Mobile Music will shut down at the end of the month — the latest record store to exit a market that has been downsized by a lucrative bootlegging trade in CDs and DVDs.

As a precursor to the closure the store is holding a clearance sale, with 25 per cent to 50 per cent off all CDs, DVDs and video games. The Liguanea, St Andrew-based record store gained popularity in the late 1990s for its diversed music collection.

Up to press time, the Business Observer was unable to reach the principal of the store but a string of local retailers have fell victim in recent years to piracy and bootlegging. Widening access to broadband Internet is enabling more persons to freely and illegally download music, movies and other copyright-protected digital content, which are often burnt onto CDs and DVDs and sold as bootlegs. The upshot being that legitimate businesses that once thrived on the sale of these products are now unable to compete on pricing and are being forced to shut their doors. Record Plaza, C D Outlet and Viewers Choice are among the popular stores that have closed in recent years.

There are still a few stores left but the sentiments coming from them doesn’t ease pessimism that the industry will be all but wiped out soon.

“The situation is very bad now, it’s like you holding onto a string,” said popular singer and record producer Derrick Harriott, principal of Derrick Harriott’s One Stop Records & Video, a fixture at the Twin Gates Plaza in St Andrew since 1973.

According to Harriott, sales are down by some 90 per cent compared to the same point last year, a crisis which he said has him leaning towards restructuring his business going forward.

“I am only surviving because I get one or two loans from friends and maybe I have a little royalty,” Harriott told the Business Observer. “What I’m really trying to do is branch off into something else…that’s the only way out now.”

Harriott painted a picture of an out of control bootlegging problem that plays itself out on the streets of Kingston and St Andrew everyday. And the downturn in the economy coupled with the high prices of CDs and DVDs, he said, makes the illegal products an understandable alternative to a battered consumer base.

“With the downturn in the economy, if a man sees that he can get a CD or DVD for $200 or $300, he won’t buy the legitimate stuff for $1000, $1500,” argued Harriott, who added that the authorities aren’t doing enough to control the problem.

“It’s gotten so bad now that (bootleggers) don’t even bother to just sell on a corner anymore, they walk around anywhere and sell,” cried Harriott, adding “It looks like a lost cause because the authories who should be doing something about it only pretend to be doing something.”