Tom Coates is writing a series of pieces "arguing that the behaviour of an until-recently small group of digital music fans seemed to be now spreading into the mainstream"...

One of the first questions you have to ask yourself in any organic R&D role (which is I think how I'd characterise what I do) is am I a freak or am I an early adopter? You have to have some sense of how much your instincts and excitements are in tune with real people in the world because otherwise you cannot possibly evaluate how those people might respond to the products, concepts or propositions that you think are exciting. In this case, it's becoming fairly clear that people who are listening to digital music and in connected ways are very definitely more like early adopters than they are freaks. They're pointing in roughly the right direction.

(The really interesting questions don't get asked yet. Of all the songs in the world, inclusing the hundred new today, which do you want to listen to right now, and why?)