Hello, Best Buy; Good-bye, Best Friends
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“We didn’t even know about [volume 6] until it came out,” says Miyk Camacho, operations manager of Tower Records’ Lincoln Park store. “Just about everyone has been looking for it. This store–given its location, we’ve traditionally been ‘XRT headquarters, you might say. Anything that’s on their airwaves we tend to sell the most of. If you look at our top ten in general it pretty much reflects their playlist. For us not to have that disc was embarrassing at times. People were shocked. We try to be a full-service store, and to not have a vital local title was surprising to most customers.”
The deal with Best Buy was part of a licensing, manufacturing, and distribution package offered by SRO Productions, a Minneapolis company that specializes in streamlining this process. “We wanted to be in the stores before Thanksgiving,” says Winer, “and they told us that if we met their timetable they’d be able to do it for us. They assured us that Best Buy would buy all of the CDs from us, and they guaranteed us distribution throughout the Chicago-area Best Buy stores. That was very appealing to us because we wouldn’t have to worry about that aspect of it.” There are Best Buy locations all over WXRT’s listening area, he adds, and the station will be able to collect the charity money–about $120,000 for the Greater Chicago Food Depository and the People’s Music School–quickly.
