It could have been anywhere but when I arrived in Oxford in 2005, there were four independent record stores to complement the high street retailers, including a dance-based one for DJs and the short-lived UK chain Fopp which had an amazing selection, typically a third the price of the larger retailers.
I've since moved but on last visit in 2008 all of these stores had disappeared, this was particularly disturbing as I had bought a lot of records there during my stay that were the soundtrack to a great time in my life (I didn't buy a desktop until 2007).
This is not like other forms of piracy down the years that have boosted innovation and ultimately benefited the industry (pirate radio, bootleggers etc) and from what I can see it's on it's way to killing hard copy music, as there are always young kids getting into music through high-speed broadband connections and not from walking into a shop and looking at the artwork or asking for that song they heard...
I'm sure some of them have never even bought a CD or read
the liner notes, pored over every record to get their money's worth
|