second hand lolita and visual kei shop closetchild has announced that they are currently holding a special sale of visual CDs at 3 of its stores - Ikebukuro, Yokohama, and Osaka - until August 15. CDs will be marked 80% off its original price, and this doesn’t include the online store. Afterwards, the store will discontinue visual CD sales altogether in mid-September at the aforementioned locations.
However, the Shinjuku shop will still continue selling visual CDs, and presumably the online store as well
To be fair some of their second hand goods are higher than the original price brand new which doesn’t really make sense. Guess other websites like Mercari where people sell stuff second hand way cheaper are probably getting the lions share of buyers. I do personally still use closetchild on occasion so aslong as the online store is still good to go I’m happy. Haha.
Compare the scene to 2015, since then many major band (Mejibray, Girugamesh, Screw etc) disbanded and we arent even getting new bands like we used to. Now max 1 or 2 pops up every month, back then that was the weekly number.
This is unfortunate but I can’t say I’m surprised. If I had to guess, they’re sitting on a lot of CDs from an older era of vkei and jrock. With these older bands fading away to time more and more each year, there are probably less and less people buying their stock. It’s good to hear they’re not getting rid of visual CDs completely. I’ve found some amazing things on their webstore.
Found out about this awhile back,
Ikebukuro stores cd section was always really bad in variety besides live dvds and sometimes books. I mean who wants to buy type a b c d of some newer idol band thats been disbanded for 5 years now. Lots of junk and the shop is pretty crammed so good move overall.
Puresound shinjuku is now half used dvds and porn.
Gotta think business wise with mercari and the vk of now not going to be worth squat in the future for used cd shops.
Popped into the Ikebukuro and Yokohama stores today to check out the sale but there wasn’t a great deal to pick up that I either don’t have already or am not interested in. 80% is a huge discount though so can’t complain at getting 6 CDs for about 1700 yen.
Ah just remembered,
I took a photo outside of the Shinjuku Closet Child CD shop,
So if you cant read the Japanese basically even though we are still getting a cd location dedicated to CDs they are very picky about what they will take in.
Ex: only goods from bands currently active.
No singles from before 2018 and such.
They dont except more than one type of a single at a time, so no loading off your instore purchases.
No goods stuff (pamphlets etc.) Of gackt/glay/larc en ciel.
So it still being there is cool but if you like older vk its kinda gonna continue to have no good stuff really.
Puresound is still going strong in Osaka, still great variety when I went last winter,
But puresound shinjuku is becoming more and more based on selling dvds/porn.
Last time I went in they were playing pop music as bgm even…
The signs are now mostly focusing on the dvd stuff too.
Huh… that’s an interesting development. I wonder why… maybe they’re afraid of it becoming unmanageable in the long run with piles of CDs and goods lying around everywhere.
The previous shinjuku cd shop did get swamped after the harajuku shop closed, there were often cardboard boxes filled up near the door towards the end, and the 100en section was mostly all those a,b,c,d, type singles.
Not taking in older stuff makes me assume their long term plan is to sell off what older stuff they do have as much as possible and also limit what new stuff they do get as something moveable.
Have seen them change the shinjuku location twice? Now so I imagine next go will just be them phasing it out possibly.
Ease of use for mercari is a big problem for them too so.
The music business has to largely blame itself. It was bad enough when they started doing the regular vs limited edition (with DVD) releases. Or, even worse were the regular edition albums with 1 extra track vs LE with 1 less track and a DVD. Then they took a massive dump on fans when they ramped it up to different letter types. For example, I have four versions of KIYOHARU’s SAMIDARE single. Obviously I’m a fan, but I look back now and think to myself… WHAT THE FUCK WAS I THINKING? DID I HAVE BRAIN ROT BACK THEN? Stuff like that will just alienate and burn people out to supporting artists.
Can’t imagine it’s easy to shop for new music in Japanese stores these days if you have to navigate through 5 versions of different singles from 15 years ago.
Yah for real,
I can understand limited versions or rather deluxe versions, but juicing fans for one song extra etc. like that is crazy.
Making fans buy multiple copies for instore events too is just rude in my opinion and just lessens the value of a release overtime and also instantly right after if they then are selling it online or in a used store nearby super cheap.
Thankfully type cds seem to be less of a thing now though.
Was not talked about in public but
LIKE AN EDISON company changed hands not only once but twice this year and I can only hope we have them for a couple more years:frowning: