Daily Mail claims Google is robbing Adele, gets it very wrong

There's a great piece on MailWatch this morning looking at Alex Brummer's piece in the Mail which droned on about how Google is evil.

Google threatens to destroy not only pop sensation Adele, but Britain's film and music industries. So why is No.10 in thrall to this parasitic monster?

You might be surprised to hear that Google is threatening to destroy Adele. Sure, Twitter has issued a death threat against The Vaccines, and Bing insists it will start to remove one of The Saturdays every hour unless its demands are met by midnight, but Google threatening to destroy Adele seems to be something we've missed.

Brummer told his readers:

Nine out of the first ten websites which pop up on Google’s search engine are run by pirates who have downloaded Adele’s output and offer it online far more cheaply than official copyrighted sites and High Street retailers.

Mailwatch takes this surprising claim and grinds it into dust:

From this sample it seems that Google seems very adept at putting Adele’s fans in touch with official sources of information about her. Only the lyrics page seems unofficial or unapproved – and do lyrics really count as piracy?

There's a couple of other surprising claims in Brummer's article which are deserving of a closer look. Remember, by the way, the Brummer is not a generalist hack trying to froth up a piece; he's a former British Press Awards financial journalist of the year and a former city editor of the Mail.

The music and books retailer HMV and the music giant EMI are two of the grand old dames of Britain’s music industry. But the future of both these historic enterprises, with a pedigree of recording talent going back almost a century, is in doubt.

Together with other UK-based creative champions such as Warner Music as well as a host of imaginative, independent record producers, they are in danger of extinction — as is this country’s extraordinarily successful music business.

Where do you start? HMV has a "pedigree of recording talent", does it? Admittedly, there was an HMV label but that business has nothing to do with the shops.

More importantly, Warner Music are not "UK-based". Their headquarters is on Rockerfeller Plaza in New York.

Brummer suggests that the woes of the industry are related to Google - which is such a narrow view of what has happened since music went online as to be laughable. His subs make an explicit link in an image caption:

Grand old dame: But the future of recording giant EMI is being undermined by Google

Really? EMI still turns profits; the future has been undermined by loading the company up with unsupportable debt and a management regime ill-equipped to nurture the legacy of the company, and uninspired to cope with the future. Even if you want to take the RIAA line that unlicensed file-sharing is part of the problem, Google aren't putting the files there and work over-strenuously to take-down when their users have ignored the licensing regime.

There's a massive clunker from Brummer when he turns to HMV:

In Britain, some 70 per cent of music sales are still in the form of CDs and come through the High Street, where HMV is now the main retailer following the collapse of Woolworths and Zavvi in the early part of 2009.

Woolworths and Zavvi both collapsed at the end of 2008 although some stores were still being wound down in early 2009, but that's a minor quibble.

Oh, and HMV was already the main retailer before Woolworths and Zavvi collapsed as its sales outstripped both of them. But that's another minor quibble.

The bigger problem is the claim that 70 per cent of music sales "are still in the form of CDs and come through the High Street". Is that by volume? Is that by value? Brummer doesn't say, although the difference is important.

But if we accept his claim that most music sales are still on CD, does he really think most of those CDs are being sold through physical stores?

Does it not occur to him that a large chunk of HMV's problems are down to supermarkets selling large numbers of CDs as loss-leaders alongside the Mum's Day flowers and BOGOF baked beans?

And has he never heard of Amazon, which is selling quite a large proportion of those CDs, without the need for anyone to go near the High Street?

Although I suppose you can find Amazon by using Google. Clearly that's Google's fault, too.

Google aren't targeting Adele. It does sound rather like Brummer is using dodgy arguments in some sort of attack on Google, though.

The illustrated Hello: Leslie Crowther

Yes, yes, there's your record store day. But what of Woolworths? Who fills their void, eh? Here's a 1970s advert with Mr Crowther stocking up on soundalike vinyl and instrumental tunes from his High Street:



(Teenagers: sorry, most of that must have been incomprehensible.)

Interesting that in those days, records were sold "at the prices you want to pay." Try to enforce the price you want to pay nowadays, and you'll wind up having the BPI throw you off the internet.

Crowther, of course, could hold a tune in his own right. Even when singing with Lena Zavaroni:



That was back before she officially changed her name to "tragic" Lena Zavaroni.

Crowther spent some time as chief pencil-awarder on kids' TV catchphrase-heavy gameshow Crackerjack. Besides the musical, um, tributes from Peter Glaze, the show was also one of those odd spots where surprising bands would sometimes turn up. This is Steeleye Span - during next-presenter-but-one Ed 'Stewpot' Stewart's reign of terror:



Stewpot. Perhaps the least menacing mafia nickname ever.

