Quaristice

A series of posts

1. How to quadruple the price of an album and get away with it
2. How not to review music
3. Autechre — Quaristice

I have now had well over a month to digest the MP3s, and I have had the CD (and what a lovely object that is) for a week. High time for me to review Quaristice, Autechre’s first album for three years.

Pinksy encouraged me to write a track-by-track review, but I will not do that in case I make an arse of myself like that other guy. That, and because I can’t think of enough things to say about each track. And I know nothing about electronic music production so I really would be making an arse of myself.

Anyway, onward!

The album starts off with a real surprise. ‘Altibzz’ is perhaps Autechre’s most luscious track since the days of Amber or Tri Repetae. It is not often that Autechre stray into making these beatless soundscapes any more, but it is a real treat when they do.

Paradoxically, for what is perhaps Autechre’s most immediately accessible track in a long time, for this very reason it was disorientating to listen to for the first time. It is an unsettling beginning to the album, because it leaves no preparation for what is to follow, namely the kind of brain-rattling beat bombardment associated with their post-LP5 work.

‘Altibzz’ is immediately followed by ‘The Plc’, a rather more dizzying track. It starts of with a kind of slippery-sounding beat, backed up with a dense synthy soundscape, like a darker ‘Altibzz’. The track progresses, in typical Autechre style, into something quite different yet the same. I love the vocals towards the end.

Autechre aficionados will immediately recognise some parts of Quaristice from the leaked recording of their 2005 gig in Glasgow as part of the Untilted tour. ‘IO’ brings us the first recognisable moment. However, I find this version disappointingly superficial compared to the live one. This had a lot more power live.

The other recognisable moment is ‘chenc9′. For me, this track succeeds much more on the album. It is a real high point towards the end of the album — upbeat, accessible and danceable, but as uncompromisingly intricate as any Autechre track.

However, my favourite track from the album is ‘Simmm’. This is not one of Autechre’s most intricate tracks. It’s rather immediate actually, with a funky melody and a groovy array of electronic percussive sounds. Another top track is ‘Perlence’. It sounds like ‘Popcorn’ by Hot Butter fucked with big time. Despite the ‘popcorn’ connotations in the sounds in this track, it’s a great listen. I also absolutely love ‘fwzE’. It reminds me of ‘The Trees’ but groovier.

A lot has been made about the immediacy of Quaristice in many of the reviews that I have read. I have to say that, in general, I did not feel this at all. I “got” Untilted straight away, and even Draft 7.30 was more immediate for me.

But listening to Quaristice gave me that stereotypical reaction to new Autechre music. I didn’t know what to think, I couldn’t possibly take in what I had listened to. I was quite confused really. I suppose I fell into the trap of wanting to hear Autechre’s last album rather than anything new. I was really looking forward to an Untilted II, which of course isn’t really the point of Autechre.

The initial alienation I felt was particularly exacerbated by the fact that, to me, Quaristice doesn’t feel much like an album. It skips from styles and moods with seemingly little thought to the overall flow of the album. With the additional fact that these tracks are much shorter than those on your standard Autechre album (20 tracks around 3–4 minutes long as opposed to 9 tracks around 7–8 minutes long), I was reminded most of Gescom’s MiniDisc.

Perhaps the fact that the tracks are relatively short by Autechre’s standards is one reason why some people found this album accessible. I just didn’t get that easy door in. After Untilted I smugly believed that I had learned to “read” Autechre as much as I needed to. Quaristice has certainly put me in my place!

It is interesting to point out here that in one of their recent interviews (in Wire magazine, not available online), Autechre have explained that the idea of Quaristice is to get to the meat of the track straight away, without any of the “language lessons” as they called the build-up of the track. I understand exactly what they mean, but for me the build-up was a lot of the fun of Autechre, and that has been taken away here.

If Quaristice has an overall sound, I would have to say that I think this is Autechre’s darkest album to date. One track in Untilted made me feel uneasy — ‘Pro Radii’. My first impression of Quaristice was as though I was listening to ‘Pro Radii’ for the first time, several times over.

A huge period of darkness comes towards the middle of the album. This period begins with ‘paralel Suns’, where, incidentally, the weaknesses of the MP3 format are shown up the most. This is followed by ‘Steels’, perhaps (along with ’90101-5l-l’) the track that most reminds me of ‘Pro Radii’.

