but when I spy these sorts of places, it always reeks of remaindered stock and cheap compilations, which I suspect is a similar transition. The 'proper' record shops are shrinking (in Sydney, Red Eye and Mojo Records shrank to half their size recently), and it seems like there's precious little left. HMV and Virgin closed up ages ago, and the remaining 'high street' brands went the iPad/DVD route ages ago. And yes, my local Target seems to have a bigger CD department than most specialists, albeit top 40 (whatever that means now).

There's really only JB Hi Fi for a decent range of catalog, and they can't seem to make their mind up what they're doing. 2 city locations do music plus various other items, the one in the burbs near me is 50-50 DVD/Games and music, and they dumped TVs recently, and the new one in the city is hardware only, no music or DVDs.

I'm confused. But that's not unusual. Can't see it lasting in the face of digital delivery though.

does HMV expect to make up such a huge loss just from Christams trading? Generally, none of the high street shops seem to have been that busy this year but I did notice that M&S and Boots seem to have shifted a lot of their seasonal stock and have rearranged the floor space to reflect this. Do HMV just hold stock over for the post Christmas sales or will they be stuck with whatever hasn't sold? There seem to be plenty of DVD box sets left.

I have never worked for HMV but have done for some associates and rivals.

HMV have been spiralling down for two years in terms of stocking music. "We stocked less - so we're going to sell less. And display less".

And then their numbers are worse. Who'da thunk it?

Overstocks from suppliers, or special deals. Great if you agree it's a bargain...

...unless they can get high-street magazines to run breezy puff pieces for them.

Er, hang on...

If HMV makes most of it's profit at christmas, perhaps it's future lies in a network of pop-up shops that only exist in November/December. They have a well known brand name that will take some years to drop out of the public's conciousness. Why sell tat at a loss for 12 months when you can sell what you're known for at a profit for two months?

if everything you want to buy from now on is available as a download and you are geared up to listen to it in the same number of ways you would a CD (every room in the house, car etc) or if you are available to accept delivery from an online retailer. Like most of us, I used to like browsing in HMV and I can order stuff to be collected at my convenience rather than having to wait in for a courier. When Woolworths went bust there were plenty of other retailers able to fill the gap, the same can't be said for HMV.

Glad to see that I'm not the only person who'd be sad to see HMV circling the plughole - I mooch down once a week to see what they've got in. Its a medium sized one, but still has a decent world cinema section that usually has what I want in stock (probably cuz they r in 'foreign'). Plenty of decent deals on TV boxsets if you're patient enough.

They're good for games and certainly have as many brand new titles in as the specialist gamestores, and unlike them don't try and mix it all in with the preowned stuff. And neither is HMV a fecking ordeal when you go in to by games like certain other retailers - trying to push all manner of crap at the tills like extra controllers, instore cards, shit advice, pushing worthless preorders, and even trying to get you to buy a preowned game rather than a brand new one (more profitable, y'see). Don't even get me started on the ripoff bundles when new hardware comes out.

All in all, it'll be a sad day when 'Humv' is shipped off to the great retail park in the sky.

BR
FT

When HMV have a sale, they often cut the price of a CD from "completly taking the pee" to "laughably expensive". And that has been the case for years, decades even.

Mind you this year can be summed up by Amazon currently offering all their album of the week \ official number one albums for £5 on download, and *still* nothing really tempted me. (Beyond the couple I already owned).

It wasn't all that busy, a queue of 4-5 people, but the 3 staff behind the counter couldn't give a monkey's about serving us.....until I made a loud comment about seeing why HMV was going to the dogs, in true Victor Meldrew fashion. Then she asked if I wanted a loyalty card.....er, no thanks....

is the only part of HMV I'd miss...if HMV go under they'll drag FOPP under with them.

Already worrying signs in FOPP - the second hand stock section is getting quite big. Of course they've got to do something with the "bring it back and we'll give you a quid off your next purchase" stock, but do I want a second hand copy for £2 when a new copy is on the shelf for £3 ?

I was passing today so, prompted by this thread, I went in. I have to say it was heaving and the queue to pay snaked around the store. Some of the prices on DVDs and Blu-Rays looked pretty good, but I found myself giving up in the end because of the crush. This made me think that I may be now so used to buying online that actually finding stuff and queuing to pay is just so 20th Century - I just don't have the patience any more.

I hasten to add I do use my local record shop - Onionheart in Exmouth, in case you're down this way and want to say hello to Michael...and hopefully buy something!

I'm not a big purchaser of DVD's so walked straight upstairs to the music floor in the main store in Birmingham this lunchtime.

Lots of music, falling into a number of unpurchaseable categories:

1. Already got it.
2. Don't want it (X-factor offspins, metal, rap).
3. Want it, but not at that price.

Managed to find a couple of things to buy, however.