But you know what we're building to here. Crowther's main claim to pop fame - his son-in-law, Phil Lynott:



[Part of the Illustrated Hello]

Zavvi in one hell of a mess

Zavvi isn't having a good time of it right now - the unlovely chain was reliant on Woolworths for most of its deliveries and has already had to close its online store right at the busiest time of the year. Oh, and while bunches of prebooked and preprinted adverts were sending customers to the place.

It's getting worse: the company have had to bring Ernst And Young to help them pick their way through the minefield of their current trading. Zavvi owes £106 million to Woolworths' Entertainment UK subsidiary, and could be forced to hand over the money (which it doesn't have) or give back the stock in its stores:

Suppliers could claim they have "retention of title" over millions of pounds of stock, potentially allowing them to reclaim the goods from Zavvi stores.

People working with Zavvi are concerned that the company may be forced to choose between returning some stock at its most crucial time of year or continuing to sell it in defiance of the music labels.

Oh, come on, Zavvi - surely you don't think entertainment industry companies would be as short-sighted as to demand return of unsold stock right before Christmas, thereby making inevitable the collapse of one of the only two major record chains left trading? It's not like the BPI companies are bungling and can't separate short-term cash from long-term best interest, is it? It's not like they have a track record of that.

At the moment, the whole thing is balancing on a line of credit underwritten by Richard Branson - a man who must have thought he'd never have to worry about those bloody stores when he offloaded the Virgin Megastore chain back in September 2007.

The Zavvi.co.uk website is like a bizarre Mary Celeste webspace right now - you can go through, look at items: there's just no way you can buy them. "Pick up instore" is the best the website can offer, allowing all the convenience of a high street store with none of the convenience of not having to go into a poorly-lit digital rummage souk. That link, by the way, takes you to the Rubiks Cube page:

It's the no.1 Christmas present this year and the best selling puzzle in history! It has 43 quintillion combinations, but it can be solved in under 30 seconds.

The number one Christmas gift this year? Really? Perhaps in households that are relying on Zavvi for their income.

I don't want to blame the Rubiks Cube page for bringing down the whole company, but is "hey, this is a puzzle which you can solve in less than a minute" really a great selling point for any product? "Hours of fiendish fun", maybe; "seconds to learn, a lifetime to master" - that could be good. But "buy your kids something that has an even shorter lifespan than our company" doesn't sound like a sweet spot for your consumer goods.

Last weekend I happened into a Zavvi for the first time since they grew ashamed of their roots and started to hide the records behind the service elevator, to buy a DVD box set as a gift. "Would you like a bag?" asked the assistant. Normally, I'd decline but I had other shopping to do, and it was a gift needing concealing, so I said "yes, please."

The assistant disappeared under the counter and re-emerged holding the sort of brown paper bags greengrocers would use for mushrooms, shoved the box into the bag and handed it over.

So I'm left holding a package which is same size, shape and weight as it was before, and still equally as difficult to carry as it had been before the bag became involved. Only now: it looked like pornography.

The end of EntertainmentUK?

Robert Peston is just on, suggesting that Entertainment UK - the distribution arm of Woolworths - looks unlikely to survive the collapse of the company.

Zavvi closes website

Zavvi - the stupid new name for what used to be Virgin Megastores - has shuttered its website following stock problems.

The chain relied on Woolworths for its supply of music and movies, and with Woolworths buckling, the decision has been taken to concentrate what CDs and DVDs it has into its stores. Presumably the decision was based on the criteria 'where are people going to be able to hit us if they're upset'?

Take That saved for a grateful nation

The collapse of Woolworths had thrown a ghastly shadow over Britain - as the biggest distributor of impulse-buy records to UK supermarkets, it could mean that the grudging racks of CDs provided by Asda and the like could run dry.

Into this crisis, the record companies have marched, kind of like the magnificent seven, organising alternative deliveries of Take That's new release and Britney's album:

A spokesman for Asda said new deliveries had been organised, adding that customers "won't notice a thing".

"We are pushing ahead with a planned national poster campaign for a new range of DVD box sets, and can reassure fans of Take That that we will have their new album in store from Monday," he said.

So, your evil plan fails again, Robbie Williams - you won't stop people getting their hands on the new Take That record.

Woolworths helps the mp3 format out of obscurity

You might have thought that the public - even the not-especially-tech-savvy parts of it - have, over the last 14 years or so, grown used to the mp3 format and understood what it is and what it does. Indeed, part of the problem other online music formats have is they lack the recognition value of the mp3 and aren't so simple to understand what they do.