Next comes ‘Tankakern’, which at first I felt was reminiscent of ’777′, one of my least favourite Autechre tracks. This, however, has been the typical Autechre grower. Now I think it approaches the brilliance of Confield, which I consider to be the pinnacle of electronic music. This track particularly reminds me of ‘Bine’ from that excellent album. Bonus marks go to ‘Tankakern’ for the inclusion of birdsong.

‘rale’ is where things start to become groovy again. A simple but addictively enjoyable beat accompanied by a rather immediate syncopated melody, though towards the end there are some rather unsettling sounds that remind me a bit of the creepy psuedo-subliminal messages in Boards of Canada’s Music Has the Right to Children.

We only truly emerge from the dark patch with ‘bnc Castl’. The track starts off ominously enough. But within seconds it becomes some madcap shiny, sparkly tune with tinsel flying all over the place. It sounds a bit like an ice cream van having a fight — a really rhythmic fight — with an ambulance.

It transpires that ‘bnc Castl’ is only a surreal interlude, as it is followed by ‘Theswere’. This sounds like it actually could be from a horror film soundtrack, albeit one where the monster is a draining sink. To be honest, this track is a bit cheesy by Autechre’s standards.

‘WNSN’ is not so intimidating, although it still has a very other-worldly quality to it. This track is very reminiscent of EP7-era material, particularly ‘Zeiss Contarex’.

Towards the end of the album we see a return to the more ambient sound found at the beginning. However, these closing two tracks do not succeed as much as ‘Altibzz’ for me. ‘Notwo’ would be quite pleasant, but the melody seems a bit ham-fisted and it’s not the most polished-sounding of tracks. Perhaps that was the intention, but I’m afraid I don’t like it.

The final track, ‘Outh9X’ is more like it, but not quite the triumphant climax it could have been. I know that Autechre are quite challenging, but even though initially many of their tracks sound very odd they tend to make most sense if you switch off your brain and just let it all wash over you; allow it to appeal on an innate, subconscious level.

This is not allowed to happen on ‘Outh9X’. I just don’t get the strange plinky-plonky melody that fades in and out towards the beginning and middle of this track. It seems completely out of place. It is quite off-putting and is enough to ruin the whole track for me.

Overall, I have to say that I find Quaristice to be quite an odd album. By any normal standards, it is brilliant. I don’t mean to come across as fanboyish (although I am a bit of an Autechre fanboy), but I can’t help thinking to myself, why is there no-one in the world who can hold a candle to Autechre? I mean really, why are they so good? There are plenty of imitators, and lots of people making music in the IDM tradition. But why are none of them anything like this good?

On the other hand, by Autechre’s standards, Quaristice is, for me, quite a weak album. It is probably their weakest since Chiastic Slide.

It is true, however, that Autechre material needs a very long time to be digested. The music grows on you and you are forever seeing the music in new and interesting lights. By the time Autechre’s tenth album comes out, I will be craving more material in the vein if Quaristice, just as I was hungry for more music in the style of Untilted.

Even so, I can’t help feeling that this is Autechre’s least ambitious offering for a very long time. For me, the interesting thing about Quaristice is that it covers a lot of old ground. There are elements here of almost all of their previous albums.

I should point out that I have read the interviews, and I am aware of the circumstances under which this album was recorded. Even so, on a purely sonic level — from what my ears feel — Quaristice is retreading a lot of old ground.

I suppose in a way it is a bit too simplistic to think of Autechre’s music as becoming increasingly complex over time. In their earliest albums, this is certainly true. But since LP5 or EP7 Autechre’s music, although changing in style and mood from album to album, has zipped around within the same boundaries as far as the intricacy of their music goes. Perhaps they always wanted to sound like this, but were limited by technology in the early 1990s.

Anyway, I do feel like a right Crispy Godber now because I have certainly analysed this too much. The best way to approach Autechre is not the chin-strokey way celebrating needless complexity. While it’s certainly interesting to consider, the real reason I like Autechre, as I suspect is the real reason why anyone likes any music — or anything, for that matter: instinct. As I said somewhere above, let it wash over you and it will make sense on an innate level anyway.

I will return to Quaristice soon with a review of the limited edition second CD, Quaristice (Versions).

Quaristice

A series of posts

1. How to quadruple the price of an album and get away with it
2. How not to review music
3. Autechre — Quaristice

If there is a musical act I like more than Radiohead, it is Autechre. The release of Autechre’s new album, Quaristice, bears some resemblance to Radiohead’s attention-grabbing In Rainbows release. It also bears a lot of the hallmarks of my predictions / observations about the apparent future of the music industry which I wrote about earlier this month.

