HMV calls in the administrators

Why doesn't it make sense?

Most games don't even come with proper manuals anymore. Only good thing about having a psychical copy, is the resell value for me. But from a price point, it would be nicer to see them digitalized. Look at steam as a example.

For ripping purposes is why I prefer CD's, I'm not talking about covers here (though most albums has really nice covers these days, I'm not a fan of jewel cases either). I don't really have good explaination for why, but having a 'real' music collection is just something I value more than other types media's.

People are losing their jobs no matter what kind of store we're talking about.

Also, this is an entirely different discussion, but: Where do you want to buy your Xbox games from, if everything becomes digital-only? Chances are MS will be the only ones to sell the games through their own XBL marketplace, and what do you think will happen to the prices then? You can't compare consoles with PC, because of the 'open nature' of PC gaming. The games will still cost the same and if you buy a piece of crap, there'll be nothing you can do about it.

This is probably not a discussion suited for this thread though. Or what?

Although I'm a bit saddened by the idea of a wide selection of music no longer being available in town, this doesn't surprise me at all. HMV has been suffering for god knows how long, but I can't think they've exactly done themselves any favours in their approach. I can understand why they tried to move away from music a bit, but they did it in such a naff fashion and in a way that completely isolated their initial base of customers it couldn't have kept up for long. Going into HMV now is just a clusterfuck, it seems to have been designed to attract 13 year olds with ADD rather than a shop where you'd go to buy music. When you do find the music it just appears really neglected and extremely overpriced, the idea that HMV was for and run by music fans died a very long time ago imo.

  On 1/15/2013 at 12:10 PM, Malkmus said:

BUT this biggest factor in this has to be Amazon and their IIse of Man / Rep of Ireland registered tax dodging, all take and no give ilk, who are playing by different rules than the highstreet.

Thank you for bringing this up! It's surprising how many people are unaware of the shady dealings of Amazon / Play and the like, pretty much all major retailers have survived by fiddling about with legal loopholes. Although in my opinion it's not been digital downloads that have facilitated as the main factor of the high street downfall, it's been the major supermarkets / soon to be warehouses we all dread. They were the ones that forced manufacturers to sell their CDs at extremely low prices and rise prices to independents and as supermarkets I believe hold 89% of the physical music market (I can't remember where I got that figure but it is an extraodinarily high number), they pretty much forced everyone out of their competition.

EDIT: Forgot to add my sympathies go out to all the people losing their jobs from this, that's real shit times.

  On 1/15/2013 at 5:14 PM, Friendly Foil said:

People are losing their jobs no matter what kind of store we're talking about.

 

Also, this is an entirely different discussion, but: Where do you want to buy your Xbox games from, if everything becomes digital-only? Chances are MS will be the only ones to sell the games through their own XBL marketplace, and what do you think will happen to the prices then? You can't compare consoles with PC, because of the 'open nature' of PC gaming. The games will still cost the same and if you buy a piece of crap, there'll be nothing you can do about it.

 

This is probably not a discussion suited for this thread though. Or what?

Yes, it's sad that people are losing their jobs, of course! I feel really bad for those people. But the world changes all the time, that's just the way it is. And I know that sounds cynical, but what can you do? I've lost two jobs in four years, because of changing markets (in other industries of course). So I know how it feels.

There are other console manufactures than Microsoft, you know. Sony are actually giving out 'free' games if you're signed up for a monthly fee on Playstation Plus. And Let's say this 'Steambox' will actually happen, that could change the console digital distribution market completely. And then even MS would be probably forced to rethink their pricing strategy. There are also other companies that are experimenting with other/new forms of distribution (Ouya, On-live, Gaikai etc.). They haven't all been successful yet. But it shows that things are slowly changing.

I'm probably going waaay off-topic here. Sorry about that.

Even before HMV got stiffed by the internet, they've been hilariously overpriced for ages. I gave up on them after going to buy a CD from them that had been out for 12 years and had jumped in price to £25 for some inexplicable reason (it wasn't a remastered release or anything special, just the vanilla album release).

I've bought the occasional blu-ray from them but I don't tend to go in anymore.

  On 1/15/2013 at 12:24 PM, hello spiral said:

"I see you're purchasing Proust, would you also like this this singing, electronic, plastic watering can?"

LOL

I've worked at Waterstone's for the past few years, and remember the unfortunate HMV days and subsequent decline. Working under them was horrendous; the 'pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap' ethos was overwhelming, as was the amount of RP - by which I mean the so-called "related product" - we were pressured into flogging at every till point. Shelves were bare and tables of tat were a'plenty.

The main grumble from Waterstone's employees was that the HMV Group didn't understand the bookselling market. But as well as that they weren't really admitting their serious faux pas with regard to the high street (not to mention the music) market as a whole i.e.Not having the music/video staples one would expect even from their flagship store, a primitive and unreliable online presence, and with the download-happy world hanging over their heads, not taking advantage of the pocket of consumers that a) enjoy the "physical browsing" experience and b) want to buy hard copies of material that wasn't openly available elsewhere.

