Kylie Christmas Kylie Minogue Parlophone Two-and-a-half stars
The formula for festive albums is fairly straightforward: re-record a few seasonal classics, add a sprinkling of songs closely associated with frosty December mornings, garnish with something new and hope that when the snow settles, one of your songs emerges as a track for the years.
Kylie Christmas stays true to that prescription, opening with a theatrical, but flat, arrangement of It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year and a rather lacklustre Santa Claus is Coming to Town, which is a peculiar and unsatisfactory duet with the late Frank Sinatra.
Another collaboration, Kylie's take on Christmas Wrapping, The Waitresses' festive floor filler, features a strange talking cameo from Iggy Pop. On a more positive note, Only You, performed with The Late Late Show host James Corden, is a more promising appropriation of the Vince Clarke song that once made The Flying Pickets a household name. Better follows with the excellent Chris Martin-composed Every Day's Like Christmas.
If the vast majority of this album will be forgotten long before the decorations are taken down, this infectious poppy anthem is Kylie and Christmas at somewhere close to their best.
What drives subscription retailing?
Once the domain of newspaper home deliveries, subscription model retailing has combined with e-commerce to permeate myriad products and services.
The concept has grown tremendously around the world and is forecast to thrive further, according to UnivDatos Market Insights’ report on recent and predicted trends in the sector.
The global subscription e-commerce market was valued at $13.2 billion (Dh48.5bn) in 2018. It is forecast to touch $478.2bn in 2025, and include the entertainment, fitness, food, cosmetics, baby care and fashion sectors.
The report says subscription-based services currently constitute “a small trend within e-commerce”. The US hosts almost 70 per cent of recurring plan firms, including leaders Dollar Shave Club, Hello Fresh and Netflix. Walmart and Sephora are among longer established retailers entering the space.
UnivDatos cites younger and affluent urbanites as prime subscription targets, with women currently the largest share of end-users.
That’s expected to remain unchanged until 2025, when women will represent a $246.6bn market share, owing to increasing numbers of start-ups targeting women.
Personal care and beauty occupy the largest chunk of the worldwide subscription e-commerce market, with changing lifestyles, work schedules, customisation and convenience among the chief future drivers.