I has already been known for a while that a new Autechre album was due out on 3 March. But on Tuesday it was announced via an email to subscribers to the Warp Records newsletter that Quaristice was available to buy as a digital download immediately.

This is the second time in as many months that Warp has sprung a surprise. They did it last month by releasing Clark’s Throttle Promoter EP with no prior warning, along with the announcement of a new album, Turning Dragon, just a month away. It is a pleasant change given that Warp seem to like announcing an album several months in advance and switch the publicity machine into overdrive (and the recorded music industry wonders why people just illegally download albums instead of waiting).

Of course, I had to buy it straight away. Unfortunately, Bleep was struggling to cope with demand. After spending far too long trying to get the zipped download to work, I eventually resorted to laboriously downloading the album track by track. The whole process took over three hours. Ironically, it would have been a lot quicker and easier — not to mention cheaper — to just illegally download it.

On top of the immediate digital release, a limited edition version of Quaristice was announced. This is interesting because Autechre have never had a ‘limited edition’ version of one of their albums released alongside a standard edition. I don’t know if that was because Autechre didn’t like the idea or if Warp thought it wouldn’t be worth it. But whatever, this move seems to back up the observations I made a few weeks ago — the limited edition is becoming much more important for the recorded music industry.

The limited edition Quaristice sounds swish. It comes with a second CD of alternative versions of tracks from the album housed in a rather luxurious-sounding package:

The double CD set comes in a Designers Republic styled, photo-etched, 0.4mm steel slipcase with foil blocked inner gatefold wallet.

It comes at an equally luxurious price — £24.99. And postage is £5! Limited to 1,000 copies, it sold out really quickly, so I feel lucky that I didn’t hang around like I often do. I speculate that they could have easily sold 5,000.

The MP3s cost £6.99 (if I had opted to go for the lossless Flac files (which I didn’t because they are not iPod-compatible), it would have cost £8.99). As such, I have spent £36.98 on Quaristice — almost as much as the £40 Radiohead ‘discbox’.

Before In Rainbows I had never spent anything like £40 on an album. Now I have done it twice in the space of a few months. What a sucker. Who said it was impossible to make money from recorded music any more?

All-in-all, it is a very clever move by Warp. I have bought every Autechre album that’s ever been released for around a tenner. With a couple of sly moves they have managed to just about quadruple that. And judging from the trouble I had downloading it and the fact that the limited edition sold out so quickly, it has happened at least a thousand times over. The accountants at Warp must be happy today.

(Needless to say, I will be reviewing Quaristice when I get the chance.)

As of today, you can play full-length tracks and entire albums for free on the Last.fm website.

Something we’ve wanted for years—for people who visit Last.fm to be able to play any track for free—is now possible. With the support of the folks behind EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner—and the artists they work with—plus thousands of independent artists and labels, we’ve made the biggest legal collection of music available to play online for free, the way we believe it should be.

Beforehand, you could only play a select few tracks in full for free — and to be honest, they were mostly rubbish. Now all four major labels as well as 150,000 indies are on board letting people listen to their music for free on Last.fm. Millions of songs are now at my fingertips.

Okay, so the music is not completely free. Once you’ve listened to a track three times, you will be blocked from listening to it again until you pay up. But complaining about this would be churlish. Even if you approach it as a kind of ‘try before you buy’ service, this is much, much better than anything that has come before.

For me, this is the day the recorded music industry has begun to face the music (excuse the pun). There have been signs of them facing up to the reality of a world with the internet. But even, for instance, their plans to sell DRM-free MP3s through Amazon was as much an attempt to derail Apple’s dominance in the digital download arena as anything else.

No doubt there will be questions about the financial viability of this. The BBC report on the announcement certainly adopts a slightly sniffy, sceptical tone.

It certainly feels strange, coming just a couple of weeks after Pandora closed its similar service in the UK on the basis that the labels were making it too difficult.

Both the PPL (which represents the record labels) and the MCPS/PRS Alliance (which represents music publishers) have demanded per track performance minima rates which are far too high to allow ad supported radio to operate…

But that is pretty much the model that Last.fm is adopting:

We’re not printing money to pay for this—but the business model is simple enough: we are paying artists and labels a share of advertising revenue from the website.

Today we’re redesigning the music economy.

