Does anyone still shop at HMV?

Our HMV closed last year and I can't say I noticed its loss but I wonder what's going to happen to Fopp now?

Fewer than 1000 indie bookshops left as well. All the shops I actually liked shopping in - music, cameras, books - all vanishing.

xpost and slightly off topic - does anyone know what happened to Rough Trade Brooklyn? It was supposed to open in Autumn 2012.

Sad to see HMV go, though admittedly I hadn't bought anything from there for a couple of years (usually, go in, walk around, realise everything was too expensive and it was too noisy, walk out). It was good to know that there was somewhere to go for that emergency CD/DVD.

Fopp looked doomed as well, or at least the Glasgow branches, based on a visit this afternoon - the blue cross sale was in effect there too. The crazy thing is, even with 25% discount, a lot of the stock is still no cheaper than Amazon.

All the stock in the smaller of the two HMVs in Glasgow had now been stickered up, so I can't imagine there'll be much to pass on to any potential buyer. My guess is that the discounting will continue over the next few days.

The sadness I feel is tempered by the fact that, when I worked in the mega-HMV in Oxford Street a few years ago, there were far too many arsehole middle-management types who knew fuck all about music OR business. It was extremely corporate, but in a kind of amateurish way - the worst of all worlds. So while I'm sure HMV's demise was ultimately inevitable, the people running the company have only hastened that demise.

whither now Gennaro Castaldo, the public face of HMV?

business report in the guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jan/14/hmv-prepares-call-administrators

Despite its troubled position, the retailer still sells 27% of all DVDs and Blu-Ray discs and 38% of the physical music market.

possibly 38% of bugger all compared to the old days, but that still seems like a hefty chunk of slack to be taken up by other retailers.

makes me think they've pissed money away on other stuff, like headphones

Their business model just has to be fucked beyond belief to not be able to work on that.

Anyone passing Glasgow Fopp tomorrow - can you tell me if they're still taking vouchers please? I have some birthday present to spend and will take a wee run up after work to do so if I can.

Cheers!

good call, I hadn't made that connection - my gf got Fopp vouchers for Christmas, think she still has them

can someone add "not anymore" to the thread title?

Haven't seen anything re: vouchers, the kids both got some for xmas

Martin Lewis the money saving expert dude was tweeting last night that he doesn't expect they'll take them today. Once into administration they're under no obligation to take them.

that's what happened with borders in aus—once the administer took over, vouchers were redeemable at reduced (half?) value for a few days, then nullified altogether

I daresay they won't be accepted at shop opening today, maybe an announcement later.

There was an announcement this morning I saw on Twitter saying vouchers no longer accepted today.

how is that even legal?

BBC Breakfast supposedly have just said if vouchers were bought on a credit or debit card you may be able to get a refund.

See, when Comet went down, they got as far as re-instating their vouchers before final closure.

I know that's the one case in a bunch of "never going to happen" but still..

This is a stupid question, I'm sure, but I'm not really sure how bankruptcy/administration works - are the shops closed effective immediately?

They are not closed.

If the form runs as previously, they may well be "cash only"...

some points of view : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21023602

Walked past the Oxford Street branch just now on my way into work, lots of camera crews filming, wonder when it'll shut, and will there be an apocalyptic closing-down sale.

Companies in administration are still trading to try and recoup some of the monies owed, so it stands to reason that the administrators will not let stock go in exchange for money they've already received (already-paid vouchers), they'll be wanting actual new money in for the stock.

Money *they* owe to other people, I mean. Not owed to them.

I dunno about "stands to reason" but.

In administration, the normal rules don't apply and the administrators get to do whatever they need to do within reason to to get money in and stop money going out.

(note: my understanding of administration is only gleaned from reading stuff when Rangers went bust)

Yeah Ailsa's right - the point of administration is it's a period when the obligation on a company to honour its debts is suspended. That includes £millions owed to Universal or whoever, and £few owed to punters in the form of vouchers.

That doesn't mean it doesn't suck, of course, and hopefully HMV will emerge from this in some form and will want to encourage the positive feelings towards it by honouring vouchers already sold.

Have seen a sign in a window of local HMV saying "No vouchers or giftcards accepted, also no refunds or exchanges". Tough shit if you bought something faulty from there yesterday.

