Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

Tony Wilson, former Factory Records boss and all around Manchester music fixture, has an essay on the website Trip Wire entitled “Oh Lord, Leave Me Record Shops.” Unlike former Creation boss Alan McGee’s recent blog posting where he seemed just fine with the fading away of record stores and the physical embodiment of music in the form of vinyl records and plastic CDs, Wilson is not going gentle into that (digital) good night. Instead, he laments the loss of these real-life objects which answer “the deep desire to purchase a physical connection to our heroes/idols.” In particular, he talks about buying one of Bob Dylan’s recent releases on CD, and how disappointed he was in the packaging. “Where one might have expected at least a little illegible booklet which got buckled when you managed to drag it past the annoying little plastic lip thing,” writes Wilson, “instead you got a single piece of thin paper with the cover image on the front and an advert for four back catalogue Bob items on the reverse.” Wilson believes that music lovers deserve more: “We deserved an object to treasure; like that 12″ double sleeve whose depth of colour and image went some way to mirror the depths of the beloved ‘Blonde on Blonde.’” True, back in the day, Factory Records produced physical artifacts which were just as beautiful and haunting (if not sometimes more so) than the music on the records/label itself. But now that digital downloads, and the death of the CD, have reduced packaging to a point where it’s almost non-existent, Wilson is asking the question, “How do we bring back physical objects, and bring back record shops for that matter?” But, since it doesn’t look like vinyl or recorded artifacts are going to make a comeback any time soon, Wilson’s not going to like the answer. True, vinyl will never die (the same way that books will never become extinct), but they have already exited — for a new generation — the general consciousness and idea of what music is. Instead, vinyl records, CDs, and other physical embodiments of music will be increasingly seen as boutique items, the same way that books will one day be seen as antiquated whether or not they’re new or old or first editions; simply any book in a digital society is bound to feel rare.

The Trip Wire: “Oh Lord, Leave Me Record Shops”