Monday 21 March 2011

I don't like Downloaded Music

There just too impersonal.

Music buying (to me at least) is about the ownership of the physical artefact and making records you own - the memory of where records were purchased.

I can pretty much remember which shop in which town virtually all of my records and CDs came from.
Examples:

  • Captain Beefheart - Trout Mask Replica
    Slightly overcast day in Hay-on-Wye.  Bought from a bookshop (is there any other kind of shop in Hay-on-Wye?)
  • Sex Pistols - Never Mind The Bollocks
    Bought from Pop Records (second hand record Shop in Reading (under Yeild Hall Lane Car Park))
  • Thin Lizzy - Live & Dangerous
    Bought from Our Price in the Butts Centre, Reading.  Got given two copies of Sides 3 & 4, and had to go to the Broad Street branch to exchange for Sides 1 & 2
  • Kate Bush - The Whole Story
    Bought from Boots with the money I'd got as Christmas tips from my paper round
  • T.Rex- Futuristic Dragon
    Bought from Woolworths when they were closing down for refurbishment.  I think they'd just cleared out the stock room and placed it in piles in the racks and on the floor.
I know where all the downloads came from - I was sitting here in this chair and pressed a button.

Amazon is convenient and easy, but does not have the same joy of trawling through racks of stuff to find the thing you've been hunting down for weeks (or even months).

With the demise of the independent record shop, the loss of large chains like Zavvi and Fopp (sorely missed every time I go into Reading (I just stand in West Street staring at what is now Somerfields with a feeling of loss)) and the laughable stock holding of HMV, Record Fairs are the only place where I can find a breadth of items and people who will sell them whilst advising me the "Track 2 is a bit of a stinker" or other gems of information which is an integral part of the purchasing process (at least to me)

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