HMV are too expensive, online and supermarkets sell things cheaper and if they can't compete with that then tough. there is no point blaming tesco for bringing you a product cheaper lol

 

just because they are HMV the music store doesn't mean they should be supported when you can get the exact same product cheaper elsewhere or online. albums sales are going down everywhere, it is thanks to stores like tesco and asda then haven't plummeted futher as they are bringing albums to huge numbers of people at cheaper prices.

But Tesco don't, the supermarkets offer an incredibly small selection of chart CDs which lack variety, HMV will always have a far, far greater selection which is generally value for money. The supermarkets have managed to almost wipe out so many other industries, why not entertainment too?

 

And any case, if HMV were to go out of business, CDs would all of a sudden become more expensive online and in supermarket, if the biggest high street name in the market is no longer competing why would there be a need to sell things so cheaply?

I immediately thought of the three stores in Glasgow City Centre when I read the MW article. They are all within 10-15 mins walk of each other. I only ever visit the Argyle Street store so I'm glad to hear that there's a good chance that it won't be affected. It will be sad to see any of them go though.

 

I used to work part time in the Virgin store on Argyle Street right next door to HMV. This was in 1988/9 and who would have thought then, with 2 huge music stores surviving side by side, that there was possibly a time when a city centre wouldn't have a big music store! Hopefully that's still a long time away!

 

Do you remember there used to be the HMV & Virgin on Union St as well? But that's the thing, there used to be so many different music shops MusicTrade, Silver Screen (In Buchanan Galleries, which was so expensive) Tower Records, Woolworths. They all seemed to be really succesful, before play.com and amazon took over.I tend to go to Cash Converters for DVDS (I got a lot of 2010 movies for £1.50 each) or Missing Records, as I don't care about second hand stuff, as long as they work!

 

At this moment the only shops that I actually love are Cineworld (if that counts, I go there all the time) H&M, Waterstones, River Island, HMV & Debenhams. I can see all my favourites slowly going. I wonder if HMV may start taking notice and selling their things at a cheaper rate!

The thing is the casual shopper is not going to spend £14 on an album in HMV, if you can get the same album at a cheaper price from the supermarket for under ten pounds or go online to get the same album at a much cheaper price for £6/£8 from Play/CDwow. What I usually do is wait a couple of months, and get the albums I want for a fiver from CDwow or Play, I got a couple of CDs from Play as Xmas presents for under a fiver, times are getting harder, so people are cutting down. HMV need to lower their prices if they want to keep afloat.

And here is a MW article showing how singles and albums have done in 2010

 

The cost of illegal downloading to the industry is again underlined by new OCC figures that show the physical and digital album market slumped 7% in volume last year.

 

Despite a big uptake in digital albums – they represented almost one fifth of the album sector in 2010 – the market for CD albums dropped 12.4% to 98.5m and dragged the whole sector from 128.9m in 2009 to 119.9m in 2010.

 

BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor believes the market has now turned a corner, with 2010 going down as the year that digital albums finally went mainstream selling some 21.0m.

 

But, Taylor also pounces on the data as further evidence of the damage illegal filesharers are doing. Taylor says, “Despite unprecedented demand for music, and strong innovation offering consumers new ways to access music online, legal downloads are unable to offset the decline in CD sales because they are dwarfed by illegal competition.”

 

His words were echoed by BPI chairman Tony Wadsworth, who says it is now crucial that action to stem illegal downloading is taken.

 

 

However, the pair have much more to cheer about in the singles sector: digital downloads have powered singles to their third successive record high with 161.8m sold in 2010, compared to 152.7m the previous year – a 5.9% jump.

 

5.2m of these tracks came in the final week of last year, which is another record because that is the first time weekly sales have surpassed the 5m mark.

 

Taylor adds, “2010 showed that the digital singles highs seen in the previous two years were no fluke – music fans continue to embrace the convenience, value and choice offered by legal download stores.”

