We're living in an age of constant entertainment. Not in the sense that we all feel constantly entertained; there are no more amusing drunks to laugh at the way to work now than there was 10 years ago. It's the fact that we can access entertainment in various sizes at any time, means that we have the ability, should we have the propensity, to be entertained at any point. The music video and the Walkman were all early manifestations of this. Now we can listen to tunes from any device at any time; watch videos on our PC, mobile, psp, TV; read books online or offline - the short, medium or long version depending if we're looking for instant knowledge or a more gluttonous satisfaction. The channels we can get this plethora of pintsize pleasure prompting portions from is quite narrow. We buy them from online stores, either accessed via the web or our mobile. But why can't I get them in queue at Sainsburys? Makes sense, I don't want a twix for kick-off. And whats more impulse as a buy than a cd or dvd. Surely the shorter versions would be even more susceptible to impulse purchase. About to pay for week's shopping, why not buy the latest 'indie bundle'? You could even brand the packages up, from value to organic, endorsed/selected by someone you vaguely trust to have semi-decent taste.
In March's issue of Wired, they have an article about how pint-size entertainment is fast arriving. How everything is now designed to be understood a matter of minutes. We can now consume so much, so quickly, that we can sample an almost excessive amount of genres/cultures every week. We are not restricted to one visit to HMV, Amazon put a stop to that. Put we're past Amazon now. We're not restricted to one portal, one shopping basket. The natural endgame for this would be any form of entertainment available wherever you are. Its good and well to say you'll be able to get it through your mobile. But people will always want to indulge in the act of shopping, and retailers should be satisfying our need for bite size entertainment more readily, rather than confining themselves to the top ten albums available at 15 quid a shot.
Oh, and this doesn't mean we're seeing the end of longer content - quite the opposite according to wired. Read the bite size version, or the full-length number, depending on your mood.
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