Roman Kotrys

Owner, Repeat The Beat

May 12^th, 2010

During the 80’s and 90’s, Repeat The Beat was one of the busiest, and leading independent record stores in the Detroit area. They also had stores in Kalamazoo and Cleveland. It seemed they were on a mission to become a chain to reckon with in the industry.

At the helm of the RTB empire was Roman Kotrys, an energetic, eternally youthful and fun loving person, who liked to play "Monopoly with music”. The game went his way for many years. He gathered national attention at NARM conventions, and was one of the founders of the Coalition of Independent Music Store (CIMS), an organization made up of the best “indie” stores across the country. Roman arranged to have hotels on all his "Musical Monopoly" board properties; Kotrys branched out Repeat The Beat with a distribution wing, and a juke box division. He had mastered the game. Kotrys kept rolling the dice, until the big-box chains started to use music as a "loss leader" to drive customers. Then Internet file sharing sites serving up free music, slowly took the dice, and eventually his stores away from him.

Roman walked away from his stores, after filing for bankruptcy. He then began selling items on eBay. It took little time; before he was shipping hundreds of packages a week, filled with music and whatever else he thought he could turn into a profit. He recently had purchased a building in Angola, Indiana (just south of the Michigan border), and was going to open a new retail store, and use the back for his eBay auction processing.

On Wednesday May 12th, 2010; Roman went home feeling ill, laid down to rest and suffered a severe cardiac incident which took his life. He had just celebrated his 52nd birthday, on April 28^th, 2010.

If you would like to tell your story about shopping at Repeat the Beat, or just leave a farewell to Roman - check out the Repeat the Beat group page on Facebook.