 

2010 was also a good year for British artists, with Take That’s Progress crowned overall year-end album chart champion, selling more than 1.8m copies. Other British talent in the top selling albums chart saw Plan B’s The Defamation of Strickland Banks at number five, Paolo Nutini’s Sunny Side Up (6), Florence & The Machine’s Lungs (8) and Mumford & Sons’ Sigh No More (10).

probably an old chestnut this one: ;)

 

I hate when the BPI hide behind the "it's the bad old illegal downloading" story when they are going on about album sales. Now I'm not going to admit that it doesn't make a dent because it almost certainly does, but if the album released is good, gets good reviews and good word of mouth, then it will almost certainly sell as people have no problem paying for quality. Look at Take That in the UK selling 1.8m copies in about 5-6 weeks, Taylor Swift selling 1m albums in a week in the US, a feat that happened quite a lot in the 90s/early 2000s with Britney, N'Sync and Eminem but seems to be quite unheard of in recent times. The BPI (and the RIAA in the US) are annoyed because nowadays consumers have a "choice" when it comes to albums, it might not be a moral one to download an album before buying but it is any more moral than somebody making a bad album and then expecting somebody to pay £10 for it?

 

album sales were better in previous years because people didn't have access to technology and had to take the music reviewers' word for an album, which could have been false because of backhanders from the record label and so on and also because bands in the 80s/90s would release better quality albums than we get nowadays so people would have no problem buying. I'm not afraid to admit that I will download most of the bands (not really chart based if I'm honest) albums before I buy them, but 75-80% of the bands I listen to now and have seen live in at a gig have basically came from either a download or something like Myspace/Purevolume to hear their stuff. I understand that "try before you buy" doesn't work in any other industries like food or that but unfortunately for the BPI/RIAA, it's a choice that they don't want the consumer to have but it's there

 

anyway, back to the topic about HMV :lol: I was a student once upon a time and I'd normally buy music from my local independent music store or the local Fopp which was normally cheaper than Virgin/HMV even on new releases. Once I got a debit card and a student account, I basically stopped using stuff like HMV and started using Amazon/Play which I do to this day. I don't think HMV will fail to the level of Woolies but I reckon they might try and build up their online store a bit more as I find that's quite reasonable for music/DVDs and things like that. Zavvi and Woolies exist online so it's not as if HMV would fail to the level that the company would be finished, although you'll probably see more shops close down before it gets better

I am ashamed unashamed to admit freely that I am one of these sods. I always used to find that I'd buy an album at full price and 2 weeks later there'd either be a special edition or it would be down to £4.99 in a sale. So now I take pre-emptive action to avoid disappointment.

 

 

That's the record companies to blame for that one! Why would I go in and buy a new released today when the greedy b*****ds will be putting it out again in 6 months time with around half a dozen extra tracks on it!

That said they have tried their best to expand much more into books, merchandise and other gadgets.

 

Fair enough moving into DVD/blu ray and music players but why the **** is it so bloody hard to find music in some stores? Stop hiding it upstairs, when I go into a "music" shop it would be nice to see the odd CD rather than a fidgeful of soft drinks.

 

probably an old chestnut this one: ;)

 

I hate when the BPI hide behind the "it's the bad old illegal downloading" story when they are going on about album sales. Now I'm not going to admit that it doesn't make a dent because it almost certainly does, but if the album released is good, gets good reviews and good word of mouth, then it will almost certainly sell as people have no problem paying for quality. Look at Take That in the UK selling 1.8m copies in about 5-6 weeks, Taylor Swift selling 1m albums in a week in the US, a feat that happened quite a lot in the 90s/early 2000s with Britney, N'Sync and Eminem but seems to be quite unheard of in recent times. The BPI (and the RIAA in the US) are annoyed because nowadays consumers have a "choice" when it comes to albums, it might not be a moral one to download an album before buying but it is any more moral than somebody making a bad album and then expecting somebody to pay £10 for it?

