14 JULY 2007, Page 35

People power Marcus Berkmann T f this column has a

People power Marcus Berkmann T f this column has any overarching theme, it's that critics know nothing and shouldn't be trusted. (Which obviously applies to me as much as to anyone.) But this intransigent suspicion of mine does create difficulties. In the never-ending search for the next fantastic record I didn't know existed, I will look anywhere and consult anyone for advice, which in practice often means scouring the reviews by punters on Amazon. Book reviews on this website, as all writers know, are usually contributed by our friends, our rivals, our enemies and our agents, but the record reviews are much more varied and informative.

Fans write in crazed superlatives, or occasionally in rueful disappointment, although the most entertaining reviews are often by people who thought they were buying one thing and turned out to be buying something else. Here, expressed in a handful of splenetic and often misspelt sentences, is the rage of the person who heard a song they liked on the radio, bought the album it came from and realised almost instantaneously that that was the only decent track that artist has ever recorded and will ever record in his or her otherwise pointless career. Or who read a review in a magazine that said that this was the only album you'd ever need, and actually believed this, as we all do, because we desperately want to believe, because we are essentially gullible idiots who buy far too many CDs.

Or do we? According to all newspapers every week, the music industry is in permanent crisis. Global music sales, it seems, have fallen 5 per cent year-on-year, and that includes sales from downloads. Last week the splendid but clearly overstretched Fopp record chain went down the drain, and HMV announced 'disappointing' profits. The consensus is that the CD is a dying format, so fusty and out-of-date that the simple act of buying one seems like an absurd act of defiance, like riding to work on a unicycle. But as the editor of Music Week pointed out in the Guardian, the CD still accounts for more than 90 per cent of the market in value terms. 'The perception that the CD belongs in the dark ages is totally wrong.'

As surely all true music obsessives would agree. CD sales are in long-term decline around the world, but in the UK we keep on splashing out on the things, brandishing our overburdened credit cards, our eyes wide with consumerly optimism, hoping as we always hope that this album will be The One. (Elton John once released an album called The One, but sadly it was not The One.) Thanks to Fopp and the supermarkets, CDs are far cheaper than they were. Margins are tighter, which may be why HMV has been feeling the pinch. But CDs were only ever so expensive because the record companies were so greedy. Now they cost less, music obsessives can find no reason not to buy a few more. Not that we have been looking too hard for one.

And good for us. In Britain we tend to believe that we have some of the best musicians in the world, but I suspect we have some of the best music-obsessives as well. Maybe it's because we are so crowded in these tiny islands, and everybody else's loud music makes us turn our own up even louder. Or maybe it's just because such a vast variety of music flourishes here that it would seem churlish not to like at least some of it. Certainly, the Amazon reviews tend to be by people who feel very strongly about what they like, and won't be swayed by critical consensus.

Last week on Radio 2, Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie expressed surprise and dismay that the Travelling Wilburys reissue had sold so well. Maconie even called it `the least cool album ever made', which he implied was a bad thing. Within seconds they had been inundated by emails and texts from nutters who disagreed violently with this very mild belittling of their favourite record. I myself had merely shouted at the radio, it being one of my favourite records as well. Then I started to feel a bit sorry for Radcliffe and Maconie, who are both far more broadminded in their tastes than most music-obsessives, and were only expressing an opinion. Even so, their opinion precisely mirrored the critical consensus, which was always solidly anti-Wilbury, and Radcliffe and Maconie sounded surprised to hear it challenged so fiercely. The people, it seems, have started biting back. These are interesting times for music, very interesting indeed.