cd-wow.co.uk

Aah, the good old days! When you could stroll through most towns and cities the length and breadth of this fair isle and find in any one a multitude of record shops, independent and with a huge range to tickle any palate.

These days, alas, you’re lucky to get any more than an HMV or an Our Price or, at a push in the bigger places, a Virgin Music store. True you do get Smiths, but you can’t call that a record store, now can you? All they seem to stock is classical and the Top 10 singles.

No variety in music shops is firmly a thing of the dim and distant past and all you can get on the High Street these days is a homogeneous mass of chart fodder and boy and girl bands, all faceless, zit ridden adolescence like S Club 7, West Life and Hear Say. Pah, a plague on all your houses.

However, if High Street music shopping is a thing of the past, the Internet has brought into our homes a rare new breed of music retailer, where choice and excellent value are watch words, and one of the very best, i.e. reasonable choice at excellent prices is CD WOW - http://www.cd-wow.com/ - a veritable heaven sent website if you want to get good, cheap music.

They even have a special offer where you can get a CD for just £3.99 if you sign up with something called PayBox, “a new mobile payment system that enables people to shop online securely or send and request money from friends using just their mobile phone. Fifty per cent owned by Deutsche Bank, one of the leading international financial service providers, paybox operates like a direct debit card in your mobile phone and is compatible with any bank account, any mobile phone and on any mobile network.”

Even if you don’t take advantage of that offer, however, CD WOW offers great value for money – they don’t charge you postage and most new CD’s are just £8.99, as low as you’ll get them anywhere as far as I can see.

The CD WOW website is also pretty smart, with their Top 20 neatly laid out down the left hand side –

PINK FLOYD
Echoes - Best Of
£12.99
BRITNEY SPEARS
Britney
£8.99
KYLIE MINOGUE
Fever
£8.99
ALICIA KEYS
Songs in A minor
£8.99
MICHAEL JACKSON
Invincible
£8.99
AND SO ON…

But it’s not in the Top 20 that you find the true value, because CD WOW have several other sections, Pre-Releases, New Releases, Bargain Basement and a Browse section. The Bargains include stuff like DEPECHE MODE The Singles 81-85 £6.99 and if you’re lucky you can get something you really like there.

The site also includes a news section, but this is little more than a run down of the new items in stock and some scanty write ups, but you wouldn’t visit CD WOW for news, only for cheap music.

I have to say that Streets Online is a better site, with a much greater choice on offer, but SO can’t match the CD WOW prices, so I’d look here first if I were you.

The site doesn’t look too attractive, but it’s functional and pretty easy to navigate, and I’d sooner be there than in Smiths…

PS The site proudly boasts the high recommendation of writers from both Ciao and Dooyoo and I’d like to join them in recommending it.