Friday 9 July 2010

Alone in Amazon’s jungle


I was on the BBC on Thursday (July 8th) – Radio Four to be precise… You and Yours to be completely pedantic. An MI retailer in Tunbridge Wells had notified the Beeb about Amazon’s establishing a musical instrument tab on its website – almost simultaneous with the online retail monster’s upping of the tariff for selling MI via its site from seven per cent to 12.

The retailer was Jonathan Birch of JB’s Music – a sensible chap, articulate and smart – and he had been enjoying a bit of success online thanks to Amazon – until this unforewarned step killed off any hope of making money out of the deal.

As he put it, terms such as ‘affiliate’ and ‘partner’ became meaningless as the corporate decision was made without consultation and without giving the retailers concerned the chance to even talk to someone, let alone object.

These news magazine interviews are so short, you never get the time to say everything you want and the message often gets so abbreviated as to become almost meaningless.

Jon and I were there with sheets of paper with bullet points on them, ready to air our views, but we got a bit hijacked by the fact that groceries have been made part of the Amazon offering and clearly Peter White (the show’s host) had been told that I would somehow defend Amazon.

I pointed out that people feeling intimidated by MI retail outlets – in reference to the entry level, rather than higher-end, more serious musos. There is little we can do about this, but I am genuinely worried about
a) unethical shoppers using retail outlets as showrooms and demonstration premises for their cheaper online purchases, and
b) the seemingly irrevocable slide towards uniform products from uniform brands and the death of variety

In many ways, we in the MI trade are barking up the wrong tree a bit here. Why are more people turning to the internet for their shopping? This is the question that needs to be answered. I think there is a growing laziness towards shopping these days, which might be fine for books, CDs and white goods, but I think is very dangerous when applied to musical instruments.

This was the other point I was trying to make. Music is a social thing, in the practice, in the performance and in the publication. Why are we increasingly isolating ourselves – from the purchase of the equipment, to the recording and performance of music – and doing more and more of it on our own?

I know internet sales are harming some bricks and mortar stores, but no more than mail order and Argos and others have done in the past.

The BPI has been banging on about the death of the record business because of home taping and now downloads for years.

The Musician Union has been doing the same about keeping music live.

But the fact is, there are still records being released – more than ever as the technology takes power away from the big record companies. There is still a phenomenal amount of live music – despite the Music Forum and UK Music banging on about a decline. And there are still musical instrument retailers...

As long as there are, there is hope for the music playing community and any negatives in the world of music can be reversed. I know it sounds like so much old guff, but if musos do have somewhere to go where ideas can be exchanged, then there is a future.

The problem with the likes of Amazon is that we are encouraged to stay at home, click a few virtual buttons and then stay at home and wait for the item to arrive...

Then stay at home and play it...

I find that unspeakably sad...

We need to get out and about, be in and among the music playing community. When music thrives in a public, active way, I seriously think we do too.

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