How can Last.fm make it work if Pandora couldn’t? It is true that Last.fm has big backing in the form of its owner, CBS. But if it’s not financially viable, it’s not financially viable, right?

Maybe there is more to this, or there is something I’m missing. Leaving the Pandora issue aside, it looks as though something big has happened today — as though someone’s banged a gong and the majors have all woken up to what’s going on. And they’ve agreed to finally do something sensible about the situation. Today music became even cheaper, and we all became a bit richer.

Copyshite

A series of posts

1. Copyshite
2. The entertainment industry’s wrong turns
3. The future of music: gigs and t-shirts
4. The future of music: pretty boxes

There are only two things in the world that give us absolute total happiness. One is seeing other people fail. The other is unwrapping a newly-bought CD.

–Armando Iannucci

In the wake of all the upheaval that the recorded music industry is facing, a lot of people have been predicting the death of the CD. After all, the very reason why music is cheap or free these days is because they don’t need to be put on a physical object which then has to be transported around the world. Surely digital downloads are the only conceivable future for music distribution.

I don’t like the idea of this. If I was five years younger it would probably make perfect sense to me. Last week’s edition of The Economist tells the story of a focus group that EMI held. It was aimed at understanding yoofs better. At the end of the meeting, the teenagers were invited to take as many free CDs from a pile on a table as they wanted. Not a single person took a CD.

It’s just the latest example of a recorded music industry that has always found it difficult to adapt to new technology. Historically, consumers have gone for the most convenient and cheapest format rather than the technically excellent one. So says Fredric Dannen if you scroll a long way down.

When the long-playing record (LP) format was introduced by Columbia Records back in the late 1940s, the industry as a whole resisted it, and many predicted it would never take off because 78s sounded better. Without question, early LPs did not sound nearly as good as 78s. But given the choice of listening to all of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on two sides of one record versus sixteen sides of eight records, the consumer opted for convenience and simplicity (not to mention less shelf space).

…You can always count on the record industry to cling to the past, and to fight innovation.

So does the arrival of MP3 mean the death of the CD? I personally hope not. I love CDs. I am of that generation, probably a small five–ten year window of people who wouldn’t consider vinyl but had no access to file sharing as they grew up. Napster came onto the scene in 2000, when I was 14 — well into my music-consuming life.

I have been collecting CDs since I was nine years old. I haven’t counted, but I must have around 600 CDs. I only bought my first vinyl records a few years ago. I bought them grudgingly, only because they were not available on CD. I reckon today I have 30 vinyl records.

I have only ever bought around a dozen MP3s — again, because they were not readily available on CD or vinyl. (I have downloaded a few dozen more because they weren’t commercially available at all — mainly live bootlegs and demos.) I would consider buying more. But although MP3 is the format du jour, there is a big block in my mind preventing me from buying something that I will never be able to see or touch.

I suppose this makes me a collector. (Yes, my collection is in alphabetical order — or it was until I ran out of space.) Collectors tend to be fans of vinyl though, which makes me an anomaly.

It would be nice to think that the CD will limp on and eventually survive another day in the MP3 era just as vinyl has done in the CD era. I have grown up with CDs and I love them. I’m not an audiophile, so the sound quality issue doesn’t worry me too much. And to be honest, I can’t be bothered with the faff of vinyl.

Whether it is CD or vinyl, there will always be people like me who treasure the physical presence of an album. It’s not just about a collection of notes. It about an event, a happening. It’s the artwork, the packaging. The sleevenotes, the lyrics. The smell of the booklet. It has an aura. When you hold a copy of a good album, you are transported to its space without even having to put it on. Could all of this really die because of the internet?

When Radiohead released In Rainbows, the pricing structure grabbed all of the headlines. But that wasn’t the interesting thing for me. The pay-what-you-want method is just a belated recognition of the fact that people could choose to pay nothing anyway.

The other aspect of the release of In Rainbows interested me much more. I didn’t pay anything for the MP3s. I downloaded them for free when they were released on 10 October. That’s because I got them as part of the £40 “discbox” set.

The discbox is a premium edition of In Rainbows. It comprises a CD of the album, an second CD with eight extra tracks and enhanced content, a 2× vinyl edition of the album, and generally all-round badass packaging.

£40 is the most I have ever paid for an album. I hesitated before I ordered it — but not much. Although I am sort of a collector, I have never been a completist. I am usually happy to have the CD version on its own. But I couldn’t resist the awesomeness of the discbox — despite the fact that I hadn’t even heard the album.

