Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - music: Do we still need record shops?

Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - music: Do we still need record shops?


I've managed to divest myself of about 80-90% of the records I once owned - I've digitized some, and for most of them the music is easily obtainable in digital form. Everytime I go through the stack, I get rid of more, but so many evoke intense waves of nostalgia and I can't part with them.

I wonder what physical icons future generations will have - perhaps looking at an old broken iPod and remembering the playlist they loaded when they first bought it.

Analog media does have a particular richness that's hard to duplicate in the digital world. But I think it was Nicolas Negroponte who posited that "Everything that can become digital, will", and this seems to be an inescapable law.