Very best of Ethiopiques
Delgados - Complete BBC Peel Sessions
Lenny Kravitz - Let Love Rule 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
Metronomy - Nights Out
Ryan Adams - Ashes & Fire

Princely sum of £25 paid. Given that 3 are double albums I think thats not bad, although I had to hunt around to get that stash together.

I suspect that the big queues in store today are possibly due to people exchanging unwanted christmas gifts!

they aren't even competative compared to FOPP - what's the point of having a HMV and a FOPP in the same area, and HMV is 85% of the time at least £1-£2 more on CDs ? At least be the same price, why not ?

Is there an article summary?

Here's the article - Fraser please remove if it violates copyrights etc etc (I won't get into the argument of morals regarding the Murdoch empire... ;-) )

Basically
- make the HMV store a place that people would actually like to visit (i.e. like it used to be). Add a cafe, listening posts etc
- set up concessions within the store for vintage vinyl sales / second hand sales etc
- extend the magazine section (compensate for the loss of Borders) - its gets people in the store browsing and a proportion of those invariably buy stuff.
- bring back the expertise - at present people browse HMV, make a note of what they want and then go home and buy on Amazon. They need a gatekeeper.

"Bob Stanley’s plan to save HMV

Bob Stanley
January 10 2012 12:01AM

Before Christmas there were rumours that HMV needed some pretty good seasonal sales figures to keep its head above water. Those figures were revealed yesterday and were, officially, “disappointing”.
The company has tried to put a brave face on its debts of £160 million and like-for-like sales that were down 8.1 per cent in the five weeks to New Year’s Eve; if it wasn’t for the novelty of Dr Dre’s horrible but huge-selling headphones, the figures would have been worse. “I am confident that HMV will be around for many Christmases to come, ” says Simon Fox, its chief executive, but he doesn’t seem to have a strategy to back up the bluster.

Not too long ago the flagship HMV shop on Oxford Street was a destination. If you were meeting someone in town you would arrange to hook up in the album section, maybe between B and D to browse the Beach Boys or Dinosaur Jr’s wares while your friend struggled with the vagaries of the Central Line. Those sections are still there, but the last people I arranged to meet in HMV were a pair of Fifties pop enthusiasts, both in their seventies, to whom a rendezvous at the store has become an old habit that they find hard to break.
The shop is so unattractive, and so unsure of its purpose, that it is wholly uninviting. I popped in at Christmas to buy some last-minute presents and breathed in what atmosphere there was. I saw two-tone grey carpet that may have been there since the Eighties. The aisles were ludicrously wide, as if they still expected people to jostle, three deep, to rifle through the CD racks. Staff wore shapeless, branded black T-shirts, meaning that a genre expert in the basement was hard to separate from someone who only started last week. When I looked for the Beach Boys Smile deluxe box-set I only found a piece of plastic in the racks that said “please ask at counter”. If you can’t display a beautiful item like that, you’re not doing your job properly.

The vinyl section I couldn’t find at all, but I’m assuming that there is one, tucked away in a grotty corner for minorities. Except that fetishists such as me will go to Sounds of the Universe, a nearby shop that advertises its vinyl products in the window, which plays records if you want to hear them, and where you’re likely to hear something new, something to raise your pulse, rather than the Rihanna album that you just heard in a café or a cab five minutes ago. The way we consume music has changed completely in the past ten years, but you’d never know it from walking around HMV.

Last summer the Voices of East Anglia blog posted a set of photos of the original HMV Shop on Oxford Street through the years. They were quite beautiful. This shop is now a branch of Foot Locker, but the present HMV could pick up plenty of aesthetic tips from its heritage. From the exterior signage, to the listening booths, to the specialist sections (whatever the “Cosmopolitan Corner” and “Personal Export Lounge” were, you’d definitely want to hang out there), it looked inviting and exciting.

Record sales back then were buoyant enough to pay for the grand staircase in the middle of the store. The HMV Shop had been opened by the Gramophone Company in 1921, ten years before that label amalgamated with Columbia to form EMI, Britain’s most successful label. For decades it thrived, but the digital age has seen the market for physical music product drop precipitously. It isn’t HMV’s fault that Boney M’s Mary’s Boy Child sold 1.6 million copies inside a month in 1978, while Orson’s No Tomorrow notoriously reached No 1 with sales of fewer than 18,000 in 2006.

The key to HMV’s survival, even on a much-reduced scale, isn’t in a hankering for the past. Many shops — chain stores in particular — have struggled or disappeared in recent years. However, other shops are thriving. Last year I did a short trip around the country to check out the state of record shops. It was invigorating. With the exception of a couple, whose owners were in their dotage, all were staying afloat, and some were doing better business than ever before. It isn’t a myth that teenagers are buying vinyl and obsessing over it. Records are cool objects to own — anyone can have 20,000 songs dangling round their neck, but not everyone can own a limited edition White Stripes seven-inch or an original mono copy of Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced?. These are desirable items and need to be sold in the right environment.
In Dalston, East London, two new record shops — the ramshackle Eldica and the well-appointed Kristina — have appeared in the past year or so. Down the road from them is Rough Trade East, a vast store, just a few years old, that has already become an institution. It has “world famous weekly mail-outs” on new releases, exclusive mixes and CDs on sale, an Album of the Month club (with invitations to members-only events), and in-store happenings that include book launches and debates on the future of pop.

