Heartland

Quite sad to see HMV going to the wall.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21021073

I used to spend hours browsing in their stores & bought many a good choon from them.

Yes it's very sad, but I can't remember the last time I bought a record there. :/

always preferred hmv to the likes of virgin and our price and it's sad to see them going the same way. i remember the first time i went the megastore on oxford street... Amazing shop. Actually saw Marc Almond do an instore gig back in the 90's there too...

hopefully it survives in some form...

I used the online store (as I can't find HMV in Hungary), but always popped into the shops at airports & picked up a bargain or two.

It's sad to see such an iconic firm go under, but like Woolies (and WH Smith in a few years IMO) what it actually was for had become increasingly hard to figure out. My local one (in the nearest sizable town)was fair sized but had got rid of half it's DVD's and CD's and decided I'd much rather buy 80's Cyberman headphones, hipster band t-shirts, and books like "Twilight" and "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo". There was a more interesting selection of stuff in the CEX across the road.

The end or a era....
So sad really is i grew up in record shops and spent hours in them back in the 80s.

Forward and onwards
Thank you HMV for all the memories of my youth.

As I was growing up it was mainly independent record shops. These went out of business as they were undercut and replaced by HMV and Virgin.
Virgin disappeared a few years ago, HMV is all that is left apart from one that sells CDs for a £1.
I don't really like HMV it very rarely has what I want and when it does it is cheaper at Amazon.
But I will miss that flicking through of albums.

If one good thing can come out of this then it's that any remaining independent record shops may now be more secure (since they can try to pick up some of HMV's business).

Personally I haven't been into HMV for years (possibly even decades). But I often pop into Resident Records in Brighton to pick up a CD or two.

Beginning to wonder if there'll be any shops left in a few years time.

stufarq wrote:Beginning to wonder if there'll be any shops left in a few years time.

They were responsible for the closure of many FOP record shops and other indie stores and were always the most expensive shop around. Personally I'm glad to see them go, should have happened years ago.

moses wrote:They were responsible for the closure of many FOP record shops and other indie stores and were always the most expensive shop around.

No.
They weren't.
People stopping going to FOP & indie stores was the reason for that.

Notice in the window of Jessops in Liverpool:

https://twitter.com/7streets/status/291 ... to/1/large

(the same notice could appear in any HMV window as well, I guess - although HMV must shoulder some of the blame for failing miserably at sorting out their online presence)

SINsister wrote:

stufarq wrote:Beginning to wonder if there'll be any shops left in a few years time.

i don't think so- Job's kids will not eat everything (at least that what i strongly believe, even that sometimes buying on line and picking up ordered stuff can be cheaper than buying that in that shop).

I do remember buying some rare Depeche Mode items in coloured vinyl at HMV in the eighties and nineties. Re the Sisters, I never found anything special there. It's a bit like the closure of WOM (World of Music) in Germany, sad, but you will surely find the items offered there somewhere else...

However, I'll although miss the feeling to flip through the real stuff

I've got fond memories of HMV but they're from a long while ago. Their in-store prices, layout and stock selections have been pretty poor the last few times I ventured in for a look.
Their online sales were weird too, even though they stuck HMV on the front of a bunch of venues, they weren't capable of selling tickets to those venues without you creating a new account separate from the main HMV site :/

Jessops would be better off blaming the advent of the mobile rather than Amazon.

million voices wrote:As I was growing up it was mainly independent record shops. These went out of business as they were undercut and replaced by HMV and Virgin.
Virgin disappeared a few years ago, HMV is all that is left apart from one that sells CDs for a £1.
I don't really like HMV it very rarely has what I want and when it does it is cheaper at Amazon.
But I will miss that flicking through of albums.

What he said. A third of their customers stopped buying physical product and downloaded instead, a second group found it cheaper to buy CDs and DVDs online, and the rest just went there originally to buy chart fodder which is now more convenient and cheaper to get from your local Tesco. Look at any High St photo of 20 years ago and there had been many casualties before the latest recession - part of the cycle really. I was (almost literally) dragged to a shopping mega centre last weekend and noticed that all the most popular stores - from Hollister to Lego - were offering a leisure experience in which the actual sale of the product was almost incidental, virtually as a souvenir. A bit like the trendy local record store bag/badge of honour thirty years ago.

I bought my first ever Sisters records in HMV. Sad to see it happen, but they've just not been up to scratch lately - prices too high, poor selection and too much focus on the wrong kind of product.

I was in HMV a couple of weeks ago to buy replacement rubber ring/pad type things that go on the end of the bit you stick in your ear on in-ear headphones.

Probably wouldn't have had a clue what to search for if I'd tried buying them on Amazon..

I see a scandal brewing if they refuse to accept gift tokens.
Imagine all those who got tokens as xmas prezzies.
Could be some angry people.

Already happening I believe. HMV staff have been tweeting along the lines of "Yeah... You've lost a £20 gift voucher. I'm losing my *(*&^%%^&( job. Get over it."

Well, that puts some perspective on it I suppose

I'd rather be unemployed than work in HMV.

At least until the government starts making me work in Tesco for nothing.

Jeremiah wrote:I'd rather be unemployed than work in HMV.

At least until the government starts making me work in Tesco for nothing.

I thought you lucky people had a minimum wage regulation, unlike Germany ...

markfiend wrote:Already happening I believe. HMV staff have been tweeting along the lines of "Yeah... You've lost a £20 gift voucher. I'm losing my *(*&^%%^&( job. Get over it."

Well, I'd snap up anyone with that attitude. Especially someone so intelligent as to publicly broadcast it..