Matt Yglesias asks whether independent bookstores will outlast Barnes & Noble. He suggests that nostalgia and customer service benefit small booksellers, while the big box bookstore model is becoming outmoded in the digital book era.
It's a good point and the same logic applies to music stores. As Matt says of independent bookstores, this doesn't mean small local record stores are a growth industry, but when so much is available digitally, the advantage of having a physical retail presence has shifted from stocking everything to stocking interesting or hard-to-find things and knowing these products well enough to recommend and sell them.
Even still, the retail store model depends on customers wanting a physical copy of their music for some reason. This is pretty straightforward with vinyl, and much music remains unavailable in legitimate digital forms. Same with books.
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