Could HMV compete with Rough Trade? No, it has a bigger and broader customer base. Instead, it should let Rough Trade have a concession — after all, Rough Trade’s branches are way west and east of Oxford Street. HMV should act like it is the parent of Rough Trade, Kristina and Sounds of the Universe, because that’s exactly what it is. It should be proud of its history. The original store has a plaque on the wall that reads “Opened by Sir Edward Elgar in July 1921” — that’s impressive.

If vintage clothes can be bought in Selfridges, then why not vintage sections in HMV? There are plenty of second-hand dealers in London, working out of lock-ups or from home, who would not only have a ready supply of vintage vinyl but would love to have a Central London location in which to sell it. Some concessions could change on a bi-monthly basis, like an art show; bands could curate some departments, recommending their favourite music, and decorating the place as well as DJing or doing in-store shows. Domino Records ran its own radio station for a week last summer out of its offices in Wandsworth and it felt like an event — there’s no reason why HMV couldn’t do the same.

Beyond the CD racks HMV’s magazine section is an embarrassment. Yes, they stock the quarterly Elvis: the Man and his Music, which I buy every issue of, but they also stock Heat. Who would go into HMV to buy a celebrity gossip magazine? Borders, which used to be across Oxford Street from HMV, had an extensive magazine section, which is now entirely absent from any major West End store; you can buy Fantastic Man for an interview with Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor from a stall in Islington, but nowhere on Oxford Street. It’s an open goal. Like the HMV of old, Borders was a destination purely for its magazine selection. Stock them and people will browse, spend time and probably end up buying before they leave. It gets customers through the door and, looking at the wide open spaces, HMV isn’t doing that right now.

Other than Rough Trade East, the shop that HMV should really be looking to for ideas is a few doors away. The basement of Topshop is like a crazy souk, only navigable through practice and feminine intuition, and within it are plenty of concessions, vintage areas and shops within shops. Topshop, which once appeared way below HMV on the cool register, has re-invented itself by moving quickly to get involved with designers and start-ups who are creating a bit of buzz. An example is Wah Nails, a super-hipster nail salon that has its main store in Dalston and now has a concession in Topshop. It opened in 2010; only a handful of blogs had written about it. Then a couple of months later there it was in Topshop.

Selling music isn’t quite like selling clothes, but HMV’s clumsy embracing of technology — dumping the CDs and vinyl to sell MP3 players and assorted hardware — is short-termist; there are plenty of other shops already doing just that. The internet, however, could provide it with some much-needed cool. Blogs have helped Topshop to get new items and ideas into the store before even keen fashion watchers know about them. HMV could look to aspirational, tastemaker sites such as Pitchfork and Popjustice to recommend music. Beyond that, there are plenty of well-written, enthusiastic music blogs that HMV could take a chance on. It’s a two-way street. At the moment nobody would want their music or playlists to be associated with HMV’s grubby-grey carpet-tiles.

It isn’t just about what you buy, but how you buy it. There is a café in the basement of Topshop. Rough Trade has a café and a bar too. If you can meet friends, chat over a coffee, swap notes on the latest sound sensations, and then purchase those sounds, having a seated social hub for groups of friends will bring in more revenue than lone customers wandering the empty aisles.

Again, HMV could look east and steal some ideas from the Pacific Social Club boutique on Clarence Road. The walls there are decorated with vintage 78-sleeves, and there is a stack of vinyl that you can put on yourself as you eat your banana and passion fruit on toast. The café could include listening posts, using Spotify and iTunes. There must be a way for HMV to work with these digital distributors.

The details can be discussed later. At the moment HMV is little more than a vast shop window for Amazon; you can browse the racks, make a mental note of what you want, then go home and buy it online slightly cheaper. It needs to change how it sells more than what it sells. Customers need to go in thinking of HMV’s expertise — they need to think of the shop in the way that people thought of John Peel. Anybody can buy what they already know from Amazon; they need a gatekeeper.

At £160 million in the red, it wouldn’t hurt HMV much more to take a chance on a revamp, splash a couple of million re-inventing the Oxford Street store, and hope that, like Topshop, it attains trendsetting status, with its influence trickling down to regional branches. Its one major advantage, and one that it hasn’t begun to capitalise on, is that people genuinely like HMV. They want it to survive. I don’t remember anyone getting particularly weepy over the demise of Zavvi, Tower, or even Virgin. HMV, like EMI or the BBC, is a British institution that’s fun to knock, but nobody would ever want it to disappear."