120 replies to this topic

[Pinhead]

http://www.bbc.co.uk...siness-12117510

Will anyone lament the inevitable passing of the last High Street record shop?

Could this be the death nell of CD and media artwork too?

Will Apple and Tesco come to own the music world?

Anyway, feel free to rip me apart, though I will personally miss bimbling around Rival Records, Our Price, FOPP, Harlequin and the like. Always surprised GFL never seem to have considered setting up a record label either. Perhaps with its main organiser now married to a music manager . . .

[fatyeti24]

a guy on the BBC this morning put it well..

"if HMV didn't exist today, nobody would bother to invent it"

i spent a lot of my youth in record stores, but i always preferred the second hand ones, not the expensive ones like HMV.  i loved it, and would spend hours in Vinyl Exchange here in Manchester.

but i don't miss it, i get the same buzz trying to track down tunes online without having to go into town.

HMV and their ilk milked us for years along with the major labels.  i won't lament their demise.

[eFestivals]

my old boss is now the big boss at HMV ... I only discovered that a few weeks ago, so sent him an email to say hello and suggest that HMV should do more stuff with efests, and got a nice reply from him and a suggestion I arrange a meeting with one of his underlings, which is happening in the new few weeks.

[beodeejay]

eFestivals, on 05 January 2011 - 10:15 AM, said:

my old boss is now the big boss at HMV ... I only discovered that a few weeks ago, so sent him an email to say hello and suggest that HMV should do more stuff with efests, and got a nice reply from him and a suggestion I arrange a meeting with one of his underlings, which is happening in the new few weeks.

Neil - suggest you send them a pro-forma invoice for the first few months !!!

[Pinhead]

fatyeti24, on 05 January 2011 - 10:05 AM, said:

a guy on the BBC this morning put it well..

"if HMV didn't exist today, nobody would bother to invent it"

i spent a lot of my youth in record stores, but i always preferred the second hand ones, not the expensive ones like HMV.  i loved it, and would spend hours in Vinyl Exchange here in Manchester.

but i don't miss it, i get the same buzz trying to track down tunes online without having to go into town.

HMV and their ilk milked us for years along with the major labels.  i won't lament their demise.

Just can't get the same feeling over compressed binary data as I do over browsing through the physical album media and artwork in a record shop. In some cases it has led me to investigate other bands that I have just 'lept out' at me due to their media artwork, or have been near other artists that I have been browsing through. Got into several bands that way over the years.

eFestivals, on 05 January 2011 - 10:15 AM, said:

my old boss is now the big boss at HMV ... I only discovered that a few weeks ago, so sent him an email to say hello and suggest that HMV should do more stuff with efests, and got a nice reply from him and a suggestion I arrange a meeting with one of his underlings, which is happening in the new few weeks.

I hope (and suspect) that HMV, or rather their group at least, are repositioning themselves for a relaunch as either a wholly on-line music retailer or even a supplier to outlets such as supermarkets, which reminds me a little of the days of Our Price based in WHSmith, or was it Woolworths? Your negotiations may well bear fruit.

[zero000]

Though HMV is a definite rip off and there are much cheaper and better alternatives online (which is of course the problem), I still think its demise is a bad thing. It essentially means that the majority of the high street market for CD's is ruled by the supermarket chains, which means no variety with a Top 40 kind of music.

[eFestivals]

beodeejay, on 05 January 2011 - 10:33 AM, said:

Neil - suggest you send them a pro-forma invoice for the first few months !!!

PMSL .... I'm guessing you're suggesting that they won't last very long....?

Whatever might happen with the main part of HMV, my dealings will be with their MAMA Group subsidiary which runs Lovebox, Great Escape and other fests, and that part of the business is profitable - so I don't think there's any need for me to worry.

But I am feeling a little sorry for my ex-boss, cos he's been seen as a rising star of the city but that looks like it might get destroyed by what's happening with HMV - he was brought in to turn it around but it looks like far from an easy job.

[Pinhead]

zero000, on 05 January 2011 - 10:44 AM, said:

Though HMV is a definite rip off and there are much cheaper and better alternatives online (which is of course the problem), I still think its demise is a bad thing. It essentially means that the majority of the high street market for CD's is ruled by the supermarket chains, which means no variety with a Top 40 kind of music.

Yep, with another competitor potentially out of the way, just watch those prices crawl up.

eFestivals, on 05 January 2011 - 10:44 AM, said:

PMSL .... I'm guessing you're suggesting that they won't last very long....?

Whatever might happen with the main part of HMV, my dealings will be with their MAMA Group subsidiary which runs Lovebox, Great Escape and other fests, and that part of the business is profitable - so I don't think there's any need for me to worry.

