It’s your turn to speak: Should we make a German music shop?
Lots of you have contacted me asking where to find certain CDs. Others have asked why Germaniac doesn’t have a shop to go along with the blog. So far, I have simply been helping those of you find whatever it is you’re looking for because a shop hasn’t really been a top priority, but the emails just keep coming. Now I’m beginning to wonder just how big the demand for an exclusively German music shop based in North America really is, and I’m asking you for the answer.
Should Germaniac.com open an online shop? If so, what should we have? Would you buy from us? And perhaps more importantly, what features would make you more likely to buy from us than from some other site?
The whole reason for this last question is because it’s very difficult and expensive to import loads of CDs from Europe and then try to offer all kinds of benefits like the lowest price in the world plus free shipping and other features like that. I would love to do all of that for you, but honestly I’m not made of gold so it’s just not possible with anything that has to be imported. Anyone who has bought music from overseas knows that it’s not exactly cheap. I want to help you get the music you want to hear and own, but I don’t want to go bankrupt doing it either. So…
What’s the best way to make this work? Do you have any ideas? Please share your opinions and answers to the questions in a comment. By doing so, you will help us create the best possible shop for everyone. Thanks!
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:38 am
Honestly, I have no clue how to make it work, but I support it 100%!
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Well I’ve found that shipping within North America is a lot cheaper than shipping from Europe, so the only way that I can really think of making it work is if you could find a supplier in Europe itself who could send you bulk shipments of various albums at a discounted price, which would then allow you to resale them at a more resonable price.
Short of that, since it relies too much on luck, you might want to have say a membership fee or something for the shop, say a yearly payment of $20 or $30 US which would give free shipping and maybe a discount on the album price too. That way people who are just buying one or two can still get a fair price for hard to find music, but those (like myself) who are frequently looking for these albums could give some payback to you which would allow for a cheaper price in the long run. Sort of like bookstores, which have memberships that give discounts and other benefits.
I think the shop is a great idea, because most of the good shops are located in Germany, which means you have to order enough albums to justify the 14 euro shipping cost. I’ll keep thinking and get back to you
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Thanks for your support Tirentu, and for your comments Paul.
I actually really like the idea of having free shipping for members who pay an annual fee. This would give me some money up front to import the CDs and then it would also be beneficial to anyone who buys stuff often. I think the membership would only be available to people in the USA or Canada because shipping elsewhere would again be really expensive (or maybe there could be an international membership?)
The only problem I can see is how to make the website determine if you’re a member or not when it figures out your shipping costs. I know it’s possible, but I don’t know how to make it work. I’ll have to figure out something for that.
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Maybe make a login-activated ordering? People who don’t want to buy the membership could order without signing in, but if you paid for the membership then you would be given a login and the site could just do it that way. Or maybe offer an option when ordering, like “Login for members benefits” or something.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Login stuff can be dealt with if you decide to go that route.
I think the main thing that would be interesting would be the harder to find stuff. CDs from new bands who don’t get enough attention or established bands who don’t have a major distribution channel. If it is already available through isotank or amazon.com, it is silly to worry about it, unless it is only at exorbitant rates. But for example Schöngeist, A_liFe [DivideD], Gottkaiser or Treibhaus, etc. I think if you were to work directly with the smaller bands, it might be more work in the short term, but I think it would be worth it. Used CDs and random out-of-print things would also be cool, but I think the focus should be more on the up-and-coming.
Of course, that is a bit more of a risk, potentially, since with a lesser known band, the market may be smaller, but along the lines of the subscription thing, you could also offer a “cd of the month” club to focus on new bands, and possibly have some of the cds of the month be picks from things that have been in inventory for too long. For such a subscription, it should be paid in advance, and it should include the cost of the CD plus shipping. One might be able to subscribe for 3 months, 6 months, a year, whatever makes sense to you. It might be nice to be genre-based, like have a couple different ones going, if that is not to complex……. but I dunno. I’d be interested in something like that.
Of course if you were to get a good deal on some major release from someone or other, that would also be cool, but I think my main interest these days is in the stuff it is a pain in the ass to track down individually.
April 24th, 2008 at 12:04 am
I’d also add a band like Riefenstahl to that list
April 24th, 2008 at 12:37 am
I also like the “CD of the month” idea, Nadja. The first thing that pops into mind with that though, is what if someone already has the CD that’s offered that month? I don’t think it would be feasible to pick the CDs in advance, so it would have to be exclusively new albums I guess.