Robert Peston was on the radio saying he thinks it's very unlikely the whole chain will close: the music and film industries have an interest in keeping it going, albeit with many stores closing. Not sure if that means they might keep the HMV name or not.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21023602

There are no record shops in my town, and haven't been for quite some time now. The only place you can buy a musical artefact is in the paltry Top 20 section in Sainsbury's, or to go over to David's Music in Letchworth - a formidable indie shop whose music section has sadly dwindled in recent years to make way for books, musical instruments and a tea and coffee bar. Nevertheless staff are friendly and helpful and I'll always remember it as my haunt; a little place to meditate and flick through racks after school, or even on a Saturday morning after coming home from staying out in London all night in my early-20s.

If HMV closes down, it spells the end for little record shops like this. As it stood, HMV was a key reason for record labels to keep producing physical media. Without the bread-and-butter power of big high street retailers like HMV, there is little motive for labels to continue to do this, and this will have a huge knock-on effect on smaller independent shops who also rely on these products to keep trading. I'm not sure how much Amazon and other online traders will help to keep physical formats buoyant; whether CD manufacturers would keep on selling via the internet, or if the demand would just dry up. There'll probably always be a market for vinyl, but I don't see it propping up the high street alone.

While this is clearly another door closing in the inevitable continuum of music media consumption (there's no need to get all Richard Hawley about it, nothing lasts forever), I can't help but feel a bit for those independent retailers, some of whom have been running from generation-to-generation for countless years. For some its their livelihoods and the only lives they know. So while I guess many of us are glad to see the back of the CD (a flawed format from the beginning), its death and the death of the music megastore carries a fair bit of clout and very likely heralds the end of leaving the house to buy new music.

Record labels (are they still called that or am I showing my age?)

...

xp

The death of browsing

Suddenly I realised the MD had stopped the meeting and was visibly angry. "I have never heard such rubbish", he said, "I accept that supermarkets are a thorn in our side but not for the serious music, games or film buyer and as for the other two, I don't ever see them being a real threat, downloadable music is just a fad and people will always want the atmosphere and experience of a music store rather than online shopping".

http://www.philipbeeching.com/2012/08/why-companies-fail-rise-and-fall-of-hmv.html

i used to like the atmosphere and experience of a record store, don't know what that has to do with HMV tbh

somewehre in amongst all the wailing and gnashing of teeth going on today people will still be buying and listening to music

they'll be doing it online though, which isn't a very atmospheric experience, more a handy commodity

i used to like the atmosphere and experience of a record store, don't know what that has to do with HMV tbh

yeah. bob stanley wrote something in his blog a year ago about how HMV used to (like, decades ago) be a destination where people would hang out - maybe those pix of the store in the 50s are shared in this thread above. the HMV Oxford Street of my youth wasn't a massively pleasant place to hang out, but it *did have a pretty unbeatable back catalogue stock, and so on, and I used to love just browsing through the racks, for hours at a time. I don't know when that ceased to be the case, and I'd probably 'graduated' to the indie stores in Soho by this point, but for a good few years I never had faith that HMV would actually have what I was after in stock, let alone be somewhere I'd want to spend any more than the time it took me to find what I was after, queue to purchase it and get the fuck out.

the issue is, if HMV shuts down it risks taking those Soho stores with it.

if HMV shuts down independent stores have lost a direct competitor i wd've thought.

but, y'know, as a good Thatcherite i'd argue that if enough people don't want the product you're selling then you probly don't have a business

I'm not sure I really get why HMV closing would hurt the Soho stores, DL - there are, what, four or five of them left and they seem to operate in a world which HMV has barely touched for years. Could you say a bit more about it?

xpost

I guess I'll have to switch to FOPP for my DVD buying, which isn't on the way home from work, so boo.

Some people are making the argument that the death of HMV as the last big high street retailer will ultimately lead to the death of physical media which will eventually close all those independents. Not sure I agree, though I think the market for physical media will continue to shrink.

I guess I'll have to switch to FOPP for my DVD buying, which isn't on the way home from work, so boo.

(who saved it from administration)

I wonder if this will effect All Tomorrow's Parties - aren't they half owned by someone owned by HMV?

Any profitable or even not-economically-insane bits of HMV will be sold off pretty quickly I think. That may or may not include any festival operations.

Two good blogposts, one from David Hepworth:

http://whatsheonaboutnow.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/if-hmv-goes-long-tail-goes-with-it.html

...and the other is Bob Stanley's piece from last year:

http://croydonmunicipal.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/how-hmv-can-save-itself.html