In the interesting article I read in a previous post, The HMV Group discarded accusations that downloading would affect the company, and it seems to me they were shoving their fingers their ears instead of admitting the state of flux (or decline) the market was in.

My main argument with the whole Amazon/Kindle vs Waterstone's - of course we are interlinked now - and the download vs physical media thing is that often, if someone downloads a book/album and likes it enough, they'll buy a physical copy. I don't know about you, but I enjoy browsing in shops and get a satisfaction from owning a hard copy of something I perceive to be aesthetically pleasing.

I went into hmv a month ago for the first time in a while, the Trafford Centre one, and it surprised me how many young staff members with snazzy hair and nice t shirts were on the shop floor basically walking around asking people if they wanted help. They asked me, I said no. Like there was easily double the amount of staff than usual, like it felt immediately like a last desperate attempt to get people buying stuff. Rather than cut down on the amount of staff, they increased it, what's what it seemed like. And this was on a weekday. Maybe extra christmas staff. I'd just never noticed it before.

It is I think the only shop in the trafford centre that sells dvds, and I'll be mildly disappointed if it went. The world cinema section is actually comprehensive with almost all the films I could think of, and at a reasonable price, it was nice to finally see the covers of films I'd downloaded.

Blink 182's Cheshire Cat has finally been reduced in price to about £9, it always bothered me that an album that is probably rubbish was so overpriced, at about £17, there was almost an allure to some hmv-sold cds because you knew they'd never be a day when you would be stupid enough to pay that much for it and thus it would always remain an album you'll never hear. It is supposed to be a music store, I think, primarily, but they don't sell any venetian snares. They usually have new albums and reissues of old albums.

Their prices on dvd boxsets are pretty bad. For ages I've always assumed the only reason people use the store is go through their 2/3 selected dvds for £10 offer.

They've resurrected the game pod in the corner at the back, it's 4-way now, whereas in the late 90s they stuck single pods on the aisles, and people playing them and queuing/watching would cause all kinds of chaos with people trying to get past. On weekends. I remember going in to see what new game they had on there, and it was Jet Force Gemini, which no one was playing due to it's controls. It was a great game.

The HMV in Southampton isn't actually that bad of a store, the basement usually has quite a good stock of Planet Mu related albums. I couldn't get over the fact that they wanted £25 for DJ Nate's Da Trak Genious though, even as someone who admittedly is a fan of the album (and listening to it as I type this post), the idea of charging that much for a CD seems absolutely hilarious.

Looks like I'll be getting quite a good haul when they're trying to get rid of all their stock to pay off the administrators

  On 1/15/2013 at 10:43 PM, Aserinsky said:

Looks like I'll be getting quite a good haul when they're trying to get rid of all their stock to pay off the administrators

This.

Can't help but be a vulture when stuff like this happens.

Christ, another Waterstone's employee, think I may have to lay low for awhile.

  On 1/15/2013 at 10:34 PM, Suffocate Peon said:

It is I think the only shop in the trafford centre that sells dvds, and I'll be mildly disappointed if it went.

Yeah, this is the problem I'm starting to see too. I was in Nottingham a few weeks ago and was looking for Breaking Bad to give as a gift. They didn't have it in Fopp, so I asked where else sold DVDs in town (knowing that the big HMV had closed at some point in the last year or two). The only other shop they could think of was a small HMV in another shopping centre (the Victoria). So if the company is wound up, that means there will be nowhere in Nottingham which has a remotely reasonable selection of DVDs or CDs.

  On 1/15/2013 at 10:43 PM, Aserinsky said:

Looks like I'll be getting quite a good haul when they're trying to get rid of all their stock to pay off the administrators

I hear there are potential buyers, so it may not even get to the fire sale stage. I went to the Lincoln HMV today to see what was what in this 'blue cross' sale. Basically, 95% of stuff that isn't already in a 2/3 for £10 or otherwise marked down has a cross sticker (25% off). So some decent stuff, but nothing outrageous. I picked up Look Around You season 2 for about £4, Gattaca for £4, Sonic Youth's Dirty deluxe edition for £9, and Deepchord's Sommer (!) for £7.50.

Blockbusters also now called in the administrators, another 4000+ jobs on the line... not a good start to the year!

So my personal HMV boycott, instated in the early 90s, has finally brought them down.

Is anyone running a tally? Think BB must make it >20k retail jobs lost since New Year.

Hopefully their stock clearance will be worth a look. Not like Comet's: 10% extra off all the shit that nobody buys from there. You may get a cheap mouse or webcam but you can keep dreaming if you think you'll be getting something worthwhile.

Every blockbuster I've ever been to seemed to only employ unwashed socially inept freaks. So how many watmmers lost their job?

In 96/97 I used to go into London and visit the big HMV on Oxford Street and go to the little record shops on Berwick St. There wasn't really decent internet info on when releases were coming out back then, so unless NME happened to mention when something was coming out you had to go and ask around.

