An interview with Eric Levin, owner of Criminal Records in Atlanta.

Eric Levin founded Atlanta’s Criminal Record, one of the nations most respected independent retailers, in 1989. In 2002, Eric formed the Alliance of Independent Media Stores, a trade group representing 30 stores nationally. Eric’s opinions on the record retail industry have been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, and quoted in the New York Times.

Interview by Michael King.

What options does an independent musician, without national distribution, have when it comes to getting their CD into retail?

The easy answer is consignment. If the local independent store is not accepting consignment, it gets a bit more difficult. It would be presumptuous of any artist or musician to think they can just walk in somewhere and get their CD into the store. But if the store accepts consignment, each store is going to have their own rules, like some stores might not do out of state consignment, and with others you might have to do it in person. I think people have to earn the position. For example, we will do a one-piece buy for three months, which is really a long time if you think about, and if that CD sold in those three months, then we have something. But 95% of consigned CDs don’t ever sell.

Should an artist be in any particular place in their career before they bring in their CD for consignment? What criteria do you look at before you take their product in?

We don’t have any criteria, other than the fact that it has to be produced, it can’t be a bedroom CDR, and we need packaging. If we’re going to display this on the high shelf right next to Gnarls Barkley, it has to compete with that. We’ve never believed in a local section, I’ve always felt that it implied that there was something different there. I believe any consignment release should hold it’s own. We take the time to try to explain a whole level of things to artists, like pricing for example. We have some artists that come in and they want to sell their CD for $15, which is totally their choice. We mark everything up a dollar. And if these artists need $14 back on their CD, it will be $15. It’s really not the artist’s responsibility to tell the store what to sell at, but more to tell what they need back. And that amount shouldn’t change from store to store. Only the artists know the amount of time and money they put into their music. And then invariably the customer comes in and says, ‘Why can’t you sell this at $8.99?’ because in this market, $8.99 is still a lot. And it all depends on how the artist looks at their CD. Is it a tool to get them gigs? Is it a way for them to promote themselves? Are they looking to make their money back on it, or are they just looking to get the word out. I mean, this thing really is somebody’s baby, and as a store owner, I have to tell everybody that that baby is really cute, funny and charming. These people are customers of mine, and part of my community. Everything that is happening around the band, how many gigs they are playing, or if they are on the radio, doesn’t really matter to me, I am just trying to find this thing a home.

So, for an independent artist, consignment seems to be the best way to get the CD in the store. What do you see is the best way to get the CD back off the shelves? Is there anything in particular that an artist should consider to help sell the CD?

You know, above everything else, it has to be good music. It will never break out of the artist’s small circle of friends, who they have probably already given the CD to, unless the music is excellent. You have to make the connection with folks and actually make the customer stand in the store and say ‘I came in here to get the new Wolfmother, but I’ve seen this band 100 times and this new record should be awesome.’ They have to make that connection. The store can’t do it; only the bands connection to others can do it. They can work like jacks, and some of their efforts are going to pay off. There’s a band around here, The Selmanaires, they put out a record, they priced it correctly at $6.99, they made a fantastic record, the songs were catchy, the band was cute, the record cover looks fantastic, and they were playing out four nights a week. They were playing college gigs, gigs at night, house parties, and they were one of our biggest sellers. They were working it and it was bitchin’. There were other bands that had infrequent gigs, but they tried heavy advertising, like putting the Criminal logo on their Web page and in their flyers and ads. And that’s one of the things I do say, for the record to sell you have to actively send customers to Criminal Records.

How important is college radio play to the success of a record?

It’s impossible to put a finger on it. There are bands that spend weeks and weeks at #1 at WRAS and we’ve never sold one, and there are bands that are in the lower fifty at radio that we can’t keep in stock. And I think that would be true across the country. Just because a programmer is into a record, doesn’t necessarily mean that other folks are going to get turned onto it. It kind of has to be supplementing everything - good press, good buzz, good touring, it’s all part of it. Independent promotion could be a part of it too, but it could just as easily happen without independent promotion. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is a good example, their manager happened to be a publicist, but the band’s success was really driven by Pitchfork. We went directly to the band and said we wanted it, and we got the band wider distribution through our store’s network then they got ADA distribution, and the band was broken – they were on their way. It’s tough to replicate that, I mean, it will be replicated, it will happen from time to time, but I don’t think a band can really choose that path - it’s sort of the luck of the draw.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is an interesting story. It’s the first band that I’m aware of that was really broken by Pitchfork.

Sure, but really it’s just a new way of telling the same story we’ve been telling all along. It’s interesting; there are careers that have grown organically, careers that have grown with the help of labels, and careers that have grown from the efforts of the bands themselves. There has to be curators in place or there would be no reason for labels or anyone else.

Should an independent artist be concerned about co-op? What should an artist be looking at in terms of co-op?

If an artist is signed, and co-op is part of their contract, they should be looking at that contract very closely. If you’re signed to a major label, there is a line in there somewhere saying ‘we are gonna f*** you really hard and you will never recover.’ And I think that is what co-op is all about really. But without co-op, the album isn’t really going to get promoted. It is what the labels do, for better or worse, from the smallest to the biggest. The labels have discovered the talent, they’ve put in their money, so if one of their tools is to fly artists across the country to do radio interviews, or spend money on advertising and recoup this from the band, I mean, it’s a necessary evil. The band can choose to say no to these things, but I think that is up to the discretion of a good manager. The fact is everybody is not going to be Clap Your hands Say Yeah and do it without co-op. But you can’t really look at anyone’s career and say ‘Co-op helped or co-op didn’t help.’ It’s like wondering why a horse didn’t win a race.

What’s the most important thing you’ve learned about running a successful record store?

For anyone that wants to run a record store, the first step really is to go work at one. To try to run a store without that knowledge base wouldn’t work at all. I’ve never known anybody to jump from another business into record retail without spending some time behind the counter. I’m sure there are examples out there, but I have never heard it happen. There is no school, there is no book on how to run a record store, but you can learn by being in one.

But if you do work at a store then decide to open your own, you should move to another city, that’s only honorable, and it would be nothing but trouble. There are a lot of instances of this happening. You know Sonic Boom in Seattle was opened by a couple of guys that worked at Easy Street, and while there are some cities that can support several good records stores, I’m sure there is a lot of territorial pissing that isn’t cool, like fighting over advertising. I happened to open up my store in the same city as my boss because it truly was an f-you move. I learned everything about what I wanted to do in my record store based on what I didn’t like about that store.

You opened your first store in 1989, and a lot has changed since then. Do you think it is a good time to get into the business right now?

That is a really, really tough question. I almost feel like if I said yes I would be giving bad advice. There is a former employee that is trying to open up a store in Brooklyn asking for my advice, and my question to her is ‘What are you going to be doing in Brooklyn that is different and compelling ten years from now?’ And she told me her plans to open a coffee shop and record store, with vintage clothing, computerized monitors on every table, and I said ‘okay, now you’re talking!’ If it was somebody just saying ‘I really love music’ that’s the person I would urge not to do it.

Opening a record store is almost like joining a band. You really are going to have a life of uncertainty, poverty and unhappiness. I very rarely have meet a record store owner who I would call a ‘fat cat.’

Newbury Comics in Boston is a really good example of a store that has a lot of different revenue streams, from t-shirts, to DVDs to posters. How important are these other revenue streams to the success of a record store?

Well, you don’t have a better model than Newbury, they are the king. They have perfected it. Some people call what they are doing the ‘Spencer-fication’ of record stores in a derogatory sense. When I first heard that term, I thought ‘I’ve always like Spencers!’ When I would go to the mall, I would always want to go to that store with all the cool shit. And I hope that people say the same thing when they go to my record store. My store is a comic shop/record store, and I think it has a particular culture to it. We’ve been able to introduce a really broad range of customers that would never consider walking into a comic shop to action figures and other really weird stuff. We’ve never really ‘Spencerfied’ because we’ve always been this pop culture like place.

In addition to Criminal Records, you run a coalition of independent record stores called AIMS. What is the idea behind this coalition?

