This was originally posted 16 years ago. Opinions, facts and reality may have changed.
Reading The Guardian last week I came across this story, concerning the disappearance of the b-side in popular music. It’s a shame in many ways – some of my favourite lost songs were b sides of 7 inch singles or extra tracks on CDs that I’ve bought over the years (this song comes immediately to mind *) – but hardly a surprise. In The Guardian article, it uses the example of recent UK number 1 “Forget you **” by Cee Lo Green, which did have an attendant extra track (aka “a b-side”) released at the same time.
According to figures the ‘paper got from last.fm, whilst “Forget you” received 437,240 plays, it’s b-side “Grand Canyon” had managed just 36. In short, the song might as well not exist. But, if you don’t need to buy the “extras”, then who can blame music buyers if nobody bothers? And, for music… read, well, absolutely anything. Old models of distribution, whilst still having their place, are being replaced with some shiny new ones. Not necessarily better, but shiny and new. In the pre-web world, retail hegemony was rife: if you wanted to buy product X, there was pretty much one price, one “offer”, one package – you bought the product or you didn’t.
The digitisation of retail changed all this. And consumers now have access to a wealth of information they’ve never experienced before. The web brings every storefront into your lounge, making it possible to compare costs of identical products quickly and easily.
Looking for a particular brand of washing machine? Honest product reviews from people who actually own the model are a Google search away. Good for consumers: they are better informed. Good for some retailers: competing with the big boys is much easier. Bad for others: your brand name doesn’t always help you carry a larger price tag. Too many retailers are still fighting the change, knowing that there are still some customers who will put their faith in a high street store over a web-only store. But their numbers are dwindling. And as the faster, leaner web-only stores increasingly put their faith in social media, they no longer even need to shout about how good they are: we’ll do it for them. There are some things that the Internet revolution hasn’t improved (I do miss the b-side!) but when it comes to information at your fingertips, whether it’s about washing machines, films or the town of Chetwynd, British Columbia (Wikipedia’s featured article at the time of writing), universal access has created temporary experts of us all.
* I know it was released eventually as a single in its own right to promote a best of collection… but it *was* a b-side originally
** That title is the polite version… the link is the, er, rude one
Photo: I Put A Record On by kadluba, from Flickr, Creative Commons, some rights reserved