It’s Tuesday morning on Caledonian Road, London, and Chaka Demus & Pliers’ Twist and Shout drifts across the peaches and chicken pasta salads in the local Co-operative Food store. Flip the clock back to yesterday, however, and the shop was filled with the altogether different sound of staff complaining about unknown acts such as Adam Pickard and Jono Scott.
The supermarket was piloting a new system to “help emerging artists promote and monetise their music” by playing only unsigned acts from licensing company Emerge on Co-operative Radio (the fact that it is about 50% cheaper to profile unsigned artists than mainstream ones may have been an incentive, too). Unfortunately staff weren’t thrilled about the chance to explore new music at work. One angry Facebook campaign later, and the supermarket chain returned to playing its regular, pricier chart music. Good news for Co-op staff, not so great for a keen new music enthusiast like myself.
Luckily, Sports Direct still retains its contract with Emerge, so I head down to a local branch to have a listen. Could it really be that bad, or was I about to discover the new Jake Bugg in the ladies lightweight gilet section?
The radio was only audible in three areas; near the flip-flops, by the sports bras and in the footwear section. A few minutes into one particularly epic track – think the Killers fronted by X Factor’s Jamie Afro – I sidle up to an unsuspecting member of staff to ask who is playing. “No idea. I can’t even hear anything any more,” he tells me. “They play this stuff all day.”
That doesn’t stop me in my pursuit of fresh talent: during one breezy little song by a band I’m touting as the German Sugar Ray, I approach a man who looks as if he could be interested in some continental surf rock (he has a goatee). “It’s all right for a shop,” he replies solemnly, “but it’s nothing that I’d listen to at home.” Midway through a song by a group I’m calling “Nickelback for the Tinder generation”, a man eyeing jogging bottoms tells me he does not like the sounds at all.
I spot a muscular man in a pink shirt eyeing up scuba gear and approach during a pop track by a guy I’ll call Darius 2.0. “Are you into this?” I ask surreptitiously. “I suppose it’s quite catchy,” he says. I agree firmly. Would he be keen to find out what it is? “Possibly not this song, but I might do with another song.”
Unfortunately for Mr Pink Shirt, this might be tricky, as you can’t actually find out who is playing. Ever. There is no DJ inbetween tracks, and although a spokesperson from Emerge tells me that most of the artists are recognised by Shazam, I have no joy when I try. As a way of unearthing new artists, the system is flawed; not that the music is bad – it’s a little like the semi-finals of The Voice – but that the artists will remain unsigned, anonymously haunting the shelves of cutprice stonewash denim and cricket boxes.
