Amoeba Music

Los Angeles Business Journal

By Conor Dougherty

Anyone browsing through the aisles of a music store faces the same quandary: Dare I plunk over 20 bucks for selections I might not like?

Amoeba Records, the Bay Area institution recently opened in Hollywood, is rendering moot such concerns. The store offers listeners a chance to sample a portion of its CD inventory for as long as they like (within reason).

"Our idea was to have it be like walking into a friend’s house and perusing their record collection," said Karen Pearson, a co-owner of Amoeba.

About 12,000 titles are available on the listening stations and Amoeba eventually wants to make available up to 200,000 titles.

Listening stations are not new, but Amoeba aims to go beyond the more limited offerings of the competition. The ports have incorporated scanners that allow shoppers to listen to virtually any CD in the store. The selections are stored MP3 files on one of two networks located in-house.

Pearson said the listening stations are updated weekly and require substantial upkeep. They also have seen their share of glitches, from not-so-user-friendly software to design flaws that make it difficult to scan certain CDs into the computer.

The new store is the only one in the three-store chain with the system so far. Pearson said the store’s substantial size, 43,000 square feet, made it easier to incorporate the new idea.