WOM Sells Records on a Teutonic Scale

HAMBURG, West Germany —  A fun house of neon and mirrors wrapped around a maze of colorful aisles and counters, the WOM record store in this city’s bustling downtown makes even the fanciest Tower Records outlet look like a post office annex.

WOM--which stands for World of Music--is an amazing one-stop paradise for music lovers. But it’s not the sleek Euro-disco ambiance or the Italian espresso bar or even the small stage where local bands perform that make WOM so unlike any U.S. Schallplatten (record) store.

It’s WOM’s orchard of headphones--more than 600 of them. The headphones, hanging in long rows above record and CD bins like strange black fruit (or some mutant species of bats), are connected to 500 turntables and 105 CD players that are operating continuously.

If a music-hungry Hamburger wants to listen to the latest release from rapper L.L. Cool J or Joni Mitchell, he merely grabs the headphones below the LP or CD on display and puts them on. There are no volume controls, but the decibel level would satisfy most teen-age headbangers. You can listen to the entire recording.

To see as well as hear many artists is just as easy. Eight VCRs perch above scores of videocassettes displayed in WOM’s Musik-Video department, dispensing the likes of Depeche Mode’s “Strange Video.”

But what if blues guitarist Robert Cray’s LP is not hooked to a turntable? No problem.

Just take a copy over to “deejay” Dirk Mueller at the Vorspiel -Service counter and he’ll cue it up on one of 12 turntable-headphone linkups he commands. (Unlike those sold in America, record albums are not wrapped in plastic.)

There’s a similarly human-manned counter for listening to CDs and music cassettes, or MCs, as Germans call them. (CDs are in their plastic cases only, not buried in shoplift-deterring cardboard.)

Best of all, neither Mueller nor anyone else in the customer-friendly store will ever put pressure on a customer to buy anything.

Never? You can listen all day if you want (9 a.m. to 6 p.m.), said WOM promotions manager Susann Thiede, who gave a mid-afternoon tour of the crowded store.

There are WOMs in nine other major West German cities. The Hamburg location is in the basement of the Alterhaus, a large and handsome downtown department store.

WOM was a flashy tabernacle of U.S. popular culture. At the front entrance a huge display touted WOM’s featured artist of the month, Frank Zappa. In the large street-level display window around the corner, a bank of 60 synchronized TV monitors pumped out the latest music videos all day long.

The store’s vast inventory covered America from Aretha Franklin to ZZ Top. Huge departments are devoted to pop, jazz, disco/soul, blues and heavy metal, and to run them WOM hires specialists such as heavy-metal expert Michael (Mitch) Weber, a long-haired 25-year-old Hamburger who manages a local metal band.

WOM covers as many music-related angles as possible. It sells concert and club tickets, T-shirts, posters and dozens of music magazines, from Metal Hammer to the English-language Rolling Stone.

It also exposes local bands on its mini-stage and teams up for promotions with radio station Radio Hamburg, which has a booth in the store. The WOM chain puts out its own slick little monthly, WOM Journal, and recently acquired a small record label, to be used primarily to give exposure to little-known German artists.

“We try new ideas and if they work, we use them,” Thiede said in English.

One of those experiments is WOM’s Adagio espresso bar, which also serves liquor and a limited food menu. The space is rented out, Thiede said, and the nine TV screens above the back bar show three music videos in a row followed by a 30-second advertising spot paid for by companies such as McDonald’s or Adidas.

Now No. 1 in revenues among West German record store chains that sell recorded music only, WOM was started by three people in the city of Kiel five years ago, said Thiede. There was one simple concept: to make an inviting, friendly record shop that would offer many music-related services and also serve as a gathering place for music lovers.

The cost of all the electronic equipment needed to keep 600 sets of headphones humming, said Thiede, is covered by prices that are a deutsche mark (about 53 cents U.S.) or two higher than other German record stores (where prices already are higher than in America).

At WOM, LPs (which still account for 60% of sales) and cassettes (10% of all sales) both cost 18 marks, or about $9.50. CDs (30% of all sales) are 28 marks (about $14.80) and 32 marks (about $16.90), depending on the manufacturer. Singles cost 6 marks (about $3.20).

(The 60%, 30%, 10% breakdown of WOM’s sales of LPs, CDs and cassettes, respectively, is a reflection of the national German market, Thiede said. In the United States, the split is 17.3% for LPs, 16.4% for CDs and 66.3% for cassettes.)

Thiede mentioned she had heard that some people from Tower Records had checked out WOM’s store in Munich, a fact happily confirmed by Tower Records President Russ Solomon.

He hadn’t visited a WOM store himself, Solomon said, but he’s seen pictures. “I think it’s terrific. A great idea,” he said from Tower’s corporate headquarters in Sacramento. “WOM takes record retailing out to a whole new dimension.”

Asked if Tower was contemplating any WOM-like experiments, Solomon said, “Yes, I’m very intrigued by the whole thing.”

However, Solomon cautioned that there are important cultural differences to consider. What WOM is doing in Germany, he said, is a “terrific” natural extension of record-buying habits there. Radio doesn’t permeate German society the way it does America’s, and the dissemination of recorded music is very sporadic, he said.

People in Germany are used to listening to music in record shops before they buy it. The buying culture in America doesn’t require that, Solomon said.

Solomon expressed some reservations about such practical things as high maintenance costs and the problem of manufacturers accepting returned records that are worn out from all that playing. Also, he said, WOM’s racks of CDs displayed only in their plastic cases would create greater shoplifting risks in America.

Still, he said, “One of these days I’d love to try it in some way to see how it works in the U.S.”