The Long Ear Compact Discs & Tapes, an independent music store in Coeur d'Alene, has seen music formats go by the wayside, supposedly replaced by something better. Now, with the growth of music downloads, the store is relying on its deep CD inventory, in-store expertise, and rising sales of its "music lifestyle" products to keep customers coming in the door.

The store, which occupies a 3,000-square-foot building, at 2405 N. Fourth Street, stocks 18,000 album titles, mostly in the form of new CDs. It has several listening stations at which customers can listen via headphones to about 5,000 titles in their entirety before deciding whether to buy any of them.

"Degree of service is something we work on," says Deon Borchard, who co-owns The Long Ear with her husband, Terry.

The Long Ear isn't just a discount CD store. It's all about the love of music—and the lifestyle that goes with it, Borchard says.

Beaded curtains airbrushed with bold prints of Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley line the entrance to the store. Display cases with pewter fairy figurines and racks of body jewelry stand beside the massive CD selection.

"We're trying to make it an interesting and fun place to come to," Borchard says, as energetic genre-crossing music that might be described as alternative folk rock wafts from the store's sound system.

The Long Ear isn't beholden to record labels or a corporate owner, Borchard says.

"One of the advantages of being independent over being part of a chain is we can choose what we put up on our listening stations," she says. "We can give honest opinions and refer customers to different albums. We can pull out one they are curious about and one to recommend in its place."

The Long Ear has four employees, and the owners are highly selective about whom they hire, she says. Some employees applied for three years before the store had an opening.

"We tend to keep them a long time," she says. "The usual employee turnover at music stores is about six months. That would drive us nuts. There is so much to know."

She says it's important to hire employees with varied areas of knowledge in music.

"We strive to have employees with diverse interests in music, so we have all the genres covered," she says.

New employees work through a trial period before being brought on full time. "They must feel like a Long Ear family member before they can be considered to work here," Borchard says.

Store manager Nick Fritze has worked there 11 years, she says. "He's able to take over more of the reins."

That allows Terry Borchard, who manages the music inventory, to do a lot of his ordering from home, she says.

Borchard handles the lifestyle inventory and says she does careful research on each item she carries and its maker.

"We're bringing in products from all over the world," she says.

In addition to music-related memorabilia, and ever-present incense, The Long Ear stocks products from all over the world, including handmade wooden boxes from Poland, purses from Nepal, embroidered skirts from India, and U.S.-made jewelry and belt buckles.

Borchard puts special emphasis on finding certified fair-trade products. Fair trade is part of a social movement intended to help producers and workers in developing countries become economically self-sufficient, she says.

The lifestyle section of the store is "kind of saving our bacon," Borchard says.

Music downloading is forcing independent stores to add other inventory or die, she says.

"The way we are trying to compete is through diversification in the store," Borchard says. "People who shop here are getting something they're not getting anywhere else."

In addition to being a threat to conventional music stores, music downloading is "is terrible for artists," she claims.

Borchard says it's too easy to copy entire artist catalogs digitally and share them without regard to compensating artists. That forces artists to rely more on live performances for income.

"We've definitely seen an increase in concert prices," she says. "We used to go to 40 concerts a summer. Now we can't afford to go to more than three or four."

Music downloading aside, The Long Ear's rapid turnaround of special orders beats that of most Internet sources, she asserts.

"We deal with the three biggest distributors, and we don't charge extra for special orders," Borchard says.

The Long Ear also bests most other music retailers on price, she says.

"Everything is discounted," she says. "A lot of people think of independent stores as selling things at a premium. Every new release runs on sale for the first two weeks."

Typical CD prices are $9.99 for new releases, and $13.99 for current releases after that.

The Internet itself isn't the enemy, Borchard says. The Long Ear is about to launch a new Web page that will provide its customers local music news, listening recommendations from the staff, information on new and upcoming releases, and many music-related links.

Borchard says it's difficult to pin down her favorite artist or music genre, because that depends on her mood. She often refers, however, to progressive rock pioneer Jethro Tull as the house band.

"We've seen Jethro Tull about 40 times live," she says.

She also listens to blues and new rock.

"I enjoy listening to things that are fresh," she says, adding that fresh sounds are hard to come by these days. "When we opened in 1973, everything was fresh."

The Long Ear isn't focused on the past as far as music is concerned, she says.

The business started as The Long Ear Discount Records & Tapes, in the skiing and fishing community of Big Bear Lake, in the San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California.

Borchard says her husband thought up the Long Ear name when they tried to establish an address with the U.S. Postal Service, she says.

"We had a building, and knew what we wanted, but we didn't think about (a business name) until they asked us the name of the building," she says.

The Long Ear name is a reference to long-hair music.

"Terry always had long hair," Borchard says. She says the long-hair lifestyle tolerates a bit more structure than the hippie lifestyle.

"Long hairs take showers. I'm just going to leave it at that," she says.

The Borchards opened their first store with an inventory of 400 LPs, 88 eight-track tapes, and three cassette tapes. "We had more music in our personal collection than we had in the store," she says.

The Borchards left California in 1986 and landed in Coeur d'Alene, where they opened up the second incarnation of The Long Ear in 1,800 square feet of space at 2920 N. Government Way.

Compared to Big Bear, Coeur d'Alene was a big city then, she says.

"It had two theaters and three stop lights," Borchard jokes.

Yet, Coeur d'Alene still had a friendly small-town atmosphere, she says.

"People here gave us a warm feeling, and they never had a problem with us being from California," she says. "It still feels the same as far as the people here go. People who love music have a tendency to gravitate together."

The Long Ear moved to its current location in 2000. By then, eight-track tapes were long gone. Cassette tapes and vinyl records also had been phased out in favor of CDs, although there's been a bit of a resurgence recently in both of those formats, Borchard says.

Many audiophiles prefer the warmer tones delivered through vinyl over CDs and other digital formats, she says.

The Long Ear also has been handling special orders for titles on cassette tape from customers who own classic cars and don't want to replace their sound systems with newer technology.

The store has a bin of used CDs and about a half-bin of new and used vinyl records.

"We're very picky," she says about the used inventory. "The vast majority doesn't make it onto the floor."

The store donates the used items it doesn't intend to sell to Spokane Public Radio for its annual music and video sale.

The word "Tapes" is still in the business name, although Borchard says she's thinking of changing the name to something that might incorporate the word "Lifestyles."

Despite the challenges of running a business that's subject to the whims of the constantly changing music industry, Borchard says she couldn't imagine doing anything else.

"We like doing what we do," she says. "Retirement isn't in our vocabulary. It's good to be in a business in which people arrive here in a good mood and leave in a better mood."