As expected, the music industry sector is moving and rather frail.
We’ve heard last week HMV “is planning to shut 40 HMV stores and 20 Waterstone's bookshops in an effort to cut costs” according to the website thisisfakediy.co.uk.
It is not the only one! “The last US HMV closed five years ago, Tower Records stopped trading soon after, and the last Virgin Megastore finally closed its doors 18 months ago” says the Guardian.
Physical records tend to disappear but people are continuing to listen to music.
In our capitalistic world, people win and people lose. Who are the winners? You? Me? Customers in general I think because if we don’t buy physical records we can buy (or illegally download) music and listen to it with our MP3. Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. are the bigger online retailers. They can also cut prices and be more competitive in the market. So they’re winners too even if they have certainly been affected with the crisis.
The losers are obviously stores but also everybody behind the scene: musicians, labels, technicians, fabrics, etc...
Quick explanation about labels:
A record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion, and enforcement of copyright protection of sound recordings and music videos; conducts talent scouting and development of new artists and maintains contracts with recording artists and their managers. (Wikipedia).
You should notice that you, your neighbor and me, are losing sound quality! And if you want to sing your favorite song you cannot check in the leaflet what the lyrics are and you cannot enjoy the entire album hours long because they’re NO leaflet, NO pictures of your favorite singer and NO compact disc that you put in the record player so carefully as if it was the most beautiful thing in the world.
Dear reader, I confess, I’m nostalgic of that time when in secret I went to the music library of my parents and picked up few CD by change to hear it secretly in my room…
Technology is technology!
When the CD entered the market in 1982, it was a revolution. It provided a better sound quality than the cassette and was “also much more portable and durable than vinyl” (www.articleinput.com).
Perhaps we should see digital download as a new revolution. Perhaps it answers to the need of the mass consumption.
Interestingly, the founder of Waterstones, Tim Waterstone, is trying to buy back the bookshop chain he founded some 25 or so years ago. So even though technology moves on, there is still someone who foresees a demand for products which have been around ever since the invention of the printing press!
ReplyDeleteEven though technology is moving on, I think if we do a survey around us, people would claim they are still reluctant to read the new book of their favorite author on a screen (iPad, Kindle).
ReplyDeletePersonaly, I like to buy books because of the smell they have.