Surprise and Delight

I was running today(I don't do it so much nowadays due to a dodgy knee), and apart from thinking how brilliant Nike + is, I found myself clicking through some of my favourite ever songs on the Ipod; "Uptight" and "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" by Stevie Wonder, and "Tears of a Clown" by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. It occured to me that with the download culture I had listened to them so often I have become too familiar with them. This is in marked contrast from when I was a kid and the songs would appear on the radio when you didn't expect them and they were all the more brilliant becuase of that element of surprise. I am not quite old enough to remember them in the charts (ok, perhaps just the last one) but there was genuine, spontaneous excitement when they came up on golden oldie slots, and I would wait with my old flat tape recorder, fingers poised over the 'play' and 'record' buttons, hoping the DJ didn't talk for too long over the intro of the song I was going to record onto my C60 Cassette. Now I can get the song when I want on youtube, my Ipod, my phone. Even the 'I can't wait to get home and play the record' feeling has pretty much gone.

It is way more efficient - I get my music when I want rather than waste hours waiting for it to come on the radio or save up and go down the shops for it- but boy does it take away that sense of surprise and delight.

Perhaps that is why we need to do what we can to put the surprise and delight back into what people are buying.