So Many People Are Choosing Downloads over CDs because...

HMV Oxford Street (From Wikipidea)

I have this conversation every now and then… I’m sure you would agree, those buying CDs from a shop are the minority.

I also used to love going to HMV and specialist record shops in SOHO. However I don’t now, I can’t be bothered, I’ve got better things to do. Why? because I don’t think music is special anymore. Probably because there’s so much of it coming out. This has devalued my experience. This also makes music discovery difficult and impractical. More reasons… I don’t care for piles of CDs, DVDs, Xbox games etc. in the house, I hate it - although I do love my 800 odd vinyl collection, that’s a different story. And I want stuff now, when I’m in the mood.

One could argue that all of this is a result of the Internet, which I think is the truth of the matter. A piece of content can be virtually instantly made available world wide that’s tp the internet. Up and coming artists clocked on to this early. I used to digitise select white label releases and Lodnon pirate radio recording and host them on my web site, this was quite popular, even in the early days of boardband.

Online was retail was always going to kill the high street chain where there’s no product differentiation. Internet retailers have lower overheads etc therefore can sell the same products at a lower price. Soon most content will not be published on physical midium such as CD, DVD, and Blu-ray. It makes no sense when, why incure the extra manufacturing cost. I beleive that there will be no format for audio beyond CD and for video beyond Blu-ray.

Digital right systems such as UltraViolet will allow us to once again own the rights to the content while being free to choose and change our content hosting and streaming provider(s) - iTunes, Netflix, LoveFilm etc.

Finally, with HMV specifically it is a great shame, I don’t think Oxford Street will be the same without it!