MI Pro

Now that the crushing New Year’s hangover is beginning to clear, it’s time once more to welcome in a new decade. What will the 2010s bring us, one can’t help but wonder? Surely we’re due some sort of musical revolution, some rebirth of invention that’s going to have all the kids excited and the grown ups scared. While that’s only a nice thought, it has the benefit of making the dismal January weather easier to deal with.

Realistically, this year looks set to carry on much in the same vein as the last. In the face of ever-impending economic meltdown, a pick and mix selection of largely unwinnable wars and the all-powerful Simon Cowell’s X Factor chart domination, the Great British public are well aware that the musical future lies with them. This is rather handy for music shops, which have traditionally weathered social and economic disasters relatively well.

I guess it’s easier to write songs when you’ve got the blues. Howlin’ Wolf would have been a lot less interesting if he’d had a £30k-a-year job and a house in Shropshire.

2009 was certainly a strange time for music. An uneasy mix of boys with guitars and girls with huge voices and wild imaginations. It’s hard to judge what’s coming next.

Maybe DJ Hero on the Xbox will lead to a fresh surge in the dance charts, rendering our years of carefully cultivated guitar knowledge useless as we try to get to grips with decks. Or perhaps the legions of marginal shredders will unite, coming together like a mammoth, über-fast playing mega-transformer that will smash us all to tiny pieces with 1,000,000 note-per-second attacks. Probably not, though, eh?

One thing for sure is that if retail is to prosper, it must be ready and willing to adapt to the market at the drop of a hat. Music trends come and go so fast now that it would be easy to miss out on a rash of Tenori On sales simply because in the six months they were popular you managed to miss it.

Keeping a close eye on what’s going on outside the pop charts will be increasingly vital, as musicians search for new ways to get themselves heard and to stand out from the crowd.

So be vigilant, fellow shop-front folk, and let’s make 2010 a good one.