subject: No Matter How Obscure Your Music Tastes, A Courier Can Hit The Right Notes [print this page] In just a few years, the market for recorded music has seen change of seismic proportions. The shift away from buying CDs and other music media in physical retail stores has been just as rapid as that which has been seen in the books market, and some will say that the sector has been hit by a 'double whammy'.
Not only has the number of truly independent outlets for CDs, DVDs and the like shrunk dramatically in recent years, but the advent of digitised musical formats has led to a new generation being brought up which has hardly experienced listening to music in anything other than a digital format.
But saying that digital music has sounded the death knell for other formats is far too premature, as many people are still strongly attached to their old stereo systems many believing, quite rightly, that the sound quality which they can achieve is every bit as good as can be found on any digital reproduction.
While formats such as the long-playing vinyl record and cassette are now confined to a small band of hard-core followers some of whom have collections which are worth considerable sums of money, if only for their historical value the compact disc will certainly continue to be espoused by record companies and many music fans.
And while ever it continues to live on, there will still be strong demand for not just the CDs released by the most popular bands and artists, but also for those across a wide range of musical genres which are largely ignored by the media.
Thanks, however, to the dedication of small numbers of dedicated fans, there are still many thousands of these items being produced and sold every week. Just because the mainstream stores have all but turned their backs on selling them doesn't mean that the demand isn't there.
It's merely being satisfied in a different way. Instead of the people who hanker after these less fashionable music genres being able to walk into a high street store and pick up a copy of one of their favourite performer's new album there and then, they are instead going online, and buying their products from people for whom the shop-front has largely been replaced by a well-produced website, and the brightly-coloured vans of the courier companies.
And, in this context, the courier service is playing an important middle man's role, keeping the long-standing and steadfastly faithful relationship between music creators and the people who enjoy listening to what they do alive.
