I'm surprised this passed me by before now, but I thought it was worth a mention:

 

HMV have gone from close to being completely shut-down, to being saved by Hilco in a £50 million deal, to again becoming the UK's top retailer of music in the space of just over a year, with their sales of physical music growing by almost £10 million last quarter.

 

But the latest for the chain is the launch of a UK website, "within weeks," reports the Telegraph. Apparently a soft launch of the HMV website was trialled in Ireland last year.

 

"People are switching from downloads to streaming music, so digital is eating digital but physical music sales are recovering," said Paul McGowan, chief executive of Hilco and HMV. Indeed, last year UK digital downloads fell by 17% last year, whilst sales of physical music rose by 7% – with HMV at the forefront.

 

Thoughts on this? HMV really is back at the top of its game now - I'd say I visit them more now than I did in the months prior to its administration and sale to Hilco. I did use to use their website quite a lot back in the day (they were an absolute godsend for getting Girls Aloud's singles turn up the Saturday before release) but I don't know how a website makes any sense, especially when being on high street only is what's been part of its renaissance, so to speak - particularly as many people are turning on Amazon and the like in light of recent controversies.

I'm delighted to hear this, I always preferred pre-ordering from HMV over Amazon, the latter always seem to send it out on the release date, meaning I get albums on the Wednesday as opposed to the Monday. Only 2 days but every little helps :heehee:

Now let's hope they ship European as well :kink:

I'm absolutely thrilled to hear this. Working there over the Christmas period was a nightmare as it was constantly so busy, but obviously wonderful at the same time as it showed there was still a demand. HMV has always been a firm favourite so I'm glad that the company has turned things around rather than going down the route of Zavvi/Virgin Megastores. I suppose in this day and age pretty much every kind of store needs an accompanying website to keep up with competitors anyway so I can only see this as a good thing. They're rather speedy too as people have pointed out so that's a good incentive.

Very pleased to see physical sales rose last year! I adore HMV so I'm really hoping they make this into a success (they should do that pretty easily I'd imagine)

HMV have been doing brilliant deals recently on all products which has meant i've been shopping there more recently than ever before. I used to just browse in the store and because everything was RRP'd i just ended up buying stuff i saw elsewhere after. If they have similar deals on the online store then i will very much welcome this :D

Unlike some, our (Cheltenham) HMV survived, so should gain the benefit. :)

I think these last couple of years with their website - which I have to say is actually really good with the whole music blogging thing, as it's really reconnected to the core ethos of what HMV is about - has been a sensible way in. They just need to make sure that applies to the actual online retailing as well. I think they've learnt their lesson from last time anyway when they were selling the very thing that was endangering the demand for the physical product - I don't see them doing that again thank goodness.

Excellent news, i wasn't too keen on the current new-look website which was revamped after Hilco took over. The old website prior to that was very useful if you

wanted to find out the new and forthcoming releases for albums and DVDs. That was lost with the last re-vamp.

Hope the new design is better.

 

HMV are still expensive on some things but since Amazon have started charging postage for orders under £20, HMV have become competitive again. Their service was excellent when I used the online store.

And it looks like it is back! http://store.hmv.com/

 

For some reason the search isn't working at the moment as I searched Taylor Swift and nothing came up, likewise Years & Years - however '1989' and 'Communion' are able to be found in their "Best of 2015" offer and pre-order chart respectively. Apart from that it all looks fabulous!

Ugh, the site is a bit horrible though.

Why is everything so big????, the amount of keystrokes you have to go through to get anywhere is excessive.

I agree, it's not easily navigable. Hopefully they'll do a customer feedback soon so they can make a few changes. Can't complain otherwise, a very simple, fuss free design.

I think it's just in very early stages atm! I think it will be sorted and corrected within the next month or so!

HMV rude as f*** with their UK only deliveries :angry:

The HMV website is more like the NME website than a place to sell music and DVD's. They need to ask themselves if they are trying to be music magazine or a Record Store?

HMV has always been a firm favourite

 

Not with me, always the most expensive place. Sometimes I would go in to have a look at what new stuff was out, but also be thinking to myself what morons the people shopping there were. A few may have been doing the same thing though!

I'm glad HMV online are back. There needs to be more competition online as Amazon and Play.com are very expensive.