Friday, October 22, 2004

Right To Reply #3: Part Four

The subject: The future of recorded music

The participants:
Ben - your host
Nick - Contributing Editor for Stylus and author of Auspicious Fish
Simon - the one and only Mr No Rock & Roll Fun
Leon - Portsmouth's very own musical renegade
Kenny - the man behind the hand and the brains behind ace popcult blog Parallax View
Jez - Stereolab afficionado instrumental in introducing me to the delights of The Smiths and The Wedding Present
He Who Cannot Be Named - the shadowy figure behind Excuse Me For Laughing

Does downloading herald the end of the traditional record store?

Kenny: No, but Jeff Bezos and Amazon probably do, if they can keep it in profit.

Leon: Free downloads are payback for years of record companies and record shops overpricing their product and becoming complacent that people will forever consume it in the same manner. In this country, in the short term, the likes of HMV should start worrying about Tesco and Asda. Those people buying all the MOR dross or the stuff that’s in this week’s chart – which I assume is where HMV’s core turnover lies - will be able to pick up CDs with their weekly shop.

Jez: I fucking hope [it does herald the end]. They are there purely to sell. It would be idealistic to expect otherwise but those bastards are corrupt and always have been. They rent space to companies and then involve themselves in a massive fight to draw all attention away from the discs that will hardly sell. I’ll settle for Amazon as long as I can go to spend a couple of hours in Selectadisc.

Kenny: Most 'megastores' are becoming discount DVD warehouses anyway, in my experience.

Simon: The future of record shops? Not good. Obviously, it's been several years since there were record shops on any high street in most towns – Tower and Our Price have withdrawn, Boots has dropped its record shop, Virgin and HMV do still have a couple of racks of CDs, normally tucked away behind the T-shirts and mobile phones. Those stores will continue to repurpose their real estate for higher-yielding products. Independent stores which had weathered the onslaught of the chains may hang on for a while longer, but it's hard to see how they'll be able to survive much beyond the end of the decade. Second hand shops might last, but new records? They'll not be selling in large enough numbers to keep the little guys going. Of course, the great shame is by 2015, the joy of going into a charity shop and finding a bunch of great music for cheap is going to be lost forever.

He Who Cannot Be Named: Record stores have to try harder and please their customers and create, gulp, brand loyalty. I know friends to go to record shops to have the coolness of their purchases validated by the record clerks (what's the English word?), where they can pick up gig tickets and get recommendations from the musical equivalent of social workers. Yes, that is me sometimes. But record stores should try and play on the theme of community.

Ben: There’s surely still something to be said for the sort of independent record store staffed by passionate and enthusiastic people who aren’t just there because it’s a better or more respectable option than McDonalds (I could have sworn a baseball-capped HMV worker once said “Have a nice day” to me…). Perhaps this is over-romanticising it, but a trip to Selectadisc is less like a cold, transactional exchange and more like an enriching and wholesome experience. Over the years I’ve grown to trust the stickers describing what the more obscure albums sound like – you know they’re coming personally recommended by someone who’s given it a spin and knows what they’re talking about. In the short term there’ll still be plenty of Luddite customers like me who are yet to embrace the future, but it’s difficult to see how even well-established and popular independent shops like Selectadisc will be able to survive the downloading revolution.

Nick: Downloading does not herald the end of traditional record stores anymore than home taping did.

He Who Cannot Be Named: What signals the end more so is the advent of cheap CD sites like Play.com. I was on there today and bought Antics and SMiLE. Did I consider the traditional record store while doing so? Hell no. I did what was easier. Easier at other times walking past Sister Ray or Rounder and walking in there and buying a couple of CDs, as you do.

Leon: Long term, I think record companies will sell to consumers direct and the big record stores will be forced to radically alter the way they operate. Why should the record labels pay out for distribution etc when they can cut out the middle men? Consumers will go to the record label’s online store and either download a track or, as an option, say, download an album and then order the CD version if you want a ‘hard copy’.

Ben: How significant is it, then, that a label like Warp has deliberately chosen to make their entire back catalogue available to download?

He Who Cannot Be Named: It is great because it opens up (weirder) avenues to the casual browser on the internet. It spreads the gospel. In the long run they can only profit. And it's better than letting their back catalogue rot at the back of CD racks in Music and Video Exchanges.

Kenny: It seems like a smart, forward-thinking move, but I have no idea how much money they make from it. If you have to pay for it, why not buy the record from Amazon for just as many clicks? Although as my Tricky Disco 12" jumps here and there, I might just go and check their site out.

Nick: As for Warp making their entire back catalogue available online… well, I’ll get excited when EMI does that, with every song at 320kbps, costing 20p and downloading in ten seconds.

Ben: It’s a bold move that Warp have made, and at least it’s a start. No real surprise that it took one of the most forward-thinking labels around in musical terms to stand up and reject the official RIAA party line that downloading is bad for the music industry full stop. It’s a myth, utter bullshit – pure and simple.

*****

And, to wrap the whole feature up, it’s over to Nick for some concluding thoughts on the downloading phenomenon, MP3 blogs and internet music writers:

The thing that most internet-based music writers (I was going to use the word ‘journalists’ but we’re not, are we?) don’t realise is quite how hermetically sealed the net makes you; the free access to a diversity of opinions, to a wealth of knowledge far in excess of anything we’ve ever been able to utilise before, has opened up a huge amount of doors, of opportunities. People with the time, conviction and broadband connection can discover and fall in love with things they never would have had access to before – you only need to look at recent blog-friendly trends for grime, dancehall, microhouse and a thousand other new (and not so new) genres that keep neologists just as happy as music fans. And that’s great and good and positive and empowering and allows people to broaden horizons in ways hitherto unthought-of etcetera.

BUT, no matter how diverse internet boards such as I Love Music are, now matter how broad a church the blogosphere is, these are STILL, in the scheme of things, very small communities made up of individuals with a great deal in common – hence the diversity so often lauded is, at least in part, illusory.

And I often wonder whether the illusion of diversity is actually more dangerous than out-and-out narrow-mindedness. Anyone who spends any amount of time using a messageboard particular to one artist could quickly come under the entirely erroneous (and frankly ridiculous) impression that the regulars of that board constitute the entire fanbase of the artist, even if there are only a couple of dozen regular posters. Who then makes up the other couple of thousand (or hundred thousand, or million) people who attend concerts and buy records by said artist?

Despite the apparent ubiquity and inclusivity of the net, it’s still a very specialist concern, and nowhere near as representative as it likes to think it is.

*****

And that's a wrap. Thanks to all the contributors for making this the best and most extensive Right To Reply to date. There'll be another one along in the next couple of months.

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