Sounds of silence
May 18, 2010
By David Hayes
Music store to close its doors for good in June
Barry Reisman is about to see his business go the way of the buggy whip.
Just as the advent of the car negated the need of buggy whips for horse-powered carriages, technology is making the need for a physical copy of music to listen to it obsolete.
Reisman owns Soundsations, one of the few remaining used-record stores on the Eastside. Come the end of June, Soundsations closes shop.
“People just don’t buy used music any more,” Reisman said. “It’s all downloaded now.”
Reisman and his wife, Sandra, opened Soundsations in Los Angeles in 1978. They moved back to Issaquah, where she grew up, in 1991, opening next to Denny’s restaurant before settling in its current location in the Commons Shopping Center in 1995.
Barry Reisman, Soundsations store owner, stands before shelves of quickly diminishing stock before the store goes out of business for good in June. By David Hayes
Reisman has seen all of the inevitable changes in music technology — from records to eight tracks to cassettes to CDs and finally, to MP3s. It’s the latter that has drawn the most customers away from his business as the iPod and other digital musical players make needing a physical copy of a song unnecessary.
Faced with that inevitability, Reisman said he took stock of other aspects of his personal life. The lease on the Soundsations location is up at the end of June and he’s ready to retire when he turns 65 in July. Combine the three, and it made the most sense to close the store for good. He announced his intentions to customers and staff members in January.
“One guy said it was horrible,” Reisman said. “He’d bought his first CD here when he was 7 years old.”
Longtime employees Jeremiah Smith and Richard Rehm, both having assisted Reisman for the past decade, tried to keep the store’s legacy alive by taking over when he retired. But the economic times conspired against them.
“It was hard to get a bank loan and impossible to get a small business loan,” Smith said.
He said Soundsations’s demise is going to leave a big void in Issaquah, and not just in the used music market.
“We have a lot of stuff — imports, live recordings, hip-hop — that you just can’t get at Target,” he said.
The store’s inventory has been slowly whittled down since January, with everything remaining marked down 30 percent.
Reisman said any merchandise that isn’t sold by the time the lease is up, he’ll take and sell from home on eBay.
Rehm, who said he likes having a physical copy of his music, has a cautionary tale for those who prefer a digital download.
“I like CDs and stuff, the physical things, and I learned that the hard way,” he said. “My computer got fried one day and I lost everything. So, don’t blow off having a hard copy.”
David Hayes: dhayes@isspress.com, 392-6434, ext. 237. Comment at www.issaquqahpress.com.
If you go
Soundsations
- 775 N.W. Gilman Blvd.
- 10 a.m. – 9 p.m. Monday – Thursday;
- 10 a.m. – 10 p.m. Friday – Sunday;
- 11 a.m. – 8 p.m. Sunday
- 392-6094
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