 

album sales were better in previous years because people didn't have access to technology and had to take the music reviewers' word for an album, which could have been false because of backhanders from the record label and so on and also because bands in the 80s/90s would release better quality albums than we get nowadays so people would have no problem buying. I'm not afraid to admit that I will download most of the bands (not really chart based if I'm honest) albums before I buy them, but 75-80% of the bands I listen to now and have seen live in at a gig have basically came from either a download or something like Myspace/Purevolume to hear their stuff. I understand that "try before you buy" doesn't work in any other industries like food or that but unfortunately for the BPI/RIAA, it's a choice that they don't want the consumer to have but it's there

 

Good is subjective and those albums sold because of the hype, Taylor Swift was predicted to sell a million long before anyone heard a song from the album, people buy (or used to) buy albums based on the songs they are exposed to, of course good word of mouth always helps but in the 90s there were plenty of albums bashed by critics that became hits, also a lot of albums that everyone only bought for one big hit and the rest of the tracks nobody cared about. Cheryl Cole is a good example, her albums (well at least the second, can't recall reviews of the first) were trashed by critics but they still sold very well, do you think if there was no "check before buy" then people would have bought LESS Cheryl because of critics? I seriously doubt that.

 

On one hand you have iTunes now that allows people to buy the *one* popular song and just ignore the album, they are not forced to pay for 10 more tracks they don't have the time/patience/interest to check out, this is the general trend but the few albums that defy this cannot be called "better" because it's subjective and I'm pretty sure many people who buy the hits on iTunes have no clue whether the parent album is good or bad.

 

Then there's illegal downloading, you have too much faith in people that download first and then supposedly buy it, I don't think that's the case, it might be true for a select few people who still enjoy collecting CDs, or fans of an artist that want to support them, but chances are, if they download good quality files then they probably won't need the actual CD. So it is bigger than just "have a choice" but I still can't feel sorry for the labels and the shops because they got the most out of pop music before the digital era, they sold millions of CDs in the past that people probably never listen to anymore since music became so disposable with the media always hyping the new and moving on from the old acts.

Edited January 6, 201114 yr by Cyrax

I definitely think illegal downloading is a problem. I illegally download, I'll freely admit it, I also legally purchased 36 albums in 2010, most of which I did because I'd illegally downloaded them first to see if I like them. The ones I did most, I bought. If I hadn't have done that I doubt I'd have got to 20 because over the years I've got bored of spending £8+ for something that's completely average.

 

Younger people however, I think it's more of a problem. My brother is 17, I bought him a £15 iTunes voucher for Christmas in 2009 and he's still got over a fiver's worth of credit on it. He illegally downloads everything, as do all of his mates, and none of them have any interest in purchasing it either before or after.

Where do places like Tesco get the money to slash their CD's and stuff, that's right they bung it on to your loaf of bread, your pints of milk etc. And their product knowledge, well yeah, not that good from my personal experience.

 

Suppliers need to stop bowing down to supermarkets demands too, their attitude to suppliers is we'll give you x amount of money, or nothing.

 

And vultures be gone please!

I guess I must be somebody who likes to give back to music or something then, if I find an album that I think is good then I will almost certainly buy it if it's within reasonable price or has been released in this country (my genre is a bit dodgy at times for this) I'll try and see the band or artist at a gig when they come to this country as well as I like to give them money back that way without the label interferring. I have to agree with the ITunes theory mentioned though, lots of people tend to "cherry pick" albums instead of actually buying the whole thing and it counting as a sale so that probably affects sales as well

 

On the basis of Cole then I won't say much cause I don't think much of her talent and there is probably plenty of people here who might take offence but she's been on a massive rating TV show for months which pretty much acts as the advertisement campaign for it, so I'd be surprised if she doesn't end up with a high selling album with all that publicity even if the quality isn't up to any sort of scratch. Swift had the hype indeed and I have no idea what her album is like but she's quite talented so I'm not surprised that she sold the amount of albums she sold worldwide

 

think I bought about 30+ albums either digitally or phyiscally last year, will probably look for much more this year as a lot of my favourite artists are back with new material :)

The thing is the casual shopper is not going to spend £14 on an album in HMV, if you can get the same album at a cheaper price from the supermarket for under ten pounds or go online to get the same album at a much cheaper price for £6/£8 from Play/CDwow. What I usually do is wait a couple of months, and get the albums I want for a fiver from CDwow or Play, I got a couple of CDs from Play as Xmas presents for under a fiver, times are getting harder, so people are cutting down. HMV need to lower their prices if they want to keep afloat.

