Fifty-quid guy
Marcus Berkmann
An unusually fat cheque has just come through the post, so like most males of my age and temperament I am thinking, 'To iPod or not to iPod?' Yes, yes, I know, you already have one for the kids and one for yourself and a spare one just in case, each with your entire CD collection downloaded on to it for instant retrieval at all times.
Unfortunately, although I am as gadgetcrazed as the next man, a combination of mild poverty and fantastic inertia has previously prevented me from investing in one of these intriguing little items. I don't really need it. I don't really want it, But on some sorry. subconscious level I know that I am going to get it. And now this cheque has arrived, glistening and gleaming in the cool winter sunlight and making me drool rather unbecomingly, I no longer have any excuse. The ways we listen to music are forever changing.
As Mark Lawson recently pointed out somewhere, pop fans of a certain age still regard compact discs as rather new and a bit exciting, even though they have been most people's medium of choice for nearly 20 years. To young people, of course, CDs are as new and exciting as the 78. For several years now the record industry has
been panicking about what it calls 'illegal downloads', but, if you have the time and the inclination, I can imagine it would be immense fun to surf the Web looking for obscure Radiohead remixes to nab at no cost.
Twenty years ago they bleated that 'Home taping is killing music' — possibly the most pitiful slogan of all time, after the V&A's 'An ace caff with quite a nice museum attached'. The technology moves on, but nothing really changes. Teenagers still have lots of time and no money, and they will go to almost any lengths to avoid giving what money they have to record companies. I can sympathise. I loathe being asked to pay Virgin Megastore £16.49 for a new. non-chart CD — a price fixed purely to rip off unsuspecting shoppers who haven't the energy or nous to shop around. Astoundingly. the major supermarkets are now the pop fan's friend. By pricing chart CDs at £9.99 they are viciously undercutting the dedicated music retailers, and putting one or two of them out of business. All of them, though, are still catering to the stingy teenager: a market that isn't so much declining as running in the opposite direction. Whereas, according to the rock critic Tim de Lisle, they should have been courting an entirely different kind of customer. You and me.
Mmm. I feel a warm glow of smugness ooze through my 43-year-old bones, De Lisle quotes David Hepworth, who knows a thing or two about the music industry, having launched Q, Moja and now Word. Hepworth has been talking about 'the fiftyquid guy', who pops into one of the big stores, maybe slightly drunk after a big
lunch, spends £50 on CDs and DVDs and then leaves quickly before he can feel guilty about it. And maybe forgets to mention it to the mother of his children when he gets home. This is me! I do this!
'But frankly,' Hepworth goes on. 'blokes get the same giddy rush from buying CDs and DVDs that most women get from shoes. It's a spiritual thing.' Crucially, here, he is both (a) joking and (b) absolutely correct in his analysis. For middle-aged pop fans don't bother with downloading music: it's far too much effort. As de Lisle puts it with customary precision, 'the generation gap, once about content, has shifted to modes of consumption'. The youngsters avoid buying music, but we oldsters are still in thrall to the album format — the 40 minutes, the ten tracks, the thrill of putting it on for the first time and finding out whether it's any good. Look at the album charts. Dido. Norah Jones, all these dreary jazz infants lionised by Parky on Radio Two — no one under 25 is buying any of that. What are The Darkness if not Queen and Rush reborn?
Have Duran Duran really re-formed? Is Nick Hornby's 31 Songs still in the bestseller list? Did you see TOTP2 last night? As someone once said, under slightly different circumstances, we are the masters now. Our tastes must be catered to; our slightly crabbed and stubborn adoration of ancient 1970s bands must now be fully indulged. And yet we must remain up to date — which will be much easier if it is we who decide what is and is not 'up to date'. An iPod qualifies, don't you think? Flex that credit card. I feel a purchase coming on.
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