Who Buys Musical Instruments? "Music Row is Dead"

The music industry sucks because piracy is rampant and there's also nowhere to play.

Rents keep going up.

Those two facts have led to the death of "Music Row" on 48th Street just off Broadway.

At one time, this one street was a wonderland. All musicians shopped on "Music Row," one block long, both sides of 48th Street, just loaded with music stores.

From the music student getting a first violin or trumpet, to the professional wanting the best sax or the most expensive Fender guitar, "Music Row" had it all. You went from store to store trying out the products and getting expert advice. There were autographed photos of celeb clients on the walls.

KaBOOM.

The last store, Alex's, is going out of business in a few months. Rudy's vanished the other day.

Who plays a musical instrument anymore? Most of the monkey music is scratching and "beats." There are computer programs that can imitate most anything. People can steal (sample) anything. With few symphony orchestras, few jazz clubs, and fewer places for even a singer-songwriter to strum and get some tip jar money, why bother taking all that time to learn an instrument?

The few who might want to get a guitar just...GO ONLINE. Amazon sells 'em. Why bother trying it out? People give their opinions and that's good enough.

Most every major city will still have one or two musical instrument stores of some kind. Sam Ash, one of the most famous (they even rented instruments in case you weren't sure you really wanted to keep up once you left school) moved down to 34th. Matt's guitar joint is still on Bleecker Street, and there are a few shops in the East Village for punks and pretenders. But there won't be anything like "Music Row" ever again. It's harder to find "cluster shops" of any kind, where you could go from one to another to another and get all your needs and the best prices.

Need I mention that at one time there was a "record route," where you could walk down a few blocks between 12th Street and 8th Street and hit about six or eight different shops? That's long gone.

Landlords are fucking up all the areas that were once "neighborhoods" or bargain areas. In NYC, Chinatown is shrinking and Little Italy is barely a few blocks long. Yuppie scum and fancy shops moved in. "Book Row" between 14th and 10th is gone, with only the Strand remaining.

Odd, how a group of stores, all of one type, would group together. Down on the Lower East Side, there were dozens of tailor shops. Competition was high, prices were low. If you found bargains on pants that were too long, well, for only TWO dollars they'd be shortened by some expert Latino. You could get shirts or jackets altered, or some applique added to the back of your jeans. Whatever. If one store was busy, another was available. Sit behind a closed stall door with your pants off, and five or ten minutes later, knock-knock. You put your pants on, they fit, and off you went.

Areas of the city were loaded with Indian restaurants, or Korean ones. There was, of course, the "red light" district, too. How convenient to have a concentrated two or three or five blocks and so many choices and such low prices. The loss of "Music Row" is just part of the lost culture.

There's still "Museum Mile," and that's not likely to change. A bunch of famous museums are all lined up on Fifth Avenue. Likewise, there are still fancy boutiques on 5th Avenue, and art galleries to browse on Madison. But much of these "joyful clusters" of shops are going or already GONE.

No more pinball arcades in Times Square. No more camera stores lining 33rd Street, along with "remainder" stores for new items bought at auction or bankruptcy sales. No more bargain-basement joints on Chambers Street. Instead? Yep, Burger King and Old Navy and Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks and the rest of the chain stores.

All this affects tourism. Why should people come rushing to stores when it's the same junky "mall" shops in every town? Why not stay home and shop online? If all the stores are the same, why even pay a high rent to live in a particular locale? Does it even matter where you live? Maybe not too much. As to why bother living, that's another interesting point, although we all most agree, "black lives matter."