Is this a good idea for starting a Record Store in a college town?

Question by skunkaperecords: Is this a good idea for starting a Record Store in a college town?
I have been trying to come up with a great concept for starting my own record store. I’m currently a small record label owner and I’ve been producing and releasing low budget CD’s for about 10yrs now. I’ve taken Music Business courses at UCLA (with Randy Jackson of American Idol) and I know deep down in my heart that I am destined to be successful in music business.

Here’s my idea and I need you guys to please tell me if it sounds like it could be profitable or basically if you could see people (young and old) coming into my state of the art record store.

Imagine a Music Store “Cafe” where you could go in, order a coffee or your favorite beverage, browse the wide selection of music, take the CD’s up to the “Music Barista”, pay $ 10 for each CD, go over to the computer “bar”, import all of the music from the CD’s you just bought into your mp3 player OR burn a CD-R of each CD and then take all of the CD’s back to the Music Barista who will then give you a refund of $ 9 for each CD that you just returned.

So essentially you just imported OR burned all of the music from the CD’s that you legally purchased for only $ 1 each complete album! You can’t beat that price anywhere! Not even itunes or lala.com can sell you complete albums for a $ 1. Not only that but you can burn custom litescribe CD labels with our state of the art computers on each CDR that you create.

There is nothing illegal about this idea because as long as you purchased the CD, then you have the right to burn a copy or import the music into your mp3 player because after the purchase the CD was legally yours and you can do whatever you want with it. Now as a record store we have the right to buy back the CD after you are done with it and our buyback price would be $ 9 so basically you just paid $ 1 to do whatever you wanted with it.

Also, if there are any legalities about refunding a customer less than the full amount of a CD then we can say the $ 1 charge was for the blank CD-R’s we are selling to our customers that want to burn the CD’s on them. Either way I think there is nothing illegal about this idea.

I’d like to get some input from anyone that enjoys going to record stores and loading their ipods or mp3 players with the hottest new releases “legally” for a great, great price.

Thanks and wish me luck guys!
Sorry, we wouldn’t be “refunding” the customer rather we would be “buying” back the CD as a used product for $ 9 and then putting it back on the shelf for the next customer so purchase for $ 10 again and the cycle continues over and over and over again until everyone in my town has all the albums they’ve ever wanted in their ipods, mp3 players, hehe. Oh and I become rich in the process opening more and more stores across the nation! Just kidding about that last party guys!
I checked out warehouse.com and they are still too expensive. They sell a new release for around $ 13 and will only buy it back for $ 8. Which means you still paid $ 5 for that CD. At my store you will pay .99 cents for each CD and have the comfort of burning it or importing it into your mp3 player while still in our store. If Warehouse can stay in business doing this online then I should be able to keep my small record label afloat if it’s my only location.
I also checked out Napster.com and they still charge you $ 1.29 to burn each song onto a CD. Sure, they let you “listen” to it steaming an unlimited amount of times but if you want to import those napster songs into your mp3 player then you will have to burn an mp3 CD and then import them back into iTunes in order to put onto an ipod. Too much hassle still.

Best answer:

Answer by Don
thanks for having the courage to be your own business.

I wish I had tthat.

I have lived in major cities like Denver, St. Louis, Chicago and that business is fairly hard due to internet, etc.

However, all that is hard – I mean doing that and that is why I admire.

Maybe, if allowed, see other stuff like blt’s or malts – crazy but maybe.

good luck

What do you think? Answer below!