This was largely ignored in the media coverage of the album, but to me it was the most notable aspect of the unconventional release of In Rainbows. When I first posted about In Rainbows, I neglected to even mention the fact that the MP3s were free. I didn’t find it that interesting.

People like me, who love the physical formats, will be continue to be catered for. It is easy to make money out of us. Slap a sticker saying ‘limited edition’ on a record and suddenly demand for it will become price inelastic. Suckers like me will buy premium versions of albums at higher prices than we would otherwise consider. And this will become ever more important for the record companies as physical sales continue to get eaten into by the internet, where profit seeking is impossible.

In Rainbows wasn’t the start of this. Limited edition versions of albums have been around for a very long time. But in an age where it is becoming increasingly difficult to make money out of recorded music, it is becoming more and more prevalent.

When I went shopping for Sigur Rós’s Heima DVD I thought £17 was a bit steep. Then I saw the limited edition version for £25 and bought it.

The deluxe multi-format edition seems to be becoming more common as well. Björk’s latest single, ‘Declare Independence’, is available as a deluxe edition, yours for only £19.99.

Formatted in the same extravagant packaging as the Volta double LP, this contains all conceivable formats of the single: double vinyl, CD and DVD.

Something else that is becoming more and more common is for people to automatically get the MP3 version for free when they order a physical version. For instance, Nonesuch has started doing this. You can choose between standard 128kbps MP3s or maximum quality 320kpbs at no extra cost.

It makes sense to me. Being able to have your entire music collection on a portable device is becoming an expectation these days. Since vinyl is a bit more tricky to get onto your iPod, it would be good to get the MP3s of music that you have already bought automatically for free. Hopefully more record companies will adopt this approach.

A lot of people have wondered aloud if the fact that we can now get music for free from the internet is devaluing music. But it seems to me as though the internet is not only driving the price of music down — it’s also driving the price of CDs and records up.

Copyshite

A series of posts

1. Copyshite
2. The entertainment industry’s wrong turns
3. The future of music: gigs and t-shirts
4. The future of music: pretty boxes

Record labels and video distributors had been ticked off by consumers for charging high prices for quite a while. At first the labels got away with it though. This was because they actually added value to the product. They were the only ones who were able to actually deliver the product to consumers efficiently.

However, with the advent of the internet and explosion of file-sharing, they are no longer the only people who can deliver content. It’s even worse than that. They are now woefully inefficient at delivering content.

The big question staring the record companies in the face has been: why should people pay £10 or £20 to buy a CD or a DVD when they could download it for free? Their original answer to this question has been to criminalise the very fans whose custom they depend upon. At every turn, consumers of music are accused of stealing music and killing the record industry.

Not exactly the best way to build a loyal fanbase.

Since that approach didn’t work, the record labels reluctantly dipped their toe into the digital water. But even this was a complete disaster. They insisted on releasing music that was crippled by DRM. This shackled the music, yet again making the consumer feel like a criminal.

The worst instances of DRM prevent people from listening to music on different devices. A high-profile example is music purchased from the iTunes Music Store, which can’t be played on any device unless it was made by Apple. That is like buying a CD released by Sony BMG and only being allowed to play it on CD players manufactured by Sony. It is outrageous, and it is a wonder that the music industry ever felt that it was a sensible approach. Sadly, the most blinkered companies still release digital music in this way.

Incidentally, kudos should go to Warp Records, who recognised from the very start that its fans wouldn’t like to be treated as criminals. Its foray into the digital download world, Bleep, sells music at the highest quality the MP3 format can provide and entirely without DRM.

Some albums are even available as lossless (i.e. CD-quality) FLAC files. And you are allowed to preview the entire track before purchasing. Some albums also come with exclusive artwork, screensavers and so on. Furthermore, a (comparatively) huge cut of the profits goes to the artists, which is where fans like to see profits go.

Now hundreds of independent labels sell their music on the service. Bleep has been a huge success, having sold over a million downloads. The majors should have realised that this is how it should have been done from the start.

The problem facing the record industry remains. Their expertise was in distribution, but this advantage was removed by the internet. Their solutions don’t address the fundamental problem. Why should someone buy a digital download when they can get it for free from peer-to-peer networks?

The worst solutions were never going to work because they made the consumer feel like criminals. The better solutions — like Bleep — work to an extent because they tickle the fan’s tummy, making him feel good.