But I am feeling a little sorry for my ex-boss, cos he's been seen as a rising star of the city but that looks like it might get destroyed by what's happening with HMV - he was brought in to turn it around but it looks like far from an easy job.

Guess he'll jump ship, or perhaps it is the strategic intention now to wind down high street stores and turn profits around by relaunching on-line. Would be surprised if they keep the His Masters Voice brand however - failed high street chains relaunching on-line with the same branding has not worked well for some, e.g. Dixons; Woolworths. The typical younger music customer responds largely only to new snazzy, snappy branding, often with a short term shelf life.

[fatyeti24]

zero000, on 05 January 2011 - 10:44 AM, said:

Though HMV is a definite rip off and there are much cheaper and better alternatives online (which is of course the problem), I still think its demise is a bad thing. It essentially means that the majority of the high street market for CD's is ruled by the supermarket chains, which means no variety with a Top 40 kind of music.

nobody will buy CDs in a few years though, they won't hang around like vinyl.

while i agree that online is even more dominated by large retailers, i find far, far more choice on say Amazon than i ever did in HMV.

of course if, like Pinhead says, binary just doesn't do it far you then fair enough.  your call.  i never got excited by artwork on albums, that wasn't my thing.

and you could argue that since all mp3 sales started to be counted towards the charts, the top 40 has been more varied in recent years than it has for a long time.

[eFestivals]

fatyeti24, on 05 January 2011 - 11:06 AM, said:

nobody will buy CDs in a few years though, they won't hang around like vinyl.

I'm not sure about that. How many people are going to think it's a good thing to keep losing the perhaps thousands of pounds worth or music they've purchased?

Surely there's going to become a point where people realise they ultimately end up with a shit deal by only having digital copies? Most people don't do backups, most people lose their phone or MP3 player eventually, etc, etc, etc - so the result is likely to be that people will stop buying completely, or they'll want to buy a more solid product that doesn't disappear into the ether sooner or later.

[MilkyJoe]

If they do close then this is a shame only in that it is the last of the high street music stores but that is about all it is. Times change and these stores have had it their own way for so long. Now with the supermarkets stocking music, games and other media it is inevitable that there will be casualties. I personally believe that Woolworths' demise was helped along greatly by their ridiculously inflated prices for Cd's and movies and that people just chose to buy online and in supermarkets.

Myself, I tended to stay clear of places like Ourprice once I was out of the smash hits stage of my music listening but used to love spending hours in tiny local music stores. Unfortunately my local one was one of the first to clost down.

[Pinhead]

eFestivals, on 05 January 2011 - 11:33 AM, said:

I'm not sure about that. How many people are going to think it's a good thing to keep losing the perhaps thousands of pounds worth or music they've purchased?

Surely there's going to become a point where people realise they ultimately end up with a shit deal by only having digital copies? Most people don't do backups, most people lose their phone or MP3 player eventually, etc, etc, etc - so the result is likely to be that people will stop buying completely, or they'll want to buy a more solid product that doesn't disappear into the ether sooner or later.

Its certainly a motivating factor for me when purchasing music, almost all of which is still as 'hard copy' if you like, i.e. on a CD (or even vinyl sometimes if I'm adding older releases to various music collections).

It has been said in IT circles too that the volitility of image data amongst the average home user is such that much historial information is simply being lost through memory card, HDD failures or similar.

I think CD sales will remain fairly boyant for a few years yet - music is still being traded on CD via on-line shops. Its just the record fairs and high street shops that are pretty much going to vanish now over the next couple of years I expect. As pointed out, far more choice is available on Amazon since high street retailers have had to scale back and focus their stock on the popular sellers.

As for the charts - the charts are dead already arn't they  

[TomfromStroud]

fatyeti24, on 05 January 2011 - 11:06 AM, said:

nobody will buy CDs in a few years though, they won't hang around like vinyl.

I don't know, I really like the old CDs. I think future generations will realise that you just can't beat hearing the tiny indentations in the well-worn polycarbonate disc layer as the laser beam gets reflected back to the sensor.

[fatyeti24]

eFestivals, on 05 January 2011 - 11:33 AM, said:

I'm not sure about that. How many people are going to think it's a good thing to keep losing the perhaps thousands of pounds worth or music they've purchased?

