I have no doubt that there’ll be plenty of navel-gazing,
wringing-of-hands, gnashing and wailing about the demise of HMV and justifiably
so. A significant part of our ‘high street shopping experience’ is about to
disappear, conceivably one of the last links from the High St
Maybe those moaning most will not be doing so for some
winsome mourning of misplaced youth, perhaps they will be the people who used
the store most but I fear they’ll be those who long-ago stopped shopping in the
physical world.
The writing was always on the wall. In a relatively short
space of time we have lost Virgin Megastores, Our Price, Tower and numerous
others I’ve already forgotten. The specialist independents haven’t fared much
better. The lure of the record shop is not what it was.
I have a clear conscience here, I regularly used HMV not
just as a showroom but also to buy things – albeit that the
purchases had more frequently become DVDs than CDs since the store had moved
far from being just a music retailer. In trying to master many disciplines its
downfall may have been founded, but I’m no expert.
Sadly it seems the future is not in bricks and mortar, the
online retailers can do it cheaper and we’re all about price. They also carry
access to greater stock, to ‘independent’ reviews, to sound clips and, since
we’re now less about physical (digital music sales finally exceeding those of
hard-cased product in 2012), it seems to matter less. We also don’t seem to be
too bothered if they don’t pay tax to the UK
I’m still relatively old-fashioned, probably due to being
relatively old, and prefer the physical – to be able to see, touch and feel a product.
Sadly it seems that the bigger retailers (and not only those online) have now
almost picked apart the entertainment retailers – Comet, Game, Jessops, HMV –
so that some of us now have even less desire or need to ‘go’ shopping.
In the case of HMV – leaving aside their broken business
model and leaden progress into the digital world – the music industry should
still bear some of the blame. As we slide into an ongoing dependence on ‘pop’,
focussing only on an audience that has no historical, nostalgic ties to a
high-street-brand, the industry has not supplied the artists or the product
that would keep people coming into a store like HMV.
The knock-on effect could be catastrophic. Most people don’t
read a music/entertainment paper/guide and lack an arbiter/prophet
to steer them. Their only knowledge of new product actually being on the market
might’ve been when they saw it in HMV; I know this has happened to me. Without
that ‘physical prompt’ who can say where the sales will come from.
The future of the High Street may lie in showrooms
where manufacturers display but do not sell, it is surely a long-hard-road for
retailers of all persuasions – maybe harder still for the music industry
itself.
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