BRIAN ENO LIKES ABBA, thinks music business is a passing phase

I enjoyed this interview with Brian Eno, partly because it echoes some of my own musical journey ā€“ as a listener, I must emphasise:

I like Abba. I did then and I didn’t admit it. The snobbery of the time wouldn’t allow it.

Quite. Which is why a couple of years ago I bought the 4CD set Thank you for the Music, and not only do I love it, I admire what they did, the technique, the melody and the emotion.

I may have been foolish to buy it. It sounds like Eno doubts we will have to for much longer:

I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time. I always knew it would run out sooner or later. It couldn’t last, and now it’s running out. I don’t particularly care that it is and like the way things are going.

Kudos to Eno for portraying this not as some evil thing, but just something of our time. I love Spotify; millions of songs on demand and for free. Iā€™m not sure how long Spotify itself will last, but clearly the era of the record shop is over and there are many reasons to be glad about that ā€“ even if one cannot help a little nostalgia for the fun of browsing the racks and the excitement of setting the needle onto a groove for the first time, or the CD equivalent.