Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Tower Records and online music stories and beyond..
I couldn’t help but note Vicki Fisher’s lament of the passing of Tower Records. Our music critic for the Weekend section expressed shock when she found that the once-highly popular and profitable record store had closed in Annapolis and was replaced by a furniture store.
Of course, young music buyers may be scratching their heads over the reference to “records” in the first paragraph. Their world of music consists of CDs and digital downloads. It is this last form of music—digital, is the primary reason for the passing of the large single-purpose music store.
Almost the same day Fisher’s lament appeared in the Weekend section, an online article reported that the Apple iTunes store was returning to normal after four days of slowdowns following Christmas. Apparently a lot of people got iTunes gift cards at Christmas and they all wanted to redeem them immediately. The result was that the Apple site had four-times the normal traffic and suffered massive slowdowns.
When you add the new Microsoft Zune media player to the already highly popular Apple iPod products, there are a lot of people choosing to acquire their music digitally. Granted, many are loading their existing CD collection into their iTunes program and loading them onto their iPods. But the slowdown at Apple indicates there are a number of people who are buying their music from the online store as well.
Here we are at that convergence issue again. To make a digital download or to transfer your CD collection into a digital format to play on a media player like an iPod, you need a computer. The computer which is becoming the all purpose communications tool in the home is also becoming the all purpose media entertainment center. The percentage of homes with computers is growing by the day. Businesses like Tower Records, that depend upon customers in the store, are suffering.
I remember when computers where not much more than word processors. Then came Internet connections and you could communicate with others by email or on bulletin boards. Computers got more powerful and graphics became part of the mix. You could create and manipulate images in programs like PhotoShop.
Connections got faster, computers more powerful and cameras were created that could capture a digital image. Hard drives got larger and computers faster so that you could begin to capture and play video clips. A typical desk top computer—no, a typical laptop computer now has vastly more storage space than a fileserver of only a couple of years ago.
Technology is moving ahead faster than all but the most ardent geek could imagine.
When I first got into the newspaper business, my camera equipment was all made by Canon. It was top of the line, professional stuff. It rivaled Nikon. I just recently learned that Canon has stopped making film cameras. They are putting all their efforts into digital. I had long since moved to digital for all my photography but that announcement still came as a shock to me. I guess it was like the shock of finding a furniture store where a record store had once been.
Advancing technology is pacing our future. I wonder where it will take us.
As always, you can contact me at rpolk@chespub.com or through my blog accessible from the stardem.com Website.
Of course, young music buyers may be scratching their heads over the reference to “records” in the first paragraph. Their world of music consists of CDs and digital downloads. It is this last form of music—digital, is the primary reason for the passing of the large single-purpose music store.
Almost the same day Fisher’s lament appeared in the Weekend section, an online article reported that the Apple iTunes store was returning to normal after four days of slowdowns following Christmas. Apparently a lot of people got iTunes gift cards at Christmas and they all wanted to redeem them immediately. The result was that the Apple site had four-times the normal traffic and suffered massive slowdowns.
When you add the new Microsoft Zune media player to the already highly popular Apple iPod products, there are a lot of people choosing to acquire their music digitally. Granted, many are loading their existing CD collection into their iTunes program and loading them onto their iPods. But the slowdown at Apple indicates there are a number of people who are buying their music from the online store as well.
Here we are at that convergence issue again. To make a digital download or to transfer your CD collection into a digital format to play on a media player like an iPod, you need a computer. The computer which is becoming the all purpose communications tool in the home is also becoming the all purpose media entertainment center. The percentage of homes with computers is growing by the day. Businesses like Tower Records, that depend upon customers in the store, are suffering.
I remember when computers where not much more than word processors. Then came Internet connections and you could communicate with others by email or on bulletin boards. Computers got more powerful and graphics became part of the mix. You could create and manipulate images in programs like PhotoShop.
Connections got faster, computers more powerful and cameras were created that could capture a digital image. Hard drives got larger and computers faster so that you could begin to capture and play video clips. A typical desk top computer—no, a typical laptop computer now has vastly more storage space than a fileserver of only a couple of years ago.
Technology is moving ahead faster than all but the most ardent geek could imagine.
When I first got into the newspaper business, my camera equipment was all made by Canon. It was top of the line, professional stuff. It rivaled Nikon. I just recently learned that Canon has stopped making film cameras. They are putting all their efforts into digital. I had long since moved to digital for all my photography but that announcement still came as a shock to me. I guess it was like the shock of finding a furniture store where a record store had once been.
Advancing technology is pacing our future. I wonder where it will take us.
As always, you can contact me at rpolk@chespub.com or through my blog accessible from the stardem.com Website.
# posted by Richard Polk @ 10:33 AM 