Regardless of what the record companies would like to think, the internet has greatly improved efficiency and has made consumers better off. Unless they really like pretty boxes, a choice between buying a CD for upwards of £10 or downloading the music for free is a no-brainer.

Sticking plaster solutions such as reducing the price of CDs or releasing DRM-infected MP3s were never going to do. And you can’t un-invent the internet. In their current state, record companies are a complete anachronism. An entirely new business model is needed in order for them to survive. It is the only way. For some of them, it may already be too late.

But I think there is an answer. And I think they are catching on to it. But I’ll write about that in my next post.

According to Jonny Greenwood (and he would know), their new album is called In Rainbows and comes out on October the 10^th.

I’m not sure about the choice you face though. You can either get it as a digital download, or you can stump up £40 to get a ‘discbox’, which contains versions of the album on CD, vinyl and download. And wait until December for it.

Gah, I’m just excited that new Radiohead material is being released at last.

Immediately people were wondering if HMV had bought the right stores. I guess they are in a much better position to know which stores are profitable and which are not. But they bought the Rose Street store in Edinburgh. It’s a good shop, but there are already two HMVs within a stone’s throw. The one on Cockburn Street was smaller but only has that dusty Avalanche for competition. And it was closer to the university, which, for purely self-interested reasons, made it automatically better for me.

Also, a lot of the point about Fopp was the fact that it wasn’t HMV. Nor was it some indie-wank shop. It was something in between, which I thought was just perfect.

During my trip there, I was pleased to see that almost nothing has changed in the Rose Street store. There are only very slight cosmetic differences that only the most anal people (like me) will notice. Price stickers are now HMV-style, as are the receipts. But apart from that, most things have pleasantly remained the same.

The prices are still in nice round numbers. There is none of that £X.99 nonsense. It feels good just to hand over a twenty and be done with the transaction with no fuss.

I did try to do my usual thing of looking for a cheap Can album, but although they had loads of Can albums, they were all £15! The same was true for Brian Eno. I guess it’s not inconceivable that this would have happened in the old Fopp, but it did ring a minor alarm bell. Hopefully it is just my imagination. Thankfully, in general, the prices are still pretty good. I bought four albums for £20 (including one Stereolab CD which was just £3! Bargain!), which is pretty good going.

There was something quite striking about my visit to Fopp though. I was browsing there in full knowledge that the shop was almost wiped off the face of the earth, so I was thinking about the business side of things as I was shopping. The thing I noticed above everything else was that almost every single other customer there was a middle-aged man. I was probably the youngest person in the shop. It’s true — kids just don’t buy music these days.

On my way down to Rose Street, I passed the folk specialist Coda store on Bank Street. I wondered to myself, “I wonder how long before that goes?” In fact, I have often wondered that to myself over the years (before today’s music retail woes), but that probably shows my narrow-mindedness about folk music. Today, I suppose most of its customers will be the more loyal middle-aged men. That was probably a curse just a few years ago. It’s surely a blessing now!

I am a big fan of the CD format, and I love to have a physical copy of any music that I have. Then it feels like I really own it, and is a signal that I really value the music rather than just downloading any old crappy MP3 and throwing it in the recycle bin if I don’t like it.

It’s a bit like a story I read about in a very exciting book called A Logic of Expressive Choice by Alexander A. Schuessler. It’s a bit dry, but it has some neat examples to demonstrate its points.

(I don’t have the book to hand, so my memory of this example is quite sketchy, but you will get the general idea.) One of them involved a man who, every year, would camp outside to buy tickets to something or other. He waited an extraordinarily long time to ensure that he was at the front of the queue so that he could get the best tickets.

One year the venue decided to just give him the best tickets anyway, as a kind of token of appreciation (or probably as a publicity stunt). The man was outraged and refused to accept the tickets. For him, his value came from the waiting, not from acquiring the tickets themselves. He took pride in waiting for ages. It was his way of saying to the world, “Look how much I love this thing! I will wait for ages to make sure I see it!” When the theatre offered him the tickets, he was robbed of his chance to express himself in this way.

I think I am the same with music. Sure, I could illegally download every song in existence for free. I could even download them legally and pay for them. But I wouldn’t have anything to show for it. I like to look at my music collection and think to myself, “blimey, I’ve got quite a lot of CDs now”. Even though this means that I am losing space in my room.