I really can't remember the last time I saw a chart CD in HMV that was on sale for more than £9.99. They're really not £14 and haven't been for years now...

 

I definitely think illegal downloading is a problem. I illegally download, I'll freely admit it, I also legally purchased 36 albums in 2010, most of which I did because I'd illegally downloaded them first to see if I like them. The ones I did most, I bought. If I hadn't have done that I doubt I'd have got to 20 because over the years I've got bored of spending £8+ for something that's completely average.

 

Younger people however, I think it's more of a problem. My brother is 17, I bought him a £15 iTunes voucher for Christmas in 2009 and he's still got over a fiver's worth of credit on it. He illegally downloads everything, as do all of his mates, and none of them have any interest in purchasing it either before or after.

 

This discussion came up at our New Year's Eve bash and everyone was astonished when I said I legally downloaded all my singles, I was equally astonished to find out that they literally never paid for any music any longer. A few of them even said they had received letters from their internet suppliers telling them that they know they've been illegally downloading and warning them to stop but it's made no difference to their attitude at all.

 

I really think it's about time they tightened the laws to prevent so many people being able to download everything for free, especially as more and more artists are beginning to give away tracks as samplers for their albums anyway.

 

Do you remember there used to be the HMV & Virgin on Union St as well? But that's the thing, there used to be so many different music shops MusicTrade, Silver Screen (In Buchanan Galleries, which was so expensive) Tower Records, Woolworths. They all seemed to be really succesful, before play.com and amazon took over.I tend to go to Cash Converters for DVDS (I got a lot of 2010 movies for £1.50 each) or Missing Records, as I don't care about second hand stuff, as long as they work!

 

Yes, I remember that. Both sets of shops were literally within 2 minutes walk from each other. And they were all busy! Saturday in Virgin was hectic. I worked there on Saturdays for about 8 weeks when it first opened on Argyle Street. It was a sh*t job so I had to give it up. You could have been selling baked beans for all they cared. Bizarrely, they always ran out of 1p pieces by about lunchtime which I always found completely frustrating in a shop where EVERY product price ended in 99 pence!!!

 

I really miss the late night opening of Tower Records in Glasgow too. Fantastic for night time browsing and always had real gems of import CD's. Good times!

I swear to God if they close the one near me, I will be kill myself. I can't live without that shop, I'm in there in my every free at college! :cry:

We had two HMVs in our town before I left in August. When I came back, they had solo one of them to a new independent music store called 'Head Music,' (whose name I adore for obvious reasons) which has a much bigger stock of CDs and vinyl than our HMV does. I can't see it lasting beyond a year, but it's nice to see new indie stores entering the market.

 

There's a branch of Head opened in Belfast a couple of months back where Zavvi was! Pretty good shop actually and just as good as HMV price-wise.

Surely this was not to be not expected? Buying loads of old Zavvi stores is clearly the reason for this. It sounded like a good business move by being the one big major high street entertainment supplier, but supermarkets and online purchasing have such a big hold over the market at the moment and it is not going to change, especially with the whole the economy is. Before maybe £2/3 would not have mattered, but these days it does to a lot of consumers.

 

I'd expect the majority of the stores closing to the ones where there are two in cities, or the old Zavvi stores...but really they're not closing that many actual stores PRE-Zavvi going bust right?

I doubt that these closures will mean the end of HMV on the high street, but give it 20 years or so (maybe less) and it will probably be very scarce indeed (maybe big stores like Oxford Street will stay open for a long time to promote the brand, but small-town branches will probably die off).

