College-Town Record Stores Shuttering

Some independent record stores are surviving, though mostly ones that don't depend so much on college students.

There is still one independent record store in Chapel Hill, called CD Alley, though it's much smaller than Schoolkids and farther from the center of town. Owner Ryan Richardson, a 1998 UNC grad, says he has an older clientele and cheaper rent. But he's trying to drum up new business, selling turntables and hoping to get more students into vinyl records. The local college radio stations are a big help.

"We can carry all this obscure stuff because there's a good chance people will hear it on the radio," he said. "I'm hoping there's enough of a difference in what we do to keep us going a little while longer."

Schoolkids' owner, Mike Phillips, once owned eight stores, and will now be down to two in Athens, Ga. (home of the University of Georgia) and nearby Raleigh, near North Carolina State. He said he's been getting lots of e-mails about the store closing, some of them from angry customers.

"If everybody was so damned concerned," he responds, "they should have come in and bought a CD every once in a while."