I think most people growing up these days won’t value music like this. They have access to far more music than they can possibly consume, and they just do it. They just download disposable albums without thinking about it and don’t give the music their full attention. (I can see myself as an old man with my pipe and slippers, fondly remembering the days of CDs, when youths respected music.)

But a lot of people are saying that CDs are doomed. Vinyl will still have its niche, but CDs won’t be around any longer. Imagine that! I could end up having the opposite dilemma to the previous generation — I will have to convert my entire CD collection into vinyl!

As much as I dislike this situation, it has to be said that there is not much going for music retailers these days. They are dropping like flies. And when they are not dropping like flies, they are hurriedly rearranging their deckchairs in preparation for the sinking.

HMV has launched its “next generation” stores. “Download hubs”, “gaming stations” and smoothie bars. Just don’t mention music.

Richard Branson has just sold his Virgin music stores. This is incredible because it is the first time in three decades that Richard Branson hasn’t had his fingers in the music retail pie. It was music retail where he started, so for Virgin to be pulling out of it altogether, you know that things are just not going well at all in the music retail world.

I thought that was really odd. The store must have only been open for about a week; two weeks maximum. Why would a store need to stocktake when it had only been open for a maximum of two weeks?

It does not take a genius to work out that something might have been amiss, but I never imagined that it would be a company-wide problem. I suspected it was just a problem with the Cumbernauld branch specifically, not the entire chain.

I considered the possibility that Fopp as a whole might be in trouble. But I quickly discarded this, given the fact that earlier in the year they had optimistically bought several of the Music Zone stores which had gone into administration at Christmas. That is not the behaviour of a company that is in trouble.

When I received a couple of texts from Twitter about the health of Fopp, alarm bells began to ring again. The Cumbernauld Fopp store with its shutters down did have wider significance. It seems as though Fopp is in major trouble.

After work I brought the Twitter messages up in a conversation. I learned that the also recently-opened Glenrothes store has also mysteriously had its shutters down recently.

I came home and immediately searched Google News for information on the situation with Fopp. Seemingly, every Fopp store in the country was 50 Fopp stores were closed last Friday for an “extraordinary stocktake” (whatever the hell that is), but the company bullishly reopened its doors the next day.

But yesterday Fopp halted its online ordering service and stopped accepting credit cards at its tills. That sounds like a company in major trouble.

But as if that wasn’t enough, this evening I have read (via DJ Martian) that some workers will not get their scheduled pay packets tomorrow. Moreover, some Fopp stores will not be opening their doors in the morning.

Sitting here today, it is easy to say that Fopp simply over stretched itself. Ever since this year began, with the acquisition of the already faltering Music Zone stores, Fopp had completely changed its position in the high street.

Not so long ago, it was the sort of place that you would only find in a major city — Dundee or Edinburgh were the closest stores to my town. Suddenly, Fopps were opening all over the shop, in places like Glenrothes and Cumbernauld (I do remember being surprised to see a Fopp there when I first saw it).

Somehow, it just didn’t seem right. In a way, suddenly you would be more likely to find a Fopp in any one town than an HMV. That’s how it felt to me. And that was a situation which — while I was glad about it — just didn’t seem to make sense.

For this reason, I had assumed that Fopp must have been in extraordinarily sound financial shape. Seemingly, that is not the case. It looks as though they have just overstretched themselves too far over these past few months.

If Fopp goes into administration, I would be immensely sorry to see it go. When I first visited a Fopp, I wasn’t terribly impressed. But I soon learned to love it.

In fact, Fopp is the most dangerous shop on the High Street. All too often I would enter a Fopp for a cursory browse, or looking for a particular release. I would always emerge with an armful of bargain £5 / £6 / £7 CDs that I hadn’t been looking for.

Just last week, the day before the mysterious stocktake, I went in to the Cumbernauld store to buy the new releases by Simian Mobile Disco and Justice. I came out with the Sneaker Pimps album that I had been putting off buying for many, many years. I also chose the cheapest of the Can CDs, to add to my slowly growing collection of Can CDs. Fopp was that kind of shop. You would surprise yourself with what you ended up buying.

If Fopp goes, what is left? Even though its recent expansion felt odd, Fopp was a trusty friend unlike no other record shop. Smaller indie shops feel dusty and unwelcoming. The likes of HMV are expensive and sometimes lack selection. Fopp is (was?) a perfect in-between situation.

