On December 7, 2006 Artvoice ran a cover story about the closing of longtime Elmwood Avenue mainstay Home of the Hits, the independent record store located a stone’s throw from Buffalo State that had served the city’s music fans since 1982—longer if you count its precursor, Play it Again Sam’s.

At the time, I wrote a little sidebar about the forces at work in the music industry that are putting the squeeze on mom-and-pop stores that strive to offer something outside the mainstream. I interviewed Govindan Kartha, owner of New World Record, which was then located less than a mile down Elmwood between Auburn and Cleveland. Kartha lamented the closing of Home of the Hits, although cynics likely doubted his sincerity. How could a business owner be saddened when a competitor closes shop?

Kartha was straightforward in describing the challenges facing independent retailers: “The culture has moved away from valuing music as a commodity or as something that’s worth paying for.”

Govindan and Asha Grace Kartha, Paul Morin, Laura Rindfleisch, Andrea Kleinfelder, Eric Kendall.

Just nine months later New World pulled up stakes on Elmwood, moving from the building it had occupied at 765 Elmwood next to Spot Coffee since 1999. Casual observers were left scratching their heads. How could a business that seemed so vibrant, so much a part of the whole Elmwood Village scene, just pack up and head out? Despite the growing public realization that internet downloading and CD shopping, coupled with the relentless price-slashing tactics of big-box stores represented a tightening noose for small, specialized record stores—there were still those who pointed to New World’s decision and said, “Dumb move.”

Less than four months later, in January of this year, the store announced that it would, in fact, be closing for good. Vindicated, some prognosticators pointed to their observations of a few months before, that leaving Elmwood would seal the store’s fate. (For the record, the New World/Spot location had been a Village Green bookstore that had also closed. Before that, it had been a Bells supermarket. Before that, it was a Loblaws supermarket. None of these businesses are around anymore, but it’s not because they left that specific address.)

The “location, location, location” argument falls apart further when one considers that New World began in November of 1984 as an 800-square-foot space in Williamsville. A year and a half later they moved into a 3,200-square-foot space in the same plaza. In 1990 they opened what was then a second location at 512 Elmwood in Buffalo, near the corner of West Utica. The store thrived there. New World Record was a growing, successful small business for 15 years before ever moving to their familiar home next to Spot.

So what really happened?

It’s impossible to understand without looking back to June 1999, when a guy named Shawn Fanning introduced a novel online service that appealed to music fans with a limited budget. Which is to say, the young people most apt to spend money on records.

“Napster changed everything,” says Kartha, “and it took a long time for that to filter down, in a sense, because we kept going up. We in fact doubled our sales when we moved to 765 Elmwood [on Thanksgiving, 1999] and then kept going up on a gentle incline until 2004. Then there was a very, very slight dip in 2005. Followed by a significant drop in 2006, and then a disastrous drop in 2007. So really it was two years, 2006 and 2007, that were kind of the end of things for us.”

What kind of drops are we talking about?

“In 2006 we dropped about 20 percent from the previous year,” Kartha says. “In 2005 our dip had been less than two percent. 2004 and 2005 were our really peak years. 2006 was a 20 percent drop and then in 2007 we dropped 30, maybe 35 percent from there.”

In other words, after building a business for 20 years, in only two years Kartha watched sales plummet to roughly half of what they’d been.

Suddenly, rent for the Elmwood store, which had been manageable, began to seem “Olympian,” Kartha’s says. In addition, what had increased, and had not been capped, were the common area maintenance costs. These are the charges for things like plowing, salting, light repair for the parking lot next to Blockbuster, clearing sidewalks for the four businesses on that section of the strip and the parking lot across the street (between Globe Market and Wilson Farms). In the eight years that New World was there, those costs increased by close to $20,000.

Still, Kartha is not interested in looking back at minor irritations. In fact, he credits Benchmark, the group that leases the property at 765 Elmwood, for helping the store move into its final location at Delaware and Hertel. “Benchmark was great. They did the best they could,” he says. “We had some flooding in the basement that was really due to ancient city lines, but they always sent somebody out to help. And when Elizabeth [Eisenhauer] and I realized we had to do something to help the business, they helped us find the new location, they helped us move, they terminated our lease early at Elmwood. Then they wrote us a one-year lease at the new place, chopping time off of our obligation, and in a sense gave us an exit strategy.”

But the same writing on the wall greeted Kartha at the new place. When New World hosted a recent in-store performance by the band Cobra Starship, it coincided with a school holiday. Two hundred fifty people, mostly girls, started showing up at 10 in the morning for the 5:30pm performance. Kartha describes the scene: “They brought lunch, they brought board games, they brought card games, they went on candy runs. They were very nice. They didn’t give us any problems. They walked around the perimeter of the store and looked at toys and bags and stuff.

“They never even browsed the CD section. And the predominant items that were presented to the band for autographs were iPods.”

If you hear that story and still can’t grasp that the internet, music sharing and big-box stores have forever changed the habits of music lovers, picture 250 teenage girls even being allowed to hang out all day in Wal-Mart waiting for a free performance by one of their favorite bands. The times, they have a-changed. To repeat the reasons why is to sound like a broken record—a metaphor that is itself as hopelessly dated as analog technology.

On a personal level, as a local musician, I’ll never forget the pride I felt when my band the Steam Donkeys released our first CD. New World hung the actual cover artwork, which was a painting of the band done by Philip Burke, right in the big front window of the store. No other retailer in town would have given such props to a then-unsigned band. But that was the kind of business it was. Small, localized, open, supportive and friendly.

It was that kind of atmosphere that brought Kartha and Eisenhauer together. And out of that bond came their beautiful daughter, Asha, who, probably more than any other individual in her age group, will remember it all as a special time, having grown up in the store.

By the end of April, the doors to New World Record will be closed for good. As they wind things up in the coming weeks, why not take an hour or so to flip through the stacks and soak up that independent record store experience, for old time’s sake? With the closing of New World Record, only a small handful will remain in town. And, while you’re at it, why not pay a visit to other small indies like the Record Baron, Sit and Spin, Frizb’s and Doris Records? If only to be able to tell your children about what a fun time collecting music was before it became the cold, bland, isolated experience of staring alone at a screen and clicking on a mouse.