ICONIC store Rocking Horse Records, the last major independent record store in the Brisbane central business district, looks set to close after 36 years of business.

The store has launched a half-price sale and while owner Warwick Vere said yesterday that he was keeping his options open for the future, it was possible the shop could be forced to close.

The increase in digital downloading of music, high rents in the inner city and flat retail trading after Brisbane's floods were behind the shop's uncertain future.

``We have been looking around for another (suitable) site for a year but there is nothing that was realistic and you would have to make a giant leap of faith to sign a three-year lease in these conditions,'' Mr Vere said.

``Vinyl sales are very strong and if we could turn every CD we had into a vinyl record then we would be right.

``It's a pity it looks like we can't continue but the sums don't add up.''

Tell us what life-changing record you bought from Rocking Horse below...

Stiff competition from major music and consumer electronics chain JB Hi-Fi, which has opened three stores in the CBD, was also a factor. Major independent record stores Toombul Music and city store Skinny's have closed in the past three years.

The loss of Rocking Horse would be a blow to Brisbane's independent music scene.

The store's racks of local releases have been the starting point for generations of bands, from The Saints and The Go-Betweens in the 1970s through to current bands.

Former Skinny's owner Simon Homer, who runs independent record label Plus One, said: ``One of the the great things about a store like Rocking Horse is it stocks all kinds of local releases, albums, EPs, singles, seven-inch vinyl, whereas the major chain stores prefer albums.

``Thank God for digital music for indie bands and labels because if stores like Rocking Horse go, where do you go to get the physical product?

``You buy them from bands at gigs but bands don't play seven nights a week.''

Mr Vere opened Rocking Horse in a small store in Adelaide St in 1975.

In the years since he has expanded it into two larger premises on that street, before making the move to Albert St in 2004.

Mr Vere said: ``Downloading, file sharing and basically everyone imagining they are getting a better deal online all present problems for a shop like this.

``Back in January, when (Harvey Norman chairman) Gerry Harvey started squawking about retail competition from online, we saw a noticeable spike in our sales on Amazon from Australia, even though people were paying 20 per cent more for our CDs from Amazon.

``In fact, the prices in our store were very keen, but it's difficult to fight the perception that online is cheaper.''

Noel Mengel remembers a Rocking Horse special...

The year was 1978, by which time punk rock had exploded and there seemed to be some hot new band putting out something new every week, The Clash, Television, The Jam, Patti Smith Group, Radio Birdman, some whippersnappers called The Police.



Import record stores sprang up all over the city but Rocking Horse was the place where you could count on keeping pace with it all.



That's where I bought the second Saints album Eternally Yours which changed everything for me, showed that music wasn't about borders, about genres, but what you brought to it and how you made something original from it. And they came from Brisbane too! That copy is still by my record player.



It still sounds great.

Tell us what life-changing record you bought from Rocking Horse below...

Originally published as Retailer Rocking Horse out to pasture