TheWayoftheWeb

With some time to kill before a meeting, I took the chance to browse round the Oxford Street branch of HMV, looking for inspiration for what to buy with a gift voucher I’ve had kicking around, and also to get ideas for Christmas presents.

Aside from reminding me how difficult it can be to find unusual items in even the largest stores (in fact it’s usually easier in the small secondhand record shops I spent much of my music budget in), I also felt something a bit different about the experience. I’m not sure whether it’s the credit crunch, the success of online retailers or the rise of the MP3 but the shop felt slightly emptier than I’d have expected - and the average age seemed slightly older than usual.

The only major exception was the ever-expanding videogames section. Could this be the fact full console games are still viable as a physical product? (Not many options to download a full game, and the filesize would be bigger than the monthly data allowance for a lot of people!) Certainly I got the anecdotal impression that without the videogame section, the average age of the shoppers would be 10 years higher than I’ve ever seen - or maybe I’m just noticing more…

Coincidentally, via PaidContent and Media Guardian comes the news that 32.1 million MP3 players were sold in the UK last year. Jemima Kiss points out, quite rightly, that the title is a bit misleading - 75% of the sales included were MP3 capable mobile phones - but the important point is that 90% of mobiles sold last year were MP3 capable. Whether or not they’re actually being used for MP3 consumption is almost secondary - the point is that a huge mass of people now have the opportunity to be converted at any moment.

I’m not sure that CD player sales dropping to 8 million last year is necessarily related - after all, CD players have been around long enough to have reached saturation point - but if the money drops out of manufacturing CD players, and sales are growing in those little devices that make phonecalls, take pictures and video, surf the web and play MP3s, it’s another challenge to providers and retailers of physical content.

Why would I pust through a packed Oxford Street to experience agoraphobia in a massive store populated by those 10+ years older than me, and then fail to find my ideal purchase without ordering it - particularly when its so closely linked to lifestyle?

Funnily enough, I have seen a packed record shop recently - in Malmo in Sweden. And I wish I’d grabbed a picture, because it wasn’t just records - it was the 50’s style in store cafe.

I realise this has been a bit of a meandering post, but perhaps the takeaway conclusion is this:

Mobile phones are a triumph of convergence to provide value. Convergence is also increasingly happening with living room technology and online applications. Perhaps in a time-starved culture, more retailers need to look at how they could use convergence to build engagement and loyalty in the real world, as much as online? After all, it’s a reason why supermarkets and department stores have continued to have cafes instore. So why can’t record stores look at food and drink, live events, introducing art, photography, specific genre nights, or other ways to hook into the tribes who don’t have a reason to support them anymore?

When I was a child and teenager, I was as obsessive about music as it was possible to be. I combined aspirations of becoming a professional musician and DJ, with the compulsive behaviour of a serial librarian and collector. So you can imagine how many music magazines (NME, Melody Maker, Metal Hammer, Kerrang, Record Collector, Mojo, Q etc), and how many records and eventually CDs I consumed - just to make it clear I’m not completely over the hill, CDs came into circulation when I was about 11 or 12 I think…

And just as my interest in videogames and comics have both waned during early adulthood and resurfaced now due to meeting likeminded people online, my interest in music has seen a healthy resurgence. In the meantime, I still listened to all my old purchases, but I rarely found anything new. That’s changed a lot thanks to the internet.

There are basically three sites I use for all my music needs (although for the moment I still only have a radio in my car!)

• Blip.fm - There’s been a lot of buzz around Blip recently. In fact, I even suggested it shows the best method of monetising Twitter, as it’s essentially a cross between a microblog, and an annotated John Peel show. You simply tell people what you’re listening to, and if it’s available on the site they can listen as well - and that’s all filtered by who you follow, with the option to buy MP3s if you like something enough.  It’s perfect for a quick blast to find songs I’d have never heard about, or listened to, unless it was recommended by a trusted source.
• Last.fm - It’s essentially the only real option at the moment if you’re outside of the U.S. We can’t access Pandora (but founder Tim Westergren has stated it’s close to closing anyway), and Meemix seems to have focussed on extras rather than a reliable player.
• Myspace - Yep, it’s hard to believe in the age of Facebook dominance, and open source Muxtapes, but if I hear a bands name, and I want to hear their songs really quickly and easily, I tend to end up going to Myspace even before last.fm - mainly down to speed. It’ll be interesting to see if that means I use it more when the Myspace streaming radio finally appears. It might replace last.fm, but only if it offers a stream of my favourite choices without a need to subscribe

And that’s about it for music. I very occasionally catch a music show on TV (I’ve been looking at 4Music as it’s co-owned by Bauer Media where I work, along with Kerrang). I hear the radio for about 10 minutes in the car (and that’s only until I replace the stereo so I can listen to podcasts), and my only real radio use is to listen to live football if I can’t watch it. Three online services, and the recommendations I receive have replaced pretty much all my other musical inputs.

And incidentally, all my latest CD and MP3 purchases have all been songs that I would never have heard on the radio, were all things I generally struggled to find in most music shops, and once again persuaded me how much easier it is to find music online.

It’s not a surprise that Coldplay are top of the UK singles chart (along with the album chart as well). Whatever you think of their music, they’ve got the fanbase and the following to make it as close to a sure thing as could be - despite the fact they got beaten by the Crazy Frog ringtone in 2005!

But what is very interesting is the fact that the official single to be released, Violet Hill, is only at number 11 on the charts. The song at number 1, Viva La Vida, was actually only made available as a download to fans who had pre-ordered the new album,  just three days before the singles chart was compiled.

So the track available as a bonus download for pre-ordered albums beats out a physical copy costing £1.99 by the same band.

For me, this is another sure sign that the singles chart should become purely about downloaded tracks, and that increasing numbers of bands and people are understanding that downloadable music is something which can be enjoyed as an incentive, or as promotional, or a taster - and not necessarily as the end product which supports the music industry.

For a more groundbreaking example, just take a look at what Nine Inch Nails did…

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That’s why my latest purchase isn’t a top of the range iPod Touch or an Alienware PC, as much as I’d love to have the cash to spend.

Nope, my latest gadget purchases were a £10 1Gb discontinued Technika MP3 player (closest one I could find online is this), and a £9.97 Technika MP3 cassette adapter, due to the fact both of the cars in my possession come from a time when cassette players were the standard equipment.

The joy of being able to drive around in an open top car, and not being forced to listen to the radio! Now comes the dilemma of which online MP3 store to register with to keep things nice and legal. I suspect the only real viable option involves an ‘i’, at least until Myspace gets into gear.