Woolworths, HMV and a bunch of other UK music retailers aren't so sure. Indeed, they feel the idea of an mp3 file is so alien to the populace that they might need a logo to understand it.

This is it. For some reason, early plans to include a "plays for sure" promise were judged unwise and quietly dropped. The Entertainment Retailers Assocation are proud of their new baby:

7digital, Digitalstores, Tescodigital, Tunetribe, Play.com, HMV and Woolworths are all on board for the launch. ERA digital chairman Russel Coultart said the move was to take the message to music fans "that they can legally buy downloads which are not locked to specific players or computers or mobile phones".

Aha. Here we are mocking them but clearly, they've identified a segment of the market that will recognise that "mp3" refers to a digital music format but without the words "100% compatible" wouldn't realise it would play on their mp3 player.

That's the wonder of Woolworths

Much of our early record-buying experience was bent over in Woolworths, rustling through the singles 'out of chart' slush pile. Seventy nine pence, those singles used to cost me in my teenage years. But no new generations will know the joy of discovering Man2Man Meets Man Parrish for half price, as Woolworths is dropping the single.

Anyone who's been in a Woolworths recently might be surprised to discover they were still selling anything other than florid pink televisions and decorations overstocked for the last holidays - James P, who emailed us the news, described the relationship with singles as being

"like an ugly-yet-heartfelt wedding gift from a close relative that the shop has felt duty bound to accommodate for years now, shifting it around, leaving it untended for weeks, eventually squashing it into a tatty cardboard 'Top 20' display."

Now that floorspace can be used to push those bags which you vacuum the air out of, and microwave dishes that promise to cook like proper cooking but, erm, don't.

The store cites falling demand:

The group said that the format was in "terminal decline" and will be removed from the shelves from August.

Sales of CD singles have fallen sharply as the popularity of downloading music from the internet has increased.

However, it will continue to stock one-off releases, such as the X Factor winner, which the retailer says still sells hundreds of thousands of copies.

That's the sort of terminal decline which can still shift hundreds of thousands of copies, then. God, you have to hope that if ever someone has to decide when to switch off your lifesupport, it's not a Woolworths employee doing it:

- He is in a coma, but there's a chance of survival, even a recovery of most motor functions
- Right, so is this the plug we need to pull out, then?

Amusingly, Woolworths think they're going to be able to migrate their singles customers to their downloads site. Because when you're thinking music, woolworths.co.uk is your first thought, right?

It's all in the research

Victoria Newton has got exclusive pictures from Westlife's advert for the Post Office:

WESTLIFE have given a first-class performance in their debut telly commercial.

Debut commercial, is it, Newton? Presumably the 2006 Woolworths advert doesn't count, then?

Why are the Post Office using Westlife in their advert, though? They used to advertise with a series of crudely-animated ants with annoying voices, so I suppose the use of Westlife at least continues that theme. And if you're looking to get the public behind an ongoing series of closures for Post Offices, what better way to do it than to plant the suggestion that having a Post office in your village might lead to the appearance of Westlife in your neighbourhood?

One could almost feel a pang of sympathy for Kelly Osbourne

Almost, but not quite, as she's now reduced to doing ads for Woolworths. The Woolworths No Frills budget range, to be precise.

And despite sharing the advert with a dog and a sheep puppet, she's still giving the least lifelike performance of them all.

Asda kills the single

Faced with prospect of sales dropping away to nothing, Asda has dropped the CD single from its stores.

It says it can barely bring itself to do so:

"We're reluctantly saying goodbye to one of the most important products in music history," the retailer's music buyer Andy Powell said.

The CD single? Surely not? The 7" vinyl single, unquestionably, had an important part in the history of music, but the CD single... that was just a delivery method, surely?

Woolworths, meanwhile, says its remaining committed to the single:

"They are still an important part of the music business," said the chain's music boss Jim Batchelor. "If you give people what they want, they will buy it."

We don't know what marketing course he went on, but that was worth the money, wasn't it? Mind you, what Woolworths knows about giving people what they want is debatable - their teeny-tiny range and focus on selling just a few titles has helped strangle the singles market and - with about a third of all singles sold in the UK going through a Woolies till - has to take some of the blame for the dull charts we've grown used to. If the people who buy the most singles have the smallest choice, how can you ever hope to have exciting charts?

Fopp buys upwards

Fopp Records has more-than-trebled its size overnight, by buying up the best of the Music Zone stores.

Music Zone went into receivership in January, just twelve months after buying up 41 MVC stores. They'd been in receivership since December 2005, in turn just four months after Woolworths had offloaded the chain. The inability of so many management teams to turn a profit from the locations doesn't seem to have phased Fopp.

There had been 35 Fopp stores; now, there are to be 102. For a while, at least.