Not feeling it... literally

1745.

That’s how many CDs I own. Yeah... that is quite a lot, isn’t it? Whilst prices vary enormously, at a rough estimate that means I’ve spent around £10,000 on music. Of course, that ignores the cassettes, CD singles, and vinyl 7”, 12” and albums.

If only there had been some handy way of just paying a sum each month and listening to whatever I wanted – I wouldn’t have a wall full of shiny silver discs.

Just to depress myself, let’s assume a streaming music service (like Spotify) costs £10 a month. On that basis, I could have used it for 1,000 months for the same outlay as the CDs alone. Or about 83 years. Ah.

Still, there’s something nice about having a physical product, and I’d always presumed I was the righteous one – until I got the calculator out a couple of minutes ago.

For those of you fortunate enough to be growing up in the time of streaming services for music, and video content, you can get just about anything recorded, ever, to enjoy whenever and wherever you want.

A youthful colleague at work told me today that she hasn’t purchased a CD or DVD for more than a decade. I purchased a CD last week.

It seems I’m part of endangered species - more was spent on pay-as-you-play in 2018 than on stuff you can hold in your hand and shove in a player. 62% of money spent on music went to subscription services, whilst video on demand took 55%, according to the Entertainment Retailers Association.

Music and movies weren’t the first to reach this tipping point either – they were beaten to it a few years ago by the gaming world, and the monthly fees gamers pay for online multiplayer fun.

Even within my own family I’m the dark-ages sibling – both my brothers use music streaming services, and donated/ebay-ed their physical formats years ago.

I have to scan the racks to track down the particular album I want, or remember that a track is on a particular disc, then load and listen. It’s pretty tricky for me to shuffle my favourites too, although it would probably be good exercise – my collection is currently in a different room to the player.

Maybe it’s finally time I went digital and ditched the discs. I could have a fresh coaster for my cappuccino every week for the next 28 years.

This post first appeared as my "A wry look at the week" column, in The Mail, on Friday the 8th of March 2019. The version used on their website was re-titled as "Is it time to ditch the discs?". Good title, actually. Why didn't I think of that?

It's 1747 now, by the way. The two that have expanded the collection yet further are KT Tunstall's "Wax" and Within Temptation's "Resist". Will I NEVER learn?

(Tape time: No 094 - a sterling collection of recordings of mainly white label 12" singles, from when my friend Dave's mum was dating a DJ, who got 2 copies of records sent out by a label, but after moving out one set still arrived. Includes Talk Talk (mentioned just last week) Gloria Gaynor, Matthew Wilder and the brilliant "Self Control" by Raf - which is miles better than Laura Brannigan's version, but wasn't a hit. Phew. Carry on.)

Shouting in the social media mirror

It was always tricky to fit everything you wanted into the intentionally short character count of Twitter, especially when, like me, you tend to write ridiculously long sentences that keep going on and on, with no discernible end in sight, until you start wondering what the point was in the first place. The maximum length of a text message originally limited a tweet to 140 characters, due to it being a common way to post your ramblings in Twitter’s early days. Ten years later, we’ve largely consigned texting to the tech dustbin, and after a lot of angst, the social media platform’s bigwigs have finally opted to double your ranting capacity to 280. Responses ranged from “You’ve ruined it! Closing my account!” to the far more common “Meh” of modern disinterest. As someone rightly pointed out, just because you have twice as much capacity doesn’t mean you actually have to use it. It is, of course, and excellent opportunity to use the English language correctly and include punctuat...

A fisful of change at the shops

A recent day out reminded me how much the retail experience has altered during my lifetime – and it’s not all good. I could stop typing this, and buy a fridge, in a matter of seconds. The shops are shut and it’s 9pm, but I could still place the order and arrange delivery. I haven’t got to wander round a white-goods retail emporium trying to work out which slightly different version of something that keeps my cider cold is better. It’ll be cheaper, too. But in amongst the convenience, endless choice and bargains, we’ve lost some of the personal, human, touches that used to make a trip to the shops something more than just a daily chore. Last weekend, we visited a local coastal town. Amongst the shops selling over-priced imported home accessories (who doesn’t need another roughly-hewn wooden heart, poorly painted and a bargain at £10?) was one that looked different. It’s window allowed you to see in, rather than being plastered with stick-on graphics and special offers calling ...

Making an exhibition of yourself

Now and again, it’s good to reaffirm that you’re a (relatively) normal human being. One excellent way of doing this is to go to a business exhibition. Despite what you might have surmised from reading my previous columns, I am employable, and even capable of acting like a regular person most of the time, even joining in the Monday morning conversation about the weather over the weekend, and why (insert name of footyballs manager here) should be fired immediately. The mug! True, there are times, often involving a caffeine deficiency, where it is like having the distilled essence of ten moody teenagers in the room, but I try and get that out of the way when people I genuinely like aren’t around to see it. As part of my ongoing experiment with what others call ‘working’, my ‘job’ involves me occasionally needing to go and see what some of my colleagues get up to outside the office, and what our competitors do to try and make sure that they do whatever my colleagues do better than ...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog