Do you remember in Pretty Woman the scene of Vivian, Julia Roberts, singing in the tub with her headphones on? I see myself pretty much like that when I was about 8 or 10 years old and the music was directly in the ears, only with myself and with no one else, thanks to an object so beautiful to me, light blue, with the Sony silver brand, that shone and enchanted me.
Pressing the “Stop” button was like coming back to reality abruptly. The possibility of listening to my favorite song directly in the ears, only with myself and with no one else, created my world.
The walkman effect. Here it is.
A behavior that, in 1984, becomes a phenomenon: the walkman effect, here it is, so-called by the Japanese sociologist Shuhei Hosokawa, designed a new sociologic panorama, where people lose “contact with reality” and the environment around.
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It’s hard to believe that in 1979 when walkman was launched in Japan, it didn’t have immediate success. Sony’s employees had to put their energy and share the listening experience of the walkman with people around: an advertising campaign that today would have been called “guerrilla marketing”. Since this moment this great product had great success, as even the cassettes.
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You know, this year the Walkman has turned 40 and a lot has changed since then – except the sociological consequences. So I decided with the editors of AMS to meet Sebastiano, who runs of the Metropolis store in Milan with his partner Alfiero.
Sebastiano shows me what I undoubtedly call a world, more so than a shop: opened in 1981, Metropolis offers music lovers a wide choice of vinyls and compact discs, in a unique atmosphere where the 70s, 80s and 90s live on, but above all live together.
«Music has no shape for them.»
Sebastiano tells me the needs of today, influenced by fashion and great returns: discs are back in fashion, today they brought a cassette with them.
“I don’t know how long it will last, he explains, because like all fashions it is destined to fade, but right now young people – 20-year-olds – see music taking shape even through the cassette, because for them music has no form. We have put out some new tapes, which the market likes. The same goes for the so-called “eat-discs”. Nothing dies, everything is destined to return “.
«The difference between yesterday’s approach to music and today’s is precisely this: today there is too much, one gets lost and does not discover.»
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I remember that for me it had the shape of a music tape, sometimes with a drawn ribbon and a pen. Then came the cd. Today it is called Spotify.
Sebastiano tells me his story: first you couldn’t jump from one piece to another, it was too complicated. This system allowed us to discover things as they were made, perhaps even allowing us to discover songs we did not know. The kind of things that require time and patience.
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The difference between yesterday’s approach to music and today’s is precisely this: today there is too much, you get lost and don’t discover anything. A few decades ago you had to metabolize the sounds instead: there were surely some songs you didn’t like at first, but hearing them again you learned to appreciate them, and then they literally stuck to your skin. And you could never remove again.
«Now the threshold has dropped to 20,000 copies. An inexorable change.»
Let’s talk about the future. The wisdom of those who have followed this world suggests I should look to the past. “New technologies have sometimes replaced people. It happened even in music: if you think about it, today there are digital instruments that process music, compared to the past when musicians used to produce it. Music will accompany us forever, but it will always be subject to the changes it will encounter along the way. ”
As for vinyl, Sebastiano points out to me again: even if someone continues to be fascinated by it, few people buy the support to listen to it, because now you can do it even from a mobile phone. Of course, among those who still listen to the big names in music like the Beatles or Rolling Stones there is someone who still buys CDs or vinyls.
“However, I let me tell you this: once the gold record in America was given to musicians or groups that exceeded one million copies sold; in Italy it was given to those who sold more than 500,000 copies. Now the threshold has dropped to 20,000 copies. An inexorable change “.
I leave Metropolis. Once I’m out, I feel a strong desire to listen to my songs again. Those songs. I put my headphones in and play Bohemian Rapsody.
On Spotify.
