But being here and having the memories of those earlier trips and the music I was able to bring home has really been making me miss not having that as an option now.

This has been coming to mind as I travel through Germany on our vacation this year: I really miss music stores. Just like Amazon or Netflix is a pale shadow of a bookstore or a Blockbuster, online music shopping just doesn\u2019t give the same satisfaction as browsing through the bins of a good music store.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2035,2043],"tags":[7048,2182,7047],"class_list":["post-52984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-personal","tag-german-mystic-sound-sampler","tag-poems-for-laila","tag-techno-trax"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52984"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52990,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52984\/revisions\/52990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}