And so to the records of the year. I usually do this piece in December, but as all sensible shoppers know that’s the worst month in the year to buy anything for yourself — particularly music, in what is very much a buyer’s market. Amazon’s prices, normally comfortingly low, lurch up into realms of profitability during December, to catch out unwary parents and relatives who don’t buy things there for £4.98 every day of the week. In mid-December I wandered through a branch of Zavvi, the doomed rebrand of Virgin Megastores. I was there, and some tumbleweed, and a couple of sad teenagers in shabby Zavvi uniforms, who may have been making alternative career plans for the new year. If you can’t flog CDs and computer games and DVDs in the fortnight before Christmas, you haven’t a prayer.
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