Notes from a music snob
Actually, still listening isn’t entirely true, re-listening would be a more accurate description. I, like many other (hi-fi) people, have recently rediscovered my vinyl collection and indeed it is now growing again. For my accuser this makes me some kind of dinosaur, as he has definitely moved with the times and considers mp3 to be a perfectly good medium for the storage of music - “but I can get three zillion albums on my iPod!”. Without being over dramatic, this saddens me. Here is someone who was a music nut, whose formative years, like my own, were heavily influenced by the music he listened to. A man with whom I shared a stage back when I was a tub thumper and he was a singer. A man who actually opened my ears to much of the music that now still spins on my turntable.
Something has driven him (and countless millions of others) quite happily away from what we would consider to be good quality music, to a demonstrably inferior format. I’m sure we would probably all agree that convenience is one of the main driving forces behind this switch, but my question is should we, as bastions of quality, be worried?
It’s a commonly known fact that the consumer electronics retail sector is facing problems, as is music software retail. We hear about it all the time on the news - Dixons group issue profit warnings with regularity and HMV, the only remaining high street retailer of music, hasn’t exactly had a rosy time of late. But, interest in music is higher than ever - there is more music being listened to now than has ever been listened to before.
Of course, this is primarily driven, as we all know, by downloads. Searching the BPI website when researching for this article threw up some interesting statistics:
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Combined 2010 digital and physical album sales decline 7% overall in volume to 119.9m.
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Downloads saw singles sales climb to third successive record high – 161.8m sold in 2010, up 5.9% year on year.
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The digital album comes of age – 21.0m sold, representing 17.5% of 2010 album sales.
And to put that last figure into perspective, in 2009 (the latest stats available), vinyl album sales accounted for just 219,500 pieces or 0.2% of the market.
One can not deny the statistics, nor can one stand in the way of progress. Digital and downloads are not going away. It is just a shame, for those of us who love quality music, that this latest development in technology represents a step backwards in terms of quality. Each previous milestone in technology has brought much in the way of sound quality improvement - from wax cylinders to 78s; to 33⅓; from mono to stereo; to CD (let’s not get into the CD ‘v vinyl argument here); to SACD and DVD-A. And now the latest step forwards to mp3, with all it’s technological marvels and convenience factors, is without doubt a retrograde step for the quality of music.
As Stanislaw Lem, author of Solaris, wrote “Is it progress if a cannibal uses a knife and fork?”
Downloads and mp3s may be the convenient way for storing music, but perhaps it’s not all as bad as we thought and the demise of hard copy formats isn’t as advanced as some would have us believe. It’s telling that Thom Yorke, of Radiohead, said releasing their latest album solely on the internet would have been “stark raving mad”. He went on to tell BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that 80% of people still buy physical releases and that it was important for his band to have “an object”. And interestingly, the CD release of their album went straight to number one in the album charts.
But whatever the real facts about download ‘v’ physical purchasing, there is still a very real need for us, as the hi-fi industry, to engage with music fans. We need to make hi-fi and good quality sound sexy again - just like it was in the 70s and 80s, when a separates system was a “must have” purchase. How we do that is the million dollar question, but do it we must. You, me and all the other quality music lovers out there have a part to play. Spread the word, tell your friends, invite them round and play them some music. I’m sure you, like me, will be quite proud to be labelled as a music snob - especially if that means we appreciate music presented at its best. Given half a chance and the right approach I bet we can find a lot more of them out there.