Does anyone still shop at HMV?

Foyles Christmas sales down 3.7% y/y, and that was helped by a smaller decline in online sales. (HMV sales down 10% y/y, for comparison). No figs for Waterstones yet.

might be worthwhile comparing HMV's fate with FNAC, which plans to open 30 more stores in France. if anything FNAC's prices are even more exorbitant. but they benefit from a French law that forbids loss-leader pricing, meaning Amazon can't undercut them. more here:

http://www.thebookseller.com/feature/fnac-french-connection.html

Are we more independent and free than before record stores? If anything, I feel more manipulated and marketed to online than ever before.

not getting into this absolute wasteland with you again but just gonna say that clearly, there is more music available, more of all music, ever made, online, than there ever was in a shop.

there seems like a whole argument here about "oh no we can't rely on the free market to teach consumers how to be better consumers" that baffles me

people will invest as much time and effort into a leisure pastime as they feel inclined to do. the fact that the sources that throw suggestions at them changes means nothing. personal sentimental attachment to the haunts of yr youth is understandable, sure.

i never think to look at hmv online whereas i have amazon bookmarked.

there is a physical one 15 minutes away and i always pop in when in the area, dvd sale section is great for impulse purchases, but 80% my media shopping is done from my desk.

"obviously it's not me i'm worried about it's the young sheeple who will never develop any interest in music again"

the "high street" is a brief, class-inflected blip in the history of consumerism afaict

xps Physical retailers (including FNAC) also suffering in France though: www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/04/virgin-france-flagship-shutdown-paris

people will invest as much time and effort into a leisure pastime as they feel inclined to do. the fact that the sources that throw suggestions at them changes means nothing. personal sentimental attachment to the haunts of yr youth is understandable, sure.

exactly.

eh http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/04/virgin-france-flagship-shutdown-paris

Last time I was in FNAC it was going the way of HMV: all tech and DVDs, hardly any music/books

"obviously it's not me i'm worried about it's the young sheeple who will never develop any interest in music again"

Wait, who's saying anything like that?

the "high street" is a brief, class-inflected blip in the history of consumerism afaict

What was before it, in the history of consumerism?

xp iirc the Champs-Elysees one had a pretty decent art / fashion book section but tech and DVDs were the main stock.

DVDs streaming on demand will surely kill that model in the near future.

Does anyone know how this will affect the Japanese arm of HMV, if at all? I've used hmv.co.jp in the past to order tasty Japanese-only CDs.

Always found Fnac to be almost-HMV-level grim, with a couple of exotic-to-me novelties like a massive comics section.

I pay full price for books at Foyles or smaller independents, knowing that I can get them cheaper online, mainly as a (probably futile) gesture so that I feel I'm putting my money where my mouth is re: the survival of shops, but also because I find it much more fun wandering around a shop and coming away with books in my hand than clicking and waiting. Foyles is a great place to spend an hour or so Christmas shopping, browsing and asking for recommendations. Can't say HMV ever gave me the same pleasure to be honest but I do fondly remember the three-12"s-for-£10 deal they used to have in the 90s. CDs are never as much fun as vinyl.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21023610

....
Nick Twine, a 47-year-old supervisor at home improvement chain B&Q in Lincoln, probably speaks for many of his kind when he laments the changes at his local HMV shop.

"My time to go to the High Street is to take the kids shopping," says Mr Twine, who has three daughters. "They want to go to the shops and buy clothes and make-up. HMV is my soother to the pain of going to the shops - I can spend a couple of hours browsing around."

The problem is that browsing is all he does there nowadays. The chain's decision to stock fewer music titles in favour of games and gadgets has made it hard for him to find any CDs worth buying.

"I have broad music tastes - anything apart from opera - but I went there on Sunday with £50 to spend and I actually couldn't find anything that I needed.

"It's kind of indicative that they can never carry enough stuff to appeal to guys like me, who have vast record collections and go online to find the stuff they need."...

50 quid man! a spotting in the wild!

Nick Twine, a 47-year-old supervisor at home improvement chain B&Q in Lincoln

Last time I went to Rough Trade, without meaning to, I spent exactly £50. I had become that guy.

ah, thesedays (oh blimey I mean thosedays already) the kids would drag me to HMV for to find the music they like. Otherwise I'd never go in there...

