The record business is booming, but sellers are worried

It is sunny but cold in Cologne. First Sunday of Advent. A rough estimate of 300 people gathered in the Rheinterrassen hall building. In the middle of it all is Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth (Greens). She talks to everyone who walks past her, hugs some. No security guards to be noticed, no entourage of employees. The former manager of the political rock band “Ton Steine ​​Scherben” is on her own territory: among music enthusiasts. A little flashy, a touch nerdy. Scene instead of gala.

Emil is awarded. First time. An award for the best record specialist shops in the country, based in particular on Emil Berliner, an engineer from Hanover, who patented the mostly black recording discs in 1887. The award was organized by the Association of Independent Music Entrepreneurs, or VUT for short. A dozen or so best record stores across the country were honored. Which shows that the first Emil is not so much about competition but about appreciation. The 15,000 to 25,000 euros in prize money certainly helps, because you won’t get rich running a record store, as all the prize winners emphasize. You don’t run a normal retail business. More of a meeting place for cultural exchange. “So important in these dark times,” says Claudia Roth. VUT chairwoman Birte Wiemann also suggests a cap on shop rents and tax relief. Applause from the scene, but probably not very realistic.

Later, with chili con and sin carne and a significantly higher demand for wine than for Kölsch, the conversations become more lifelike. The fear of going to the social welfare office in Corona times. Almost everyone in the scene, including the shop operators, has several pillars. The constant balancing of the account between the receipt of a fee, some revenue from something done and the ever-increasing costs. About euphoric moments in the sheer powerlessness in the face of all these changing times. And that, in view of Amazon and Spotify, it is somehow magical that there is now a resurgent, technically innovative vinyl sector in the music industry. Made and worn solely by the audience, by those who appreciate music. Not from marketing.

There are currently around 550 record stores in Germany. Fourth place worldwide behind the USA, Great Britain and Japan. The music industry in this country generated sales of a good 2.2 billion euros in 2023, a good six percent of which came from records. This is the smallest share, but the only one that has been growing continuously for years alongside streaming.

Claudia Roth also speaks of this “comeback”. Her plea is flaming: an appreciation of art, of culture, as a tangible, perhaps most important social bulwark against the “enemies of democracy”, in the “culture war”. Promoting culture, she says, is therefore more important than ever. She describes the dispute about this with some financial politicians, praises and thanks the creative industries for their often barely subsistence activities. Today as then with the “shards”. Briefly tearful. A key cultural policy speech that Claudia Roth gives in her office should, given the occasion, be given in the same way, but it would have sounded more powerful in the German Bundestag.

“The time to hesitate is through,” calls Roth to the scene. A line of text from “Light my fire” by the US band The Doors, released in 1967, their first own record. Also a break from her parents, who listened to Ella Fitzgerald and the Beatles, as she tells it. The time for hesitation is over, according to the Doors. We have to fight for democracy and an open society now more than ever. It sounds like Claudia Roth’s political legacy. The always controversial 69-year-old will no longer be running as the top candidate for the Bavarian Greens in the federal election.

The next morning in Cologne it is the same outside as it was inside at the first Emil Prize: ten degrees warmer. Feels mild. But very cloudy.