END OF A DECADE

As we come to the end of another decade, i've been reflecting on how much the musical landscape has changed in the last ten years, both in the music itself and how we listen to it. Not only has streaming completely altered the listening habits and tastes of the younger generations, but the dominance of online listening and downloading music came up against an old format that everyone thought was consigned to history, or at least just the preserve of high-end hi-fi obsessives and collectors: King Vinyl was back, and sales of the once dominant format have increased year on year since the middle of the decade, so much so the compilers of the charts had to create a Vinyl sales chart. The yearly Record Store Day - celebrating independent record stores around the world with scores of highly sought after limited edition album and single releases, and the culture of the record store itself - grows more in popularity each year. The decline in the independent record store has been reversed, with more shops opening. Countless books, articles, magazines, documentaries and websites have sprung up, all celebrating the return of a much-loved format, in a backlash against the digital world, the tangibility of an actual physical object and all that goes with it taking importance over the convenience of a file on a computer. The music itself - in danger of losing its value, its importance, its magic - has reclaimed the importance it once had. More and more people are willing to pay for their music library, a far cry from the days when free file-sharing sites threatened the livelihoods of musicians and the music industry itself. It's by no means without future challenges: vinyl pressing plants are far fewer in numbers than in the heyday of the format, and the material vinyl is made from - a byproduct of the oil industry - poses environmental issues. But i believe these challenges will be met. 

Music itself is more diverse than the Top 40 singles chart would have you believe, and whilst most of the acts i love are absent from the Radio 1 playlist these days they have more outlets now than ever before, through the internet and digital radio, through Spotify playlists and so on, giving music fans the chance to be exposed to all kinds of genres and artists, and broadening their tastes. And some of them go on to buy that music on vinyl (or cd, which despite lower sales is still very much with us), and pay to see their favourite artists live. Music, in all its many diverse forms, is still alive and kicking. The magic is still there.