Web-phobic record labels love Fisherman’s Friends

It's been another upside down week in the world of Britain's declining music industry. Within days of it being announced that Jedward - the preposterously quiffed, over-eager and magnificently talentless Irish twins from X-Factor - had been dropped it was revealed that a bunch of Cornish fishermen who sing century-old sea shanties had landed a £1m recording contract.

Of the two news items, Jedward's dropping by Sony was the oddest. The pair - with a little help from Vanilla Ice - had made number two in the singles charts; had helped to sell out countless added dates on the X-Factor tour and generated almost as many headlines as David Beckham's ankle. What more does a record label want these days?

Perhaps, rather wisely Sony - practically owned and run by Simon Cowell these days, let's not forget - had seen sense and looked beyond sales to realise that investing in such a shallow product as Jedward was morally wrong in these times of financial hardship.

Or maybe it's a lot more boring than that and they hadn't dropped them at all but had only signed them up to a one single deal in the first place. When they decided not to take up their option, the twins' manager Louis Walsh caused a great big press stinkum. Hmm, maybe?

Regardless of the reality, the juxtaposition between Jedward's crisis and the promotion of Fisherman's Friends - the aforementioned Cornishmen - is an amusing development. Marketed as something of a salty old boy band, they join the Fron Male Voice Choir, The Coldstream Guards and The Priests as other unlikely attractions in the album charts.

Actually, their folk songs, which the ten-piece choir have been hollering in the pubs of Port Isaac for the past 15 years, are damn good, but it's a strange state of affairs that they should be rubbing shoulders with Rihanna and The Saturdays on the CD shelves.

A possible explanation is that in our era of downloading - both legal and illegal - the only demographic left who actually purchase CDs are the over-50s. Jedward meanwhile, even if they are capable of continued chart success, are unlikely to actually sell anything - unless they start wearing cardigans, hook up with a bunch of OAPs and record an album of Daniel O'Donnell covers.

While downloading figures may count towards sales and chart statistics the record companies don't like it. Their cut isn't as lucrative as CDs and the power lies with the main provider, iTunes. Still unable to figure out a viable way forward in the brave - but not new any more - world of downloading they've resorted to reaching out to a generation less entranced by iPods and smartphones. A generation who buy their music alongside their groceries at the supermarket.

There is practically nowhere else on the high street you can buy CDs these days other than Asda or Tesco, which leads to some rather odd scenes. In the past, record store staff would be full of knowledge about the latest hits.

The other week I heard someone ask a shelf stacker in Camden Town Morrisons if they had the CD with the song about Facebook on it. They didn't - it's by N-Dubz - but the shelf stacker, whose main skill set doesn't extend to a working knowledge of UK garage music, was clueless either way.

The other route to a lucrative recording contract and continued mainstream success is, of course, more extreme - even for John and Edward - and that's to die.

This week Michael Jackson's estate signed a $250m deal with Sony that will allow them to exploit his music in video games, amusement park rides and TV adverts. There are also plans for an album of unreleased material previously regarded as not good enough by the King of Pop. Wonder if he did any shanties? ·