The death of the independent record shop in Sussex has moved a step closer after two stores announced they will be shutting their doors.

Round Sounds in Church Walk, Burgess Hill, will close on Easter Saturday and Jingles, in Railway Approach, East Grinstead, will follow suit at the end of the month.

The owners of both blame different circumstances for their decisions but agree the future of independent record shops looks very bleak indeed.

Neil Shoubridge has owned Jingles for 15 years. He said: "There's just no business about. I would say my profits have gone down by about a third in the last two years."

Instead of the usual music industry grumble about downloads, Mr Shoubridge believes the problems lie in the current gloomy economic climate. He said: "People do not have spare cash. They are too busy coping with taxes and price rises so anything that's not a necessity gets pushed back."

Steve Brewer started working in Round Sounds 16 years ago and took it over in 1996. His decision to shut follows the closure of his Haywards Heath store in 2003.

Mr Brewer said: "A few years ago I would make a third of my weekly turnover on singles. But now about 80 per cent of single sales are downloads."

Mr Shoubridge still believes there is a big market for selling physical copies of music. He said: "Big record companies like BMG and EMI constantly say the future is in downloads even though they're still only about 20 per cent of their profits. The big problem is with piracy, not on a large scale but with kids renting CDs from the library and burning them on to computer."

The men agree business has suffered since supermarkets started selling CDs at knock-down prices.

Mr Brewer said: "Tesco has had a huge impact and has taken people away from the town centre. They are undercutting me as their levels of pricing are effectively anticompetitive because we cannot match them. They are also affecting choice. I can offer variety and have several thousand lines on sale while supermarkets are only interested in top 75 albums."

Mr Shoubridge is selling his other Jingles store in Hailsham to his business partner. It will remain open as one of the last Sussex independent record shops outside Brighton.