New NARM Info

AND NOW FOR A NARM UPDATE: Music Biz 2013 convention officially kicks off tonight with a few cocktail parties, while the prevailing mood is upbeat, focusing on who’s here rather than who’s not. Coming off the most successful Record Store Day to date, the independent retailers are out in force. And who is chasing them the hardest? Amazon, whose third party reselling mechanism has become a huge part of the indies’ bottom line over the last five years. The e-tail giant is working their new agenda that would have the indies ship product to Amazon, which would in turn warehouse it for sale. It’s been getting a mixed reaction, to be sure. The problem some see is not only the additional incremental surcharges that Amazon would levy, but also the fact that the sexier titles would no longer be available at the brick-and-mortar level (especially any of the coveted unsold RSD titles). But others see a possible upside for some of the deeper, slow-moving titles and Amazon is making some progress. Let’s see what happens. (5/7p)