 

For probably everyone on this site, CDs (or at least physical music, cassettes, vinyl or whatever) have always been around, and so have the shops to sell them in. For someone born after 2000, certainly 2010, they will as a general rule have grown up with downloads being the main way of buying (or stealing) music. They won't have had the experience of physically buying singles and albums from a shop like anyone born pre-millennium will have. Those who aren't nostalgic about that old fashioned way of getting music (and some will be obviously) won't be too bothered about not having record stores IMO.

 

CDs will keep going for a long time - and maybe vinyl will re-emerge as the collector's item of choice. Small independent record stores will stay open selling what they can, because with those kinds of shops it's about more than just selling product.

 

But HMV? Probably not going to last past...let's be generous and say 2040. Probably sooner.

 

I'd be more worried about Waterstones and other bookshops closing - if Kindles etc continue to take off, then all new books will be electronic files at some point - with physical copies being sold as high-price collector's items. Not for a while yet though...

I seem to recall that before Woolworths went bust their distribution company supplied half the cd and dvd needs of the industry (Woolies and several supermarkets) and that HMV's distribution supplied the rest (HMV, Zavvi and the other supermarkets), so with Woolies long gone I presume the same (HMV owned?) distribution supplies everyone (Not sure about WHSmiths who were allegedy pulling out of the entertainment market sometime soon too). So if HMV goes bust then we could see the total extinction of any physical entertainment products!

 

Distribution won't be a problem tbh - Tesco have their own entertainment supply company cutting out the middleman and exclusively supplying only Tesco stores, Morrisons and Sainsburys are supplied by MBL - Who have just set up their own online store www.bee.com

Edited January 7, 201114 yr by Pop B!tch

An article from MW

 

HMV: "We are not pulling out of entertainment retail"

Source: MW

12:13 | Thursday January 6, 2011

By Ben Cardew

 

HMV has affirmed its support for the entertainment sector, which it says remains “at the heart of its offer”, just one day after announcing the closure of 60 stores across the group.

 

The closures will take place across HMV and book retailer Waterstone’s, with 40 HMVs out of 300 and 20 Waterstone’s set to close over the next 12 months.

 

The news shocked the music industry and CEO Simon Fox spent much of the day reassuring observers that HMV will do all it can to make sure closures don’t dramatically affect sales.

 

He told Music Week that the company needed to take these steps to make sure it remains a profitable, long-term business, adding, “We think the sales impact [of these closures]will be minimised by our actions.”

 

Now, the company has released a statement in which it points out that the closures represent less than 10% of its combined estate and will largely take place “in large-city conurbations and may be in close proximity to each other - thus resulting in a degree of duplication in relation to local demand”.

 

 

“This move in no way signals any intention to pull out of entertainment retail, which remains at the heart of our offer, and is ultimately aimed at safeguarding our core business as we continue our transformation into a broad-based entertainment brand that now also encompasses live music venues and festivals,” it adds.

 

PIAS sales director Richard Sefton was quick to defend the chain, which he calls “the last bastion of traditional high street retail”. “It is still a secure and very strong business. It is a significant part of our business,” he says.

 

Retail analysts, however, were less positive. Arden’s Nick Bubb calls the news “depressing” as HMV warned on profits and said it was close to breaching bank covenants.

 

“They are going to have to do something to slash the debt and I am not sure that closing stores will do that,” he tells Music Week. The most likely outcome, he believes, is that HMV will sell off Waterstone’s in a bid to reduce debt.

Distribution won't be a problem tbh - Tesco have their own entertainment supply company cutting out the middleman and exclusively supplying only Tesco stores, Morrisons and Sainsburys are supplied by MBL - Who have just set up their own online store www.bee.com

 

I think the drop in sales for physical CDs is so low especially for singles it was bound to happen.I used to make the effort to go to the HMV in Oxford Street but now totting up the sheer expense of travelling, the mark up of buying new albums and oldies there, the cost is not worth it. I just stick to picking up what I want from my local Tesco or Sainsburys.Its a shame though as there collection of World music and 60's soul classics is unrivalled.