When I visited the BBC News website today to look for news on Fopp, I instead found news about how HMV is struggling. If even HMV is feeling it, it is fair to say that High Street retailers — especially those specialising in entertainment — are in big, big trouble.

Without Fopp, it is fair to say I would probably no longer buy CDs on the High Street. I would be left with online retailers alone. But the obvious next question is: How long will I be buying CDs for, before the world goes MP3-only? What a sad world that would be.

Update: It is confirmed. BBC News: Fopp closes down its 105 stores.

The iPlayer that has been given the go-ahead will have a few changes to what has been proposed before. The changes are quite minor really. Infact, one of them — about taking a platform-independent approach — is very good indeed. But there is still the odd moment where I have to slap my palm on my forehead and ask, “WHY?”

Genres included in non-DRM audio downloads: Audio-books and classical music should be excluded from the non-DRM downloads.

In other words, audio books and classical music — two very worthy genres that ring the right public service bells — will be locked up and more difficult to access than other genres. So if the next generation grows up with absolutely no taste in books or classical music, you’ll know what’s to blame.

The public value to be created is not, in the Trust’s view, sufficient to justify the potential market impact of allowing downloads of these genres.

This is horseshit. This is about the greedy commercial music industry maximising its profits; not about maximising public value. When the BBC offered all of Beethoven’s symphonies for free download, it was a massive success and everybody loved it — apart from those greedy bastards who want to lock music away unless you pay their high prices. Because the music industry reacted so violently against it, the BBC has promised never to do anything similar again — despite the fact that it was a huge success. The same is now happening to iPlayer.

My mother assures me that in Glasgow people — complete strangers — say hello to each other all the time. This is clearly untrue. For a start, if everybody said hello to everybody the greeting would become meaningless and you might as well not say hello at all. And it’s more efficient to say nothing, which is why strangers don’t say hello to each other.

Even so, if you accept that Glaswegians are more likely to say hello to strangers, then it’s only because the greeting is swiftly followed by, “Any spare change pal?”, or a knife in the chest. If it isn’t, they are probably a raging drunkard who has mistaken you for their long-lost uncle.

I’m not just going on one of my anti-Glasgow rants here you know. Every sane person thinks that it’s not normal to say hello to strangers. Matt T for instance.

Today, for what is the first time in the thousands of walks to the tube station I have made, a complete stranger said ‘Good morning’ to me as I we were passing in the street. Furthermore he wasn’t – or at least didn’t appear to be – in any way mentally ill.

My mother would say that he was just being friendly. But it is not friendly to go up to a stranger and say hello. In fact, it’s difficult to imagine anything that is more impolite. We all know from past experience that a stranger starting a conversation means one of two things. The first is that you are about to have a conversation with somebody who is utterly bonkers. The second is that you are about to have the most boring conversation you have ever had in your entire life.

There was one particular incident that made the purchase of an MP3 player my top priority. It was no longer a luxury item that would merely keep me entertained on those long journeys. It had become a necessity.

I was coming home from university, and my face was buried in a book. I was trying to revise, you see. Most people would take this as a kind of ‘do not disturb’ notice. Not the absolute dullard who sat next to me. The ticket inspector came along to check our tickets. So far it’s all very mundane. Once the conductor had moved out of earshot this person looked up at me and showed me the ticket that had been printed out for him.

He pointed at the price, as if I was meant to know what a single from South Gyle to Kirkcaldy costs. Several seconds later he finally opened his mouth. “Look, I’ve been overcharged.”
“Oh really?”, I replied.
“Yeah, look. He’s done me out of twenty pence.”

What are you supposed to say to somebody like this? My awful train neighbour was the sort of person who would make a fuss over twenty pence. But people like this are common. I’ve learned over these past few months working in a shop that people will do anything to save even the smallest amount of money — even though they certainly could have done something much more productive with their time. But it was clear that our poor overcharged soul had expected more of a reaction from me.

About ten minutes later, obviously still seething from the whole experience, he piped up again from absolutely nowhere. “That conductor is very crafty. I bet he’s got a Porsche. It all mounts up you know.” Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Because you were overcharged twenty pence, the conductor must have a sports car. Shut up!

I would rather not have to deal with dodgy, boring old men who have nothing better to do than complain to a student about losing twenty pence. So I bought an MP3 player because it is a very visible ‘do not disturb’ sign. It is useful even if you’re not listening to music. People say that it is anti social. But it’s the only way I can stop myself from actually hating people.