The 'Aspirational' Consumer: R.I.P.

The spending habits of the utmost tier of earners remains robust, but everyone below has cut back and plans to stay there. “If you look at the 10-15% [sales volume] declines for upscale retailers and brands, it was [due to] people spending beyond their means and not being able to sustain it,” said AARC president Ron Kurtz. Even within the sphere most would consider well-off ($250,000 average annual household earnings), 41 percent reported they’re making a conscious effort to reduce expenditures for the next 12 months.

Isolated data? Hardly. Consumer Edge Research recently found that skipping top-shelf brands in favor of lower-end ones is most common in households with incomes of $100,000 or higher. A study conducted by PriceWaterhouseCoopers/Kantar Retail earlier this year revealed that 93 percent of shoppers say they’ve changed their shopping behavior—with 17 percent opting for cheaper brands. “Although we’re starting to see signs of shoppers getting tired of trading down, they remain cognizant of today’s economic realities,” said a Kantar official in a statement. These findings are in line with last year's McKinsey study, which revealed 41 percent of consumers think that premium brands are “not worth the money.”

So much for life’s little indulgences.

Read more at Brand Week.

Born digital

IN THE digital realm, things seem always to happen the wrong way round. Whereas Google has hurried to scan books into its digital catalogue, a group of national libraries has begun saving what the online giant leaves behind. For although search engines such as Google index the web, they do not archive it. Many websites just disappear when their owner runs out of money or interest.

In 1996 Brewster Kahle, a computer scientist and internet entrepreneur, founded the Internet Archive, a non-profit organisation dedicated to preserving websites. He also began gently harassing national libraries to worry about preserving the web.

Another issue is ensuring that the data is stored in a format that makes it available in centuries to come. Ancient manuscripts are still readable. But much digital media from the past is readable only on a handful of fragile and antique machines, if at all. Audio and video programmes based on proprietary formats such as Windows Media Player are another challenge. What happens if Microsoft is bankrupt and forgotten in 2210?

Read more at The Economist.

A Social Music Chart

Entrepreneur Eric Garland thinks he has a better music chart. His secret? Tweets, status updates, and web chatter. BigChampagne, based in Beverly Hills, tracks sales, downloads, and listening activity on just about every music-distribution platform, from iTunes to FM radio to MySpace. (And, yes, it still tracks illegal file sharing too.). BigChampagne then analyzes and sells the data to record labels, talent agents, and radio stations that are looking to find under-the-radar acts.

In late July, BigChampagne unveiled its latest creation, the Ultimate Chart, which supplements widely available data on sales on Amazon (AMZN) and iTunes with metrics that measure a song's buzz: YouTube (GOOG) and MySpace hits, Twitter and Facebook mentions, Clear Channel radio spins, and Rhapsody and Last.fm streams.

Read more here.