The focus on small bands is definitely something I’d go for. They’re usually the ones who are more talkative and will communicate with you personally, so getting a deal on CDs directly from them shouldn’t be too hard if my past experiences doing this are anything to go by.
I guess I should start a list of potential bands. Let me know any others you have in mind.
April 24th, 2008 at 12:47 am
I’d say if it is mostly new CDs, then that would be easiest. If it is something that has been out for a while, but is fairly rare, have an alternate pick or two (and whoever is slowest in responding gets whichever of the choices is leftover, if one is more popular than the other; as long as everyone knows in advance how it works, there should be no hard feelings…).
and yes, Paul’s idea is good, too.
so there. I said it! 
April 24th, 2008 at 1:30 am
I’d say a CD of the month is a great idea, but if people already have the album it could be a problem. Maybe send out an email to members a week or two in advance to tell them what would be coming, and if they have it they can opt out for the time, or maybe request something else from a small list of alternates. Or maybe if they have all those, a discount on one other album of their choice, or some other bonus option to make up for it.
April 24th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Oh had another thought, maybe there could be some sort of advanced music thing for subscribers, like after you’ve put the order into the mail you could host the MP3s for a day or two for that subscriber, so that they can hear the songs before the album arrives, but only once it’s shipped so they won’t just cancel after they get the songs.
April 24th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
That’s another interesting idea Paul, but I’m not sure about the legality of that. I understand, the MP3s would only be given after someone paid for the CD, but I still don’t know how well that would go over with some bands.
Related to that, one thing I would like to start doing is have some bands offer free full-length MP3s here on a special download page. It would be completely up to the band and their label (if they have one), but I’ve already begun talking to a few bands about this who like the idea. More about that later…
Back to the shop, I think it would be interesting to run the shop kind of “on demand” in coordination with the blog. I will naturally post the news about upcoming releases and I will judge the number of CDs to buy according to how many people leave a comment or say they want it. (It might not be 1=1 because not everybody comments usually, so maybe for every comment there’s 3 CDs ordered or something…) This way, there’s less chance of having stuff sit around and not be sold, and it helps all of you more directly. People will hopefully become more involved and then you get what you want more easily.
April 24th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
I know that it could be questionable, but I thought it worth tossing out there. I know for me the worst part of ordering a new album is the waiting, like my recent wait for the most recent Staubkind album, which due to a few problems ended taking about a month and a half to arrive…
April 24th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Yeah, I know the waiting can be tough. It would be a nice feature, almost like a CD and MP3 bundle or something, but we might have to approach that on a case by case basis depending on how the band feels about it.
April 25th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Maybe it could be a little bit extra for that, like an extra dollar or something, which goes direct to the band, so that it’d give them some incentive to go along with it.
April 25th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Indeed, if you can deal with the bands so they receive more than 0.001% they usually receive from their labels, it would be great!
But after all, this whole thing is very risky for you. As a shop you must buy lots of CDs at once just to avoid the more shipping expenses but you never know if someone will buy all the stuff you’ve bought from Europe. Although this site is pretty popular (especially for a German Music site) I’m not so sure all the people who visit it will buy enough stuff to cover your expenses.
I don’t wanna make you quit the idea, for sure no, but wait just a bit more and look for some more opinions. And better ask someone who has already done that, he’ll tell you better than us if the risk really worthts
April 25th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
Any way we can give more to the bands is a good idea. Of course, the only problem is that if they already have a record deal, it might not be possible to do a deal direct with the band and avoid the label because they own the rights. I will talk to some of the bands, but in my past experience, the band has to buy the CDs from the label/distributor. Maybe I will have to talk to the labels or distributors like a normal store, I’m not sure yet…
April 26th, 2008 at 2:48 am
I love the idea of a shop. I find it really expensive to import CDs even from places such as amazon.de. A cd costs about $15 USD here in the states with about $3 shipping from amazon.com then if you want a cd from Germany that you cannot get here its 20€ + 10€ shipping so that is almost $45 for a CD!!! I’m looking for a few in extremo as well as some older Onkelz albums but I can’t bring myself to spend $75 for 2 CDs. My friend is going on a class trip in June and might have him attempt to find me the CDs so atleast I won’t have to pay outreagous shipping costs
April 26th, 2008 at 3:28 am
Thanks for your support. Ideally, I would like to have a maximum CD price of $20 in the shop if it’s possible, I think that’s totally reasonable for an import. I don’t know what the real numbers will turn out to be, but we can hope.