Los Angeles record store Amoeba Music’s continues to flourish in an era where physical CD’s have died out. Unfortunately, where they’re currently located at will be getting demolished in favor of a 26-story apartment complex. The property was sold in 2015 to GPI Companies but in 2018, Marc Weinstein, Amoeba’s co-owner, said that wouldn’t be moving too far from their only location.
With a new location “within blocks” of its original location, they’ll be jumping into the cannabis industry as they announced plans to acquire a dispensary license at their new location. The move to open up a dispensary inside of their record store is an effort to expand “profit streams in a music retail landscape that has been on a steady decline since the rise of downloadable digital files in the late 1990s.” They previously did the same with Amoeba’s location in Berkley which served as their first cannabis dispensary. Weinstein assured that they’ll be looking into getting all the necessary permits and “be diligent” in doing so before launching their second dispensary.
Even with streaming, Weinstein is confident that people still want to have a physical copy of albums. “Some people like to have the whole artifact curated just as the artist wanted. That experience is something people relate to across all age groups. I see so many people my age [repurchasing] vinyl albums that they’d long since sold off. They’re really amazing physical objects that represented the artist’s work. There’s nothing comparable to that in the digital world,” he said.