It’s really just copying what Don Van Cleave did with CIMS (coalition of independent record stores), in no uncertain terms. His coalition formed, and became powerful and exciting, but Criminal Records, and a lot of other stores, weren’t invited. I took that as an opportunity, with Don’s help and education, to start my own. We’ve now got 30 stores nationwide. We’re a private group built to help ourselves, basically.

Is part of the idea of this coalition to have a unified front to battle the chain stores?

I wouldn’t really call it a unified front; it’s more of a one-call-does-it-all type of thing. For a label or a band with a new project, without a coalition they’d have to make 30 different calls to 30 different retailers and learn and deal with, in my case, 30 different programs to promote their release. We sell listening posts, we sell video posts, and we do it efficiently. So if someone wants to do 30 of those with the stores I represent in my coalition, they can call me, and for the same price of dealing with the individual stores one-on-one, they can take care of it all with one call and they’re done. The coalition has added a convenience to the labels that has allowed them to do their job more efficiently. That’s really the basis of it. We share the revenue, which is fantastic, and all the stores get a check, which will keep the doors open at some stores, and go into the retirement account of others. But what is really cool is the communication between all the stores. Our listserv is always buzzing with questions, like ‘what are you selling your t-shirts for?’ or ‘what do you guys think about the idea of selling sheet music?’

So you can see what works for other stores, and then try it out for yourself. I never really looked at the coalition like that.

To be honest, I didn’t either. I don’t think any of us realized the value of camaraderie. I might be friendly with other retailers in my local area, but I’m not going to call them up and ask them a business question. But the folks in my coalition, I ask them stuff all the time. Plus I’ve made some of the best friends I’ve ever had through this. When I travel I get to see my friends. And there’s a little bit of healthy competition between us. I want my displays to be awesome because when I send my e-newsletter out I know the coalition folks are going to be looking at them. That competition, plus the camaraderie, plus the questions I can have answered have made Criminal Records way better. I have to think it is the same thing for the others.

There have been quite a few indie stores that have closed over the past few years, and the record industry is not in the best place. What do you see as the main reason for this?

That’s the million-dollar question. I don’t think there is an answer, because I don’t think we’ve been able to identify all the problems. I think you could ask the local pharmacy the same question, or the local tire store, the local optician. It’s the discounting of America, the disinterest in service, and the ‘got to get it now mentality.’ This has all been very detrimental to our economy. Of course the obvious industry problems – instant and broad access to music on the Internet, and you can get things cheaper at the loss leading stores. I’ve never believed the argument that music is worse now, or the quality is worse, I think that is bullshit, if people think that music is not quality then they are not shopping with me. I do think that being able to go track by track has been very detrimental to your industry, and detrimental to the art itself. But I have never been a fan of singles; I have always been an album guy. All these things have come to a head. It has all made this art more disposable. I blame the loss leaders for starting that, they are the ones that made this about price when it is about art. The last person I blame is the customer. I have a finite amount of income that I have to deal with too. I don’t have a passionate love affair with toilet paper or paper towels, and I am going to seek out the best price. Some people don’t have that passion with music I guess. On one hand I think music should be cheaper, I think that would help us right now, but on the other hand I think artists should be getting paid. Selling a CD for $6.99 is not necessarily going to help people make money in the future. And it’s true, we are going to have far fewer mom and pop record stores, and also far fewer mom and pop restaurants. I can see a point when you drive down the street and it’s gonna be like the ‘50s again, where you drive down the street and it the same places and the same entertainment everywhere.

That’s an interesting way to put it. I don’t think a lot of people think about the problems in the industry as part of a larger global economic event.

Well my thing could fail; Criminal Records could be a thing of the past if I choose. I’m going to do everything I can to keep this thing going, I have lots of folks that rely on me. If it was only a fiscal thing, I might be thinking about what’s next more than I do. But we’re a country at war, gas prices are as high as they’ve ever been, and I can understand why shopping at your local record store might not be first on your list. I get that. And this is why I bought the coffee shop next door. It became available at the perfect time, and I felt like I could keep another independent institution alive as well as help spread my brand name. Hopefully it will be something that is profitable, and if people are not consuming media in ten years like they are today, hey, do you want a cup of coffee? I can be that flexible because I am an independent and because I am small.