E-Mail This Article to a Friend Flipping the script Undergroundhiphop.com goes retail, Honeypump.net spawns a record label BY CHRIS RUCKER

At a time when small specialty record shops are fleeing their leases in droves for the low-overhead protection of e-commerce, the Massachusetts-based on-line record store Undergroundhiphop.com is upending conventional wisdom by moving its successful Web operation into a 2500-square-foot bricks-and-mortar storefront and warehouse in Boston. UGHH: The Retail Store is set to open May 15 at 234 Huntington Avenue, right around the corner from the Northeastern University dorm room where proprietor Adam Walder founded UGHH as a tiny niche-market hip-hop shop in 1997. In the intervening years, he’s developed the UGHH Web site from a 50-title blip on the radar into a major on-line player (the Beastie Boys even tried to partner with him out toward the end of the dot-com boom), offering news, reviews, message boards, and extensive sound samples from all of its 8400 titles.

Walder’s latest move is sure to raise eyebrows, since he knows better than anyone the advantages that on-line has over retail. Web stores can offer more titles than retail shops in far less space, and UGHH often touts the ability of its users to listen before they buy from the comfort of their own living rooms. (UGHH offers minute-long samples of every song it sells, as opposed to the industry standard of 30-second snippets from selected tracks.) Retail chains have responded to the on-line challenge by reducing the number of titles in stock and placing listening stations on the floor, but Walder thinks the UGHH store will be a next-step evolution, with a radical reworking of the record-store concept that offers more choices in less space. The idea was "to keep the inner workings of the on-line purchasing technology intact and build the traditional retail store environment around it." Like cold fusion, it sounds like a good idea, but how? Walder found the answer in an unlikely spot: the Boston Public Library.

Libraries have the same problem as record stores: too much volume, not enough shelf space. At UGHH, a mere 800 square feet (less than a third of the space) will be devoted to the storefront, which includes a lounge and a clothing section. That means there’s room for only a small CD display section: top sellers and new releases, like the front-of-shop offerings at the chains. (Of course, UGHH’s hits aren’t like other stores’: think Big Shug, Prefuse 73, Nas, and Edan.) The rest will be available the way it is on-line: by searching, browsing, and listening via in-store computer terminals. Customers will even place their orders at these computers, and clerks will retrieve the discs from the "office-structured" warehouse and back room (which will also house UGHH’s on-line operation). Walder compares this procedure to the BPL book-picking system, where a majority of the holdings are stored off the floor and accessed via a computerized card-catalogue system. If it works — that is, if the customer base can be weaned off the idea of digging through crates of vinyl and plastic — Walder’s system also holds out the promise of cutting down on the traditional retail losses incurred from shoplifting and damaged merchandise.

What’s more, this is no cold retail start-up: Walder is bringing with him an established clientele — the UGHH site gets upward of 30,000 hits per day, with more than 60,000 registered users — as well as an indie-hip-hop niche that is without a dedicated local hub. One of the goals of the store, he says, is to bridge "a gap between the college hip-hop music scene and the inner-city urban rap scene."

Ben Sisto is also bucking the conventional music-industry wisdom, with his newly formed Honeypump Records. Sisto is another example of how bottom-up on-line community-building pays dividends. A few years ago, the 24-year-old bearded Mass Art grad was producing basement shows and DIY flea markets. Today, he’s got Allston rock on lockdown — as the "promotions director" at Great Scott, he played a huge role in transforming a frat-kid bar into the Middle East’s first serious cross-river competition in more than a decade. In the process, he’s turned his Honeypump.net production company from a fledgling solo graphic-design/punk-show outpost into the volunteer-driven nexus of what might be the strongest DIY movement in the city. Hipsters stalk the Honeypump message board and turn out in droves for its "Dynasty" dance night (which celebrates its two-year anniversary tonight, April 28, at Great Scott). Now, teamed with Night Rally bassist Farhad Ebrahimi, Sisto’s getting Honeypump Records off the ground with a model that embraces free downloading: they’re giving away songs on-line and betting fans and connoisseurs will flock to their limited-edition vinyl pressings, which are also packaged with a CD-R for those without a turntable. "Done right, file sharing can help increase sales of physical copies of an album," Sisto says. "We want our bands to be heard by as many people as possible, and we understand some of those people are LP junkies and some are iPod lovers." After a long gestation period, the label’s first release, a 12-inch split with Night Rally and Clickers, is back from the pressing plants (a couple of weeks after the official record-release party); an album by U.V. Protection and a posthumous album by the Faux are due shortly. For more, visit www.honeypump.net/records

Chris Rucker is the host of New England Product, which airs Sundays from 9 to 10 p.m. on WFNX 101.7 FM.