long slow inevitable death of HMV
The news that HMV has gone into administration is devastating. For many of us HMV was the last record shop standing. When the stores close there will be, essentially, nowhere for buyers to puck up and buy CDs in many major towns and cities. The music industry, the major creditors are very foolish to let it go. With crappy quality downloads now dominant force in the industry, Apple will have a monopoly on music retail. I will be forced to buy my music from Amazon. the great pleasure of digging thru racks of CDs and records will become a memory or an intermittent treat.
Having witnessed the end of Tower records, Virgin, Nice Price, Strawberries, Sam Goody, Golden Discs and dozens of favorite record shops all over the world, along with Borders book shop, I feel very sad indeed. Going into town will just be a boring experience of walking past lousy boutiques and shoe shops. Truly the end of an era.
Update: the Irish company went into receivership this week and the door are shut, so it looks like my last ever new purchase in HMV as we knew it was Everything Everything’s ARC. Bummer – I was really looking forward to the new I am Kloot album this Friday.
Why is HMV gone? It is fairly obvious – nobody under 30 owns a CD player, Netflix and downloads have hugely devalued CDs and the market for personal electronics is saturated. HMV was a shop that catered for those of us who grew up browsing for music; frequently I went there and could not find the new releases that I was looking for. Our store did not carry vinyl. If your ordered something, it could take weeks to arrive. With Amazon Prime, even instant gratification was lost. On the other had, they often had great value sales, and CDs and DVDs were frequently less expensive to buy than the highly compressed (and copy protected) versions on iTunes.
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