HMV Gone, but not forgotten

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Macspur

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May 3, 2010
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A very sad day with the demise of such a massive giant of the music industry.

I expect we all have fond memories of visiting our local store, or making a pilgrimage to theMecca of all stores in Oxford Street.

Sad, but inevitable I guess and got to feel sorry for all those employees.

Mac
 
HMV hasn't gone yet. It is only in administration. Of course, it may disappear completely, but there is still some hope, however slim. I could see someone taking on a much leaner HMV, with a handful of stores in big cities.

HMV have, in some ways, made the same mistakes as Woolworths in not really knowing what they are there for. They have watered down their offerings in their traditional core areas to make space for consumer electronics products which are very low margin and inefficient in their use of space. Consumers don't identify HMV with these products in the first place, and the company can't compete with online pricing of items such as headphones and ipod docks.

In my opinion HMV needs to be a much smaller company, possibly with as little as 10% of its current store portfolio concentrated in regional shopping centres and offering a proper range of music, films and games including the reinstatement of specialist departments for classical music and jazz and a better focus on back catalogue. They need to appeal more to collectors and those buyers who would still prefer to buy hard copies than downloads.

I hope they can pull something out of the wreckage, but whatever happens it is inevitable that HMV is going to be a very different beast in the future.
 
That's how it should be in the current conditions. CDs are almost dead (for me, completely dead for the past 2 years) and everything else can be more conveniently bought online. Not much value in those stores anymore.
 
Its problem simply comes down to cost, I wandered around one just before Christmas expecting/hoping to buy something but when they're selling (rock) CDs for £12-£15 which I can then go onto play.com and buy for £5-£10 then it's a no-brainer. Yes I appreciate that they have overheads and staff to pay for but realistically their business model doesn't work. Half the store in the Bullring has now been converted to digital technology (headphones etc) and games machines. So they're trying to compete on two fronts and doing neither well.
 
Not surprising, who buys cds in HMV when you can get them online for £1-£5 for most of them. I don't agree cds are dead in fact I'm buying more now as you can get many for low prices much cheaper than downloads.

THey should have changed before, closed down low selling stores and gone more for online sales.
 
Cant agree; HMV was 'forgotten' a long time ago

Everything moved on bar HMV

You could get the same stuff via Amazon for cheaper and most folk prefer to download these days IMO.

Old fashioned shopping in a New fashioned world!
 
therecruiter said:
Cant agree; HMV was 'forgotten' a long time ago

Everything moved on bar HMV

You could get the same stuff via Amazon for cheaper and most folk prefer to download these days IMO.

Old fashioned shopping in a New fashioned world!
Click to expand...

Yes, agree. HMV's prices in Singapore were 15-20% more than other stores - too exorbitant in the new age of downloads and digital streaming.
 
How is CD dead, and why would I want to pay £7.99 for a compressed download when I can get an uncompressed CD, ripped to lossless and get to keep a hard copy which can be sold on in the future (if I so desire) for £3 - £5 ?

Also not sad to see HMV go. It's always been a greedy company that deserves all it gets.
 
It is not only HMV that has a problem...

http://www.whathifi.com/news/virgin-france-music-chain-declared-insolvent
 
Everyone seems to forget that the prices HMV charged for CDs and videos (all formats) were more or less typical of most high-street retailers until online shopping came along with a completely different set of overheads. 'Our Price' wasn't much cheaper, if at all (remember them?). Smiths and Woolworths were a bit, but they had nowhere near the same choice.

I loved browsing round HMV. It was a proper, big, music and video store. Where else could you go that had such a huge selection of artists and genres? If you wanted anything but Top 40 albums, it was pretty much the only place in town. Well, in my town, anyway.

Soon there'll be nothing left of our high-streets except coffee-shops, pound-shops, clothes shops and charity shops. But I don't really know what the answer is.
 
MajorFubar said:
Everyone seems to forget that the prices HMV charged for CDs and videos (all formats) were more or less typical of most high-street retailers until online shopping came along with a completely different set of overheads. 'Our Price' wasn't much cheaper, if at all (remember them?). Smiths and Woolworths were a bit, but they had nowhere near the same choice. I loved browsing round HMV. It was a proper, big, music and video store. Where else could you go that had such a huge selection of artists and genres? If you wanted anything but Top 40 albums, it was pretty much the only place in town. Well, in my town, anyway. Soon there'll be nothing left of our high-streets except coffee-shops, pound-shops, clothes shops and charity shops. But I don't really know what the answer is.
Click to expand...

And all those shops have gone or been struggling. All the retailers that have gone recently all had poor online sites, I just can't believe the people running these businesses did not change.
 
Unfortunately limited choice will mean we could all pay more for music in the long run. For that reason alone I hope they survive.

I don't think that CD's are about to die anytime soon as many still have players at home and in their cars. DVD sales may have cooled since the arrival of Blu-ray, but many people have invested in players, so I think there is mileage in both formats.

May be we will see the demise of physical media when download quality can be assured and sufficient bandwidth is available, but some how I doubt it...
 
Personally I will miss them if they go, a little bit of me time browsing through the selections will be lost.
 
Having said that, Tower Records in Picadilly was simply the best ever! :rockout: Not forgotten
 
moon said:
Having said that, Tower Records in Picadilly was simply the best ever! :rockout: Not forgotten
Click to expand...
Agreed. Tower was my favourite, follow by Virgin. Out of London, Parrot and Andys Records were both very good.
 
If browsing was the big benefit of HMV, then they should have somehow marketed it and exploited that aspect.

But without the opportunity to listen to any CD that you pick up, how can you make a buying choice without already knowing what the CD sounds like?

On Amazon etc, you can browse and listen, follow links from people's "must have" playlists, and also see the " If you like A, then why not listen to B, C and D artists".

If you then like what you hear, it's a simple "Add to Basket" or wishlist.

HMV was a dinosaur waiting to be picked off as it limped towards the mirage of a waterhole.

A real pity, and means that I'll have nowhere to hide when the Cobalts head off to the shops next time. H&M and Dorothy Perkins do not have the same appeal.

(And I'm too old to hang out in Hollister - I'd get arrested 🙂
 
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