Sounds from the Street: Urban Inequality and Record Store Foundings, Milwaukee 1970-2010

• In Event: 3551 - Section on Sociology of Culture Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: 17. Urban Landscapes

Abstract

Music consumption has dramatically changed over the past 40 years, shifting from vinyl and tape, to CD and digital formats today. These technological changes, themselves the result of decisions made at higher scales, are entangled with business growth in cities across the US. But these patterns are not haphazard, they are intertwined with urban inequality and racial segregation. In this paper asks: what changes in the distribution of record stores, along with their failures, foundings, and persistence, coincide with larger changes in demographics and technology? The analysis uses a unique year-by-year dataset of Milwaukee County record store locations over 41 years (1970-2010) and the findings suggest that stores in predominantly black census tracts were particularly susceptible to fluctuations in format between 1980 and 1990. But record stores in all areas of the city were vulnerable to technological change in the years between 1999 and 2001. Surprisingly though, the number of record store failures in these years is not exceptional. Alternating periods of decline and growth were quite common over the study period. What is different about this most recent period of decline following file-sharing is that it has not (yet) been followed by a similar period of growth. This suggests that file-sharing did not so much shutter the brick-and-mortar record store as it choked-off further openings, driving down total numbers over time. Record stores are fertile ground for understanding how structural changes at higher scales affect consumer choice and access to the pleasures of cultural consumption in urban neighborhoods.

Author

• Thomas Anthony Calkins, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee