Editorial : For 2010: The Death Of The Mom and Pop Record Store

Editorial : For 2010: The Death Of The Mom and Pop Record Store

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Excerpt:

Eventually, the major retail stores pushed back, and through effective business and political lobbying, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) began to issue ‘cease and desist’ orders to record stores that were selling mixtapes, even though record labels (who were also members of the RIAA) were endorsing, and assisting with the creation and promotion of mixtapes, and had direct relationships with these same record stores (by some measures these independent record stores were responsible for at least 30% of all sales in Hip-Hop in the late 1990s and early 2000s and the industry was dependent upon them to push certain records).

When the ‘cease and desist’ orders failed to stop the mixtape phenomenon, the RIAA, and its lawyers, influenced local police departments and the FBI to conduct raids on these record stores. They even began to work with state legislatures to pass stiffer laws aimed at shutting the mixtape down.