“In the 1980s and 90s it was not unusual for shops to arrange special midnight openings for the biggest album releases — Michael Jackson, U2, Madonna — and lines snaking around Piccadilly Circus in London, for entrance to the giant branch of Tower Records, were a commonplace on wryly amused TV coverage of those releases…. That reflected not just the popularity of the albums and artists concerned, but also the central place music occupied in popular culture in the past. That place has now been taken by technology — which is why you get queues outside Apple stores when a new iWhatever goes on sale, and why you see groups waiting for the doors of gaming shops to open when there’s a new Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto or Fifa to be bought.”