Will I miss HMV? Am I nostalgic for those times?

No. Everything is much better now.

Companies, business models come and go. Most companies fail in the end, very few companies last more than 30 or 40 years.

Hearing new music, finding good music and listening to music and talking about music with other people is now way better than it was back then. Back then you'd shell out £16 for a CD and most of it would be complete shit, with maybe one or two good tracks.

One slight thing in HMVs favour - at least they paid their taxes, while Amazon don't. But still, their time was up.

re: the music business in general: supply of music way overstrips demand now, anyone can make and publish music and a good number of people publish pretty damn good music. This is going to push the price down, even before piracy is taken into account. There's no going back. Deal with it.

  On 1/17/2013 at 1:28 AM, zazen said:

One slight thing in HMVs favour - at least they paid their taxes, while Amazon don't. But still, their time was up.

I don't get this soft-left obsession with corporations paying 'fair taxes', as if Amazon or Starbucks forking over a few extra million will magically end austerity and beat the recession.

When the Starbucks controversy erupted last year, the company agreed to pay more tax - and then immediately slashed paid lunch breaks for shop staff. That's what happens in capitalism. If you force them to pay more tax, they'll make cuts elsewhere, and it's invariably the workers who bear the brunt of it. This article offers a good explanation of the limited effectiveness of boycotting companies like Amazon or demanding they pay "fair tax": http://by-strategy.tumblr.com/post/38008160316/boycotting-amazon-is-boycotting-ukuncut-or-why-a

This is also quite heartening: HMV staff in Limerick are occupying two shops, demanding unpaid wages: http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0117/sit-in-at-hmv-limerick.html. That's the spirit!

  On 1/17/2013 at 1:28 AM, zazen said:

One slight thing in HMVs favour - at least they paid their taxes, while Amazon don't. But still, their time was up.

really? I didn't know that. That sounds illegal.

Maybe you should report them, because what they're doing is illegal?

Oh wait, it's not illegal? Move along then.

HMV was good in '98 for buying dusty £5 singles of bigbeat allstars that had already been out since '94, but they were probably cheaper online + postage even then.

  Iain C said:

This is also quite heartening: HMV staff in Limerick are occupying two shops, demanding unpaid wages: http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0117/sit-in-at-hmv-limerick.html. That's the spirit!

two good friends of mine were part of the sit-in. they all got what was owed to them eventually. excelsior!

  On 1/17/2013 at 11:01 AM, Iain C said:

 

  On 1/17/2013 at 1:28 AM, zazen said:

One slight thing in HMVs favour - at least they paid their taxes, while Amazon don't. But still, their time was up.

 

I don't get this soft-left obsession with corporations paying 'fair taxes', as if Amazon or Starbucks forking over a few extra million will magically end austerity and beat the recession.

 

When the Starbucks controversy erupted last year, the company agreed to pay more tax - and then immediately slashed paid lunch breaks for shop staff. That's what happens in capitalism. If you force them to pay more tax, they'll make cuts elsewhere, and it's invariably the workers who bear the brunt of it. This article offers a good explanation of the limited effectiveness of boycotting companies like Amazon or demanding they pay "fair tax": http://by-strategy.tumblr.com/post/38008160316/boycotting-amazon-is-boycotting-ukuncut-or-why-a

 

This is also quite heartening: HMV staff in Limerick are occupying two shops, demanding unpaid wages: http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0117/sit-in-at-hmv-limerick.html. That's the spirit!

Not that I think it will end the recession, but ... if there's going to be taxes, it needs to be 'fair' and create a level playing field, otherwise the companies that survive at the ones that are better at dodging tax, whereas it should be the case that the companies that survive are the ones that are best, as judged on sales or profits or whatever.

Or to put it another way - taxes distort the market making it inefficient, unless you can ensure the taxes impact everyone roughly equally.

Or to put it another way - as a citizen, if all the companies that pay tax fail, and the online ones that dodge it don't, then I am going to be worse off in the end. It becomes a race-to-the-bottom.

I think amazon etc would have triumphed in the end anyway, but the offshore tax loopholes they've been able to take advantage of just gave them a bit of an 'unfair' boost.

im sad book shops are closing more than music shops.i like record stores and i imagine they are a niche anyway so will stick around. I love having a coffee and flipping through magazines and that day will end very soon

  On 1/15/2013 at 3:28 PM, keltoi said:

 

  On 1/15/2013 at 2:58 PM, Iain C said:

  On 1/15/2013 at 2:32 PM, keltoi said:

what we're heading for is retail park and warehouse retail like argos and i personally hate the prospect of that.

 

Are we? Comet died a death last year too.

 

sorry, if you read my 1st and 2nd post together i think you can see what i'm getting at...

 

i meant the only alternative to online shopping will be low rent, retail park or warehouse style shopping... high street shopping as we know it is dying.

the high street might not go that way. shops that don't do these things will close:

produce what they're selling

sell product that needs to be physically tested before purchase

offer some kind of cult-like customer service experience (like apple workshops)