ANyways, Alice was looking for the Taylor Swift CD and/or the Hunger games soundtrack. Neither were in. Fair enough the soundtrack, but the TS? Not getting deliveries or something? Should have smelled a big one there.

(obv the blue X sale was a big clue, but even then I wasn't expecting the imminence of it.)

xpost you bought two CDs?

Last time I went to B&Q to nick twine, I got thrown out by some 47-year-old supervisor

you cut off the best bit, nilmar

Nick Twine, a 47-year-old supervisor at home improvement chain B&Q in Lincoln, probably speaks for many of his kind

Last time I went to B&Q to nick twine, I got thrown out by some 47-year-old supervisor

― qbert yuiop (NickB), Tuesday, 15 January 2013 13:38 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Haha

"My father was a 47-year-old supervisor at B&Q, and his father before him, and his father's father..."

went in to local HMV today, it was rammed. Not much buying going on, still. Seemed really expensive, most of it.

Don't you just hate people in their 40s buying music and having jobs?

Coalition govt. should start demonising them imo

They don't deserve HMV.

While the rest of us are getting up early in the morning to go to to work these people are getting up early in the morning to go to to work and going to HMV in their lunch breaks

Disgusting savages; list them ALL itt

Don't you just hate people in their 40s buying music and having jobs?

― Stop Gerrying Me! (onimo), Tuesday, 15 January 2013 13:44 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, these young people...

I must confess that Nick Twine - that Nick Twine – is a friend of a friend.

thank you, Rob Thread.

Like a canis with an os

Don't you just hate people in their 40s buying music and having jobs?

― Stop Gerrying Me! (onimo), Tuesday, 15 January 2013 13:44 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's an absolute disgrace.

Thought this was a pretty good reminiscence/analysis, from a guy who used to work on the HMV advertising account:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/15/why-did-hmv-fail

Yeah, read that earlier on his site before it got republished. The bit where the MD tells him off for warning them about online retailers, downloads, and supermarkets is particularly telling.

This commenter has it right, though. Even if you can see the threat coming, forcing a successful company down an unproven route isn't easy. The timing of the stock market flotation in 2002 seems poor: the short-termism of shareholder demands is exactly what HMV didn't need at that point.

That's basically the innovator's dilemma, though. You don't have much choice when your industry is being disrupted: you can protect your own short-term sales and die in the long-term (HMV, Kodak), or become smaller and live.

That ad guy's account is a little undermined by the fact that he points towards play.com as a model to follow (at least in the original version on his website) - isn't play.com closing down in march, or becoming a 'marketplace only' site?

Already did, I think.

So, 'not closing down' and 'becming a different business model' then.

Ad man's basic point is correct, tho - HMV were absolutely clueless when it came to the Internet. When I was there, there was a lot of vague chat about 'in-store hubs' or somesuch where people would come into the shops and download music onto their MP3 players - an obvious non-starter, but indicative of how wedded the management were to the idea of the physical store/space.

By the time I left HMV, DVD sales had started to plateau (after being the company's last major cash cow for a few years) and again there was a lot of blather abt more aggressively courting the computer game market - they never really got anywhere with that, and never found another format or product that could match the incredible margins on DVDs - which were themselves gradually eroded by constant in-store sales and discounting.

can't remember where and who but the recent-ish quote upthread about people prefering HMV's website to Amazon because HMV are "specialists" says everything you need to know about company management still. not. getting. it.

aw yeah, wasn't arguing with ad guy's essential thrust (xp)

i could see their specialism working if they actively demonstrated it with content on the website and helping people find other stuff they might like and all that stuff, maybe even shack up with the NME or someone to provide buyers' guides and reviews etc which could benefit them both. no evidence of their specialist knowledge to be found though afaict, it's just a shit version of the music section of tescos online. can you even listen to sound samples on the hmv site?

No, you can't.

hopeless

Yeah, if you're going to boast about specialism, it has to be more than just your brand. I suppose https://thisismyhmv.com/ was a start in that direction.