Today with Claire Byrne RTÉ Radio 1
Here I sit eating my words.
As a passionate de-clutterer, I once took a good friend to task, held out a black bin bag and made her chuck out all her 1960s gear – Mary Quant mini … tick: Afghan jacket... tick, and within months it was all right back on trend.
As with fashion, now with music… Claire Byrne's guests on RTÉ Radio 1 were music guru Dave Fanning and Adam Maguire, business reporter.
Their subject? The growing popularity of the CD – sales rose last year for the first time in 20 years and vinyl is continuing to have its time.
Just as I was about to condemn my CDs to the dustbin, turns out I’m wrong.
Fanning is passionate about his music – he even makes a difference between LPs and albums.
The LP ran from 67 to 82 … from Sergeant Pepper to Thriller.
The way people consume their music has changed he said, a full generation were getting it for free and, perhaps, not appreciating it the same way.
Not that he doesn’t use Spotify, but “it’s like getting water from a tap, you don’t have to work for it, there’s no journey involved.”
For true music lovers it’s the emotional attachment; the physical object and the beauty of the artwork and notes.
Maybe we’re all just nostalgic.
Maybe vinyl is like long ago Christmases – slip the LP out of the sleeve and you’re in a time machine back to a simpler world when Christmas dinner was timed for after the Top of the Pops special.
Byrne and guests even asked whether cassette tapes could be making a comeback?
Fanning noted that in this world of Spotify and streaming, artists are still saying their audience should listen to the whole album in a “If you want to understand my oeuvre, you gotta listen to the whole thing” way.
“Adele has demanded ‘you have to listen to my album from beginning to end, you can’t just take a track out of it’,” he said.
Here I sit scolding my inner philistine and vowing to wean off pick n mix playlists.
This was an interested, spirited and passionate debate that might just prompt a reprieve for the shelf loads of CDs destined for the Oxfam shop.
