Does anyone still shop at HMV?

Trocadero's gone. Looks like city stores have done badly out of this generally - getting rid of high rents?

Weird that they're keeping both shops in Central Glasgow open (tho' again, the Buchanan St one always seems p busy, esp. at Xmas time) - and no mention of the Fopps, either

Yeah, what's happening with the Fopps?

Every single time I go into Braehead's HMV they're playing Ocean Colour Scene or Reef's "Put Your Hands".

a mercy killing then

Only been in Braehead HMV once (about 4 years ago maybe) and got the then new Racebannon cd. I was impressed they had it. They also had the Torche cd and some other good stuff.

This says Oxford St is a goner: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/feb/06/hmv-sell-oxford-street-store

Went in the Oxford (not Oxford St, xp!) one yesterday and it's probably not a shock to anyone else here but I was still a bit surprised to find music relegated to two sides of one aisle in the small front section. Forgot to look in the classical basement, or notice whether it even still exists.

Bought some blue-crossed books instead - Naked Lunch for cheap, Retromania for cheapish, a Kraftwerk biog which I wasn't sure about since it was still a tenner even after discount, all found nestling among 6000 copies of the Olly Murs biography.

Looks like that one's staying open, too. In case anyone on a high street with all the usual food-stocking suspects (and sadly very few, err, unusual suspects left) thinks "I'd like a Wispa and a carton of Ribena - I'll go to HMV"

They really only have themselves to blame.

Don't need another boring fashion chain there; if HMV goes, there will be no reason to go to Oxford Street whatsoever.

Still heartbreaking to pass that awful "THE STING" fashion place at Piccadilly and think to myself: "But this should be TOWER RECORDS."

Why do HMV persist in trying to flog all this worthless Cowell crap and Wispas and Ribenas instead of concentrating on music, as they should always have done?

Is it really too much to ask record shops to stock vinyl as well as cds and TO STOCK BACK CATALOG.

Quite.

Wow. How much of a carefully worded claim is that it was "Europe's largest music and film store" or whatever? I mean, I'd believe it, but I believed that Dublin's O'Connell Street was Europe's Widest Street until I was 20.

"the largest enclosed park within any European capital city"

Very sad to see the megastore go. Used to go there as a kid in the 80s, when it even stocked back catalogue 7" singles. Just an awesome record shop to behold. Then I worked there for a few years in the late 90s. One of the interview questions was, "If I gave you £50 to spend in here, what would you buy?" One of my choices was a Go Betweens CD and the manager - of the biggest record shop in the world, mark you, in 1996 - followed that up with "Is that the one with Cattle & Cane on it?"

By the 90s, it was a less aspirational looking shop than the Virgin Megastore up the road, more supermarket-like, but if you looked at what was on the shelves, you could tell HMV's staff, and very probably the management too, had better product knowledge than Virgin.

That said, I can't imagine it's possible to pay rent on such a big building these days and still make a profit from selling CDs, DVDs and records, however well you run it.

One of the interview questions was, "If I gave you £50 to spend in here, what would you buy?"

I got a similar question in the pre-interview questionnaire thing I filled out (in the summer of 2000). I think I put down Zen Arcade or something and the manager brought it up at the interview proper! I have a feeling they stopped asking such questions during the '00s.

Heh, by the time I worked in the big store in the early 2000s, there were still a few heads who knew their music (and mainly worked in the 'specialities' section), but a lot more young shavers and nitwit middle management types who knew little, and cared less. I was often told that giving a fuck abt music was actually a hindrance to 'career advancement' at HMV. The store manager also once said to me, with a big grin on his face, that the fact that he couldn't get a food and drink licence for the premises was the only reason that he hadn't already turned the jazz department (where I worked) into a coffee shop.

Good God, you probably sold CDs to me at some point.

Before that I was working in the Jazz dept at Tower, so prob there, too!

Marcello, do you know if Ray's still have a department in Foyles?

tower used to have an 'out there' section in the jazz department that had loads of fushitsusha etc, spent a few quid there in my time. used to be a similar thing in the virgin megastore for a while too...

Yeah, I first saw Double Live 2 in the Virgin Megastore.

Tower's avant section was set up by someone I used to work w/ at Music and Video Exchange - after he left Tower, he went to work as a rep for Harmonia Mundi, a gd guy.

I really do miss the Piccadilly Tower, including the specialist avant section. In the past I could happily spend a whole day there browsing. It was like Amazon but with a shop. The High St Ken Tower branch was no slouch either.

Ray's are most definitely still in Foyle's, up on the third floor.

Good to hear it's not a shame about Ray's

Cosign missing Tower, such a great, sprawling, fun place to browse, especially when they would rejig the floorplan and you'd have to figure out where everything was again.

Tower had a great selection of magazines too. I used to buy the Village Voice there just to browse through the gig listings.

When Tower first opened a Piccadilly it had the most massive selection of 7" singles you've ever seen, too, including many incredible American imports and the like (distinctly remember buying 'I Wanna Testify' by the Parliaments there on my first visit.)

