No Rock And Roll Fun

THIS IS THE NEW AGE: The first-ever equivalents of Platinum, Gold and Silver records for digital music have been handed out by the RIAA, as if to prove how comfortable they are with downloading now, providing of course, it's legal and controlled by them. Outkast have won a multi-platinum award for the numbers of times Hey Ya has been accessed electronically: 400,000 times, and every single one of them was someone looking for a soundtrack for a sports programme highlights package. Other winners were D12, Maroon 5 and Hoobastank (platinum) and Beyonce Knowles, Black Eyed Peas and Usher (gold).

The amusing thing is the trouble the RIAA had in coming up with what would take the place of the record itself. They - seriously - experimented with a golden mouse and a golden keyboard; they abandoned the actually not half bad concept of a golden microchip, and instead went with "a shiny abstract design over the recording's cover art." Although we're not sure what they'll do with download-only tracks which, of course, don't have covers. If they'd asked us, we'd have suggested they got a hologram etching of a cylinder gramophone.