Surely there's going to become a point where people realise they ultimately end up with a shit deal by only having digital copies? Most people don't do backups, most people lose their phone or MP3 player eventually, etc, etc, etc - so the result is likely to be that people will stop buying completely, or they'll want to buy a more solid product that doesn't disappear into the ether sooner or later.

speaking to the younger members of my family over xmas, they don't buy music at all.  it's all Youtube, or things like Spotify on their phones.  mobile internet lets them listen to just about whatever they want, whenever and wherever they want.

the concept of actually owning a physical product that contains a copy of a song already belongs to the past to them.

[fatyeti24]

TomfromStroud, on 05 January 2011 - 12:21 PM, said:

I don't know, I really like the old CDs. I think future generations will realise that you just can't beat hearing the tiny indentations in the well-worn polycarbonate disc layer as the laser beam gets reflected back to the sensor.

[ICGenie]

MilkyJoe, on 05 January 2011 - 11:51 AM, said:

If they do close then this is a shame only in that it is the last of the high street music stores but that is about all it is. Times change and these stores have had it their own way for so long. Now with the supermarkets stocking music, games and other media it is inevitable that there will be casualties. I personally believe that Woolworths' demise was helped along greatly by their ridiculously inflated prices for Cd's and movies and that people just chose to buy online and in supermarkets.

Maybe it's not that CDs in record stores have "ridiculously inflated prices" but more that the supermarkets have been selling them at ridiculously unprofitable prices which has driven music retailers out of business.  For a supermarket, entertainment can take up a relatively small area of the store, bring people in and they can whack an extra penny on a carrot to pay for it.

I worked for HMV for a few years and left nearly 10 years ago.  The then MD was talking about how supermarkets were killing the industry back then.  The problem for HMV is that they were far too slow to jump onto the online bandwagon - they were also expanding at an incredible rate back then and even I could already see that they would never be able to maintain that.

I'll always hold a torch for the Nipper and the neon pink - they were a good company to work for and I enjoyed my time there.

And for those saying that no-one will be buying CDs in a few years - until Apple and the other legal download e-tailers get their acts together and start providing a lossless format, I will continue to buy CDs.  

[jump]

I find it funny that Waterstones (which HMV owns) is help keeping HMV up as they are making more than them.

As long as beloved Banquet Records stays open I'm not fussed about HMV or any of the other ones.

[jameshunt]

fatyeti24, on 05 January 2011 - 12:44 PM, said:

speaking to the younger members of my family over xmas, they don't buy music at all.  it's all Youtube, or things like Spotify on their phones.  mobile internet lets them listen to just about whatever they want, whenever and wherever they want.

the concept of actually owning a physical product that contains a copy of a song already belongs to the past to them.

The concept of actually paying for something seems archaic to many.

[eFestivals]

fatyeti24, on 05 January 2011 - 12:44 PM, said:

the concept of actually owning a physical product that contains a copy of a song already belongs to the past to them.

that was one of the two possibilities that I covered.

But if things do go that way, it'll be the wholesale death of the music biz - and with the amount of money invested in it at all sorts of different levels, I can't see that happening.

So what'll happen - and it's happening already to a small extent - is that the services (spotify, etc) that people currently get for free will become chargable, and that'll be balanced by physical product becoming attractive to some to own in comparison with those chargable services. I reckon, anyway.

[jameshunt]

ICGenie, on 05 January 2011 - 12:48 PM, said:

Maybe it's not that CDs in record stores have "ridiculously inflated prices" but more that the supermarkets have been selling them at ridiculously unprofitable prices which has driven music retailers out of business.  For a supermarket, entertainment can take up a relatively small area of the store, bring people in and they can whack an extra penny on a carrot to pay for it.

I worked for HMV for a few years and left nearly 10 years ago.  The then MD was talking about how supermarkets were killing the industry back then.  The problem for HMV is that they were far too slow to jump onto the online bandwagon - they were also expanding at an incredible rate back then and even I could already see that they would never be able to maintain that.

I'll always hold a torch for the Nipper and the neon pink - they were a good company to work for and I enjoyed my time there.

And for those saying that no-one will be buying CDs in a few years - until Apple and the other legal download e-tailers get their acts together and start providing a lossless format, I will continue to buy CDs.  

It's both.

I went into HMV just before Christmas and was going to buy The Fall's Your Future Our Clutter.  I saw the price £16 and walked out.  Amazon sell it for £7.93.

There are more overheads in having a physical highstreet presence, but £16 is a complete rip-off.  Had it been £10 or even £12 I'd have bought it from HMV even though I could have saved a huge percentage buying online.

edit: to highlight the point I was replying to.

edit2: just checked HMV's online store price -  £10.99.   Even they are trying to put people off buying from their physical shops.

Edited by jameshunt, 05 January 2011 - 01:09 PM.