Indie Music Shop Earshot Opens in West Ashley

Tucked into a small shop in one of the many strip centers along Savannah Highway, opened its doors at the end of March.

What the store lacks in quantity it hopes to  make up for in quality, according to Vice President of Operations Christopher Ashley. The West Ashley store at 1663 Savannah Highway features new and used vinyl records, CDs and DVDs, books and other pop culture items.

"We carry some of everything," Ashley said. "We try to get the best of each genre."

Earshot's West Ashley location is the third store the company has opened. The compay started in Greenville in 2004 and in 2010 it opened a second location in Winston Salem, N.C. The Greenville store is the largest of the three, and the West Ashley location is the second of its smaller locations, encompassing about 1,000 square feet of space.

"It's a small space but we hope to pack it with as much as possible," Ashley said. "This particular store has the best of what we have in our bigger store."

Ashley said the inventory at Earshot's West Ashley store includes the bands that have been the best sellers in the larger Greenville store. In addition to new releases and popular back-catalogue albums, Earshot also has a "Freakout" section featuring the best in underground music from around the world.

The store is small enough that Ashley said it can serve the niche market of people who want something tangible with their music.

"I feel like the digital customer is different," he said. "I grew up going to record stores with the clerks putting stuff in my hands."

He knows a lot of people these days are buying single songs on iTunes and rarely, if ever, walk into a record store, but there is a dedicated segment of the population that wants to dig deeper and explore the rest of an artist's body of work once they hear a single they like, Ashley said. Those are the people Earshot wants as customers.

"People want to look at the artwork, read the lyrics and have something tangible in their hands," he added. "To me digital is the fast food of music."

"I think the vinyl resurgence will really cut into the download market, so we really try to play that part of the business up" Ashley said."The kids who have never bought a CD are now looking for vinyl because they missed that whole era."

Ashley said Earshot is always on the lookout for great used albums, either vinyl or on CD, and the store will pay cash or store credit for them if they are in goos shape. Customers will get 25 percent more in store credit than in cash when selling used items.

Ashley said Charleston seemed like a natural fit for Earshot.

"We liked it down here because there's a good music scene in Charleston and it's bigger than Greenville," he said. "We've been looking at growing the smaller store model for a few years and we had great success with the North Carolina store. As far as South Carolina goes, Charleston was the only other place that made sense."

Ashley spends most of his time at the Greenville location where in addition to his other duties he serves as the new music/movie buyer for the company, but he's leaving the West Ashley shop in capable hands. Capitalizing on local resources, Earshot hired Frank Whiteside to manage the location. Whiteside will be familiar to anyone who shopped at 52.5 Records downtown before it closed in 2010.

The store is gearing up for a big day this Saturday. It will be the 5th Annual Record Store Day, and Earshot, and other independent record stores that participate will have tons of exclusive items that won't be available anywhere else. In addition to the exclusive merchandise the first 20 customers that day will be entered to win store gift certificates and everything in stock other than the Record Store Day exclusives will be on sale.

"The idea is to have artists and labels release special stuff on the third Saturday in April that is only available through the independent record stores," Ashley said.

Earshot is open 10 a.m. - 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon - 6 p.m. on Sundays.