I love going to the record store.  I love the dust and the poorly vacuumed carpets.  I love the pretentious customer service and the clearance bins.  I love the way the staff gushes about a new album on the rare occasions they agree.  I love how which record store you go to says something about you and how your shopping bag dares the criticism of your consumers.  But most of all, I love the subtle surprises in a well curated selection, as much a reflection of the record store owner as the currents of popular music.  I even love the stoner weekend warrior with a photographic memory of the store’s stock of 45s.

And, in our lifetimes, the record store will die. And it will never come back.

Not because of piracy, though it didn’t help.  Not because of the music industry, though it certainly hurt.  But because humans are less able to upsell than machines; because an algorithim can better direct a listener to new music they will love than a clerk.

EMI sent notices earlier this month that they will be bailing on the independent record store.  They will distribute their records solely in big box retail chains like Wal-mart and Best Buy, deleting a significant roster from the indie, hole-in-the-wall, beautifully unprofitable record stores of America.

Of the corporate music labels, EMI is perhaps the biggest blow to indie stores.  Much of their top-tier sellers – Radiohead, Beastie Boys, The Decemberists – were broke by small indie store clerks.  Acts like Gorillaz, Sigur Rós, and Corinne Bailey Rae have been mainstays of top ten racks and shift manager picks, and will now simply be absent from indie store shelves.

This development comes two years after EMI successfully pioneered selling DRM-free music on the Internet and two weeks after their CEO admitted that the company “has lost touch” with their consumers.  The move reflects the growing outward image of a company going continually online, moving to where music customers now live – the Internet.

EMI discontinuing small store sales is not just a cost-cutting measure – this is a concession to the superiority of the music recommendation engine.  The iTunes Genius, the eMusic Recommendation, and the Music Genome Project have all proven far more powerful at merchandising than even the most plugged-in record store shelf.  While a good clerk knows what the kids are looking for, these algorithms draw on everything the kids ever listened to.

Going to a store and falling in love with a new band solely through the insight provided by another human being – it’ll be something we’ll tell our grandchildren about.  It makes Pandora seem a remarkably prescient name.

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