While I was there, the jazz and classical sections were managed by the son of a p well known English jazz trumpeter and radio personality - so the shelves were always well stocked with his Dad's CDs...

Can't remember if it was Tower or HMV, but one of them had this classical department that was slap bang in the middle of the shop floor (in the basement IIRC) but shut off from the rest of the store with glass walls. The soundproofing was magnificent, you walked in and suddenly the hubbub of the whole place was cut out completely and replaced with this atmosphere of rarefied calm. Not that I ever bought anything from there, mind.

That was HMV I think.

That was the HMV on Oxford St - prob the biggest classical music dept ever seen in the UK. Great place to put Morton Feldman on the sound system, as I was wont to do if I was covering someone's lunch break.
One of the regular customers used to come in with their pet cat on their shoulder, that's how mellow it was.

They had a very similar classical section in Piccadilly Tower. Bought loads of stuff there, including Xenakis, Crumb and even some Stockhausen (including the self-reissued stuff, much cheaper than in Harold Moores Records up the road)!

Didn't Mole Jazz end up operating out of Harold Moores in the end?

i loved the jazz section of Tower Piccadilly, with its massive murals of Bitches Brew, etc, up the staircase. i miss all these places... you never think they're going to disappear when you grow up with them.

Mole Jazz was upstairs at Harold Moores for about a month, I think, then went online only, although buggered if I can find them there now.

First time I ever went in the big HMV was around the time of my 10th birthday. I was very much into birdwatching as a kid and I really wanted to get a record of bird calls cos I'd read that this was what you had to do if you were serious (and boy was I ever). Me and my mum traipsed in & out of what seems like loads of different places in the west end and mostly got totally blank looks. Finally got to HMV though and they had this whole rack of wildlife field recordings, was pretty flummoxed by the choice in fact. Ended up with some BBC thing, Tony Soper recorded hiding in a bush somewhere at dawn, hushedly rhapsodising about the distant clack of the fieldfare, the snore and sneeze of the woodcock and the yellowhammer asking for his little-bit-of-bread-and-no-cheeeeeese. But they had all sorts there - records dedicated to individual families, could have had sides full of raptor squawks, badger grunts and whatnot.

Yeah, the basement section used to be very good for that kind of thing - used to sell lots of cds of things like national anthems, sea shanties, famous speeches, etc. Exactly the kind of stuff ppl now happily download.

HMV oxford st today,

I found a Electronic music CD that was free with Mojo magazine in the dance compilation racks today and the guy at the desk had to give me it for free as it had NOT FOR RESALE on the cover....

Its a good CD as well.

http://www.mojocovercds.com/cd/2064

No wonder they are in financial trouble!

It is a good CD, I remember it.

Shame about the Trocadero branch. They'd only recently reorganised the upstairs bit (after the Bond St branch closed) and it was actually a pleasure to shop for music there.

So, is the Troc catching that 'shopping centre of the past' disease?

The basement used to be wonderful, loads of marketty stalls. Now it's games machines..

The bit along from it underneath is the sort of place The Face would do articles about: Loads of hipster kids practicing hip-hop dance moves..

Still heartbreaking to pass that awful "THE STING" fashion place at Piccadilly and think to myself: "But this should be TOWER RECORDS."

what the fuck is that place - I've found it slightly mystifying ever since they had the advertising hoardings up about a year ago.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/21493542

I find it interesting that the digital market seems to be the rationale behind why HMV has failed on the high street. No mention of supermarket competition, the fact that it started to dilute its main offer with ribena and shitty phone covers or that senior management fucked up. No straight to the e-commerce channel.

The repeated falsehood that will prevent them sorting themselves out, very true.

dont forget their old friend - the blame of illegal downloading.

That is the reason though, isn't it? Plus whatever factors have driven prices down. They might have managed their decline better, but there isn't going to be such a big music chain again, no matter how well-run it is.

well if retailers didnt charge up to £18.99 for cds in the 90s then maybe downloading would not have taken off quite like it did. And supermarkets seem to have no problem shifting cds at £7.99

I looked at a pile of cds yesterday that were all bought early to late 90s. they ranged from £12.99 - £16 (i refused to ever buy a single cd that was more than that, but hmv used to sell cds at £17.99 back then if they were non-discounted releases - imports were even more). Ridiculous how much they charged.

Do you think a music retailer could turn a profit on the high street selling CDs at £7.99?

supermarkets seem to have no problem shifting cds at £7.99

Supermarkets also have no problem shifting beer at less than the cost of beer - supermarkets are not really representative here as they sell such a range of things that they can take hits on certain items to attract customers. Supermarkets might have problems shifting anything slightly removed from the mainstream because they don't like using up shelf space for thing that aren't popular - I reckon less than 2% of your music collection has ever been available in Tesco.

my point is they cheated us for years with high prices. If they hadn't done that then maybe people would have stayed loyal.
And onimo is right most of my music was bought from indie shops or our price in hamilton.

That BBC link - why do they always find "record collectors" who look like serial killers?