Interesting Links for 08-02-2013

[andrewducker]

• Science Museum, Natural History Museum and Wikimedia UK to jointly appoint Wikimedian in Residence
  (tags: uk museums wikipedia )
• HMV announces 66 store closures (including all five in Edinburgh)
  (tags: hmv edinburgh )
• 20% of music fans now buy only in digital format
  (tags: music uk technology )
• People talk about boyfriends more than girlfriends,

Comments

[momentsmusicaux]

The mind boggles. I remember when Wikipedia was this geeky thing with <10k articles that I used to tell people about overexcitedly, and which they'd regard with curiosity, disbelief, or skepticism.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, the world has changed in all sorts of odd ways!

[gonzo21]

I am amazed that big HMV on princes street wasn't profitable. But I guess that may be the end result of all of these years of tram line disruption.

[andrewducker]

There's no tram line disruption to Princes Street at the moment. Any problems it has are down to the same ones HMV has everywhere, and Princes Street having very high rents compared to, say, Aberdeen.

[gonzo21]

Cumulative effect from past disruption? I read something a while back that was saying shops down Princes St. and down the hill to the water had taken a big hit to their turn-overs thanks to the tram disruption and customers going elsewhere.

Certainly I have friends who used to own a furniture shop down near Leith who struggled after the first year of trams, and then had to close the second year.

[andrewducker]

Oh, there are bound to be affects. But if customers were going elsewhere then it would have made sense to close, say, three HMVs in Edinburgh and see if that caused footfall to increase at the other two.

[bart_calendar]

Two things are going on in that social media trend:

1. All data shows that women and girls update their social media accounts much, much more often than men do. Since the majority of women are heterosexual, the odds of the term "boyfriend" or "husband" coming up in their social media feeds are fairly high. If they are updating their facebook 12 times a day there are only so many pictures of shoes, cat memes, bitching about work posts they can make. Eventually they'll talk about dudes.

2. Dudes know that talking about their girlfriends online is a great way to accidentally post something that will piss their girlfriend off so they just avoid it.

[bart_calendar]

Why does Robert Plant look so pissed off during that video?

Is it because he's so sexist that the idea of a woman singing his song pisses him off? Or is it because he's friends with Cameron Crowe and still pissed off about the divorce?

[ggreig]

Maybe he just has that sort of face. He's wiping away tears by the end.

[a_pawson]

I'm not sure he is is he? I've seen the full broadcast of the show and the bit where he stands up pointing is when Jason Bonham walks onto the stage.

[a_pawson]

I'm, quite astonished that 80% of consumers still buy music on a physical medium. I thought by now people buying digital music only would be in the majority.

[andrewducker]

Maybe they buy one CD per year as a present.

[philmophlegm]

Yeah, presents is a big factor in that I would imagine. Also, it is still the case that some music is cheaper on CD. Ripping from CD takes roughly the same amount of time as downloading an album (i.e. not very long). There is a small amount of pleasure in having a physical object with album notes etc to flick through. There is a certain amount of pleasure in having the postman deliver you an exciting parcel the next day.

If an album is priced identically between Amazon and Amazon MP3, I find I'm pretty indifferent between the two formats.

[bart_calendar]

I never download when I pay for music.

I want the square box and the liner notes and stuff.