HMV
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- vaxorcist0
interesting twitter feed.... anyone remember FuckedCompany.com?
^^ that's why many companies that engage in mass layoffs ask everyone to report to a different location one morning, ask them for all the passwords, change the passwords, then fire them and make sure the office doors are locked....
...this is pretty much what happened to a friend who worked at a video game company that got ONE BAD REVIEW for a game, they laid off 60 people a few weeks later.... but no interns running twitter able to talk about it...
- i_monk0
- it was Poppy Rose Cleere
All gone now:
https://twitter.com/…
albums - You had a job, the company is going down, your job ended. Employment is not a human right, go find a new job.shaft
- it was Poppy Rose Cleere
- pang0
Back in the early 90s I used to buy music every week from my local HMV. And I remember they weren't all that cheap, e.g. CD album typically £15-ish, or above if it was an import or Ltd Edt. Can you imagine anyone paying those prices now? Nope. I don't think so.
HMV cashed in when they could... then along came the internet. The board didn't really pay much attention, especially when the iTunes etc all kicked in alongside the likes of play.com, amazon.com. Then the HMV-cash-cow died.
Moooo... ugh.
- Horp0
Goodbye Blockbuster Video too. You will DEFINITELY not be missed you moralising, censorial bunch of hypocrites.
- Ianbolton0
@webazoot. I don't think it's about the vast amounts of music they sell, you can get all that online. I think it's more about service, personality and promoting something they believe in. All that is lacking, and is something that should go hand-in-hand in the music industry today. New artists only exist because of word of mouth and the internet. If you can embrace that, then you can build a business structure similar to Rough Trade I guess. For everything else that's disposable and/or mainstream there's Amazon or iTunes. (or torrents).
- webazoot0
Not bought anything in a HMV in about ten years and don't even think about going into one. Not really been about selling a wide range of music for a long time, more about selling chart merchandise, computer games, DVDs and electronics. And doing none of that well. If they have any chance of recovering they need to look at what they want to do and do that thing well (Be nice if they went back to stocking a wide range of music again, if nothing else theres not a lot of competition left now.)
- Ianbolton0
I'd hate to see independents totally die out. HMV, to some extent, killed the local record shop back home in the small town of Scunthorpe. That was more down to Scunthorpe being a town with shit music taste! I do think there will always be a vibrant independent music scene. Those who sit there and say all new music is shit, obviously don't look hard enough. I prefer buying my music at gigs as I see the artist gets the cash.
So yeah, generally I don't really give a fuck about HMV. They've bought too heavily into a failing commercialised version of a creative industry, therefore sold themselves out. Stay small. Stay true. Stay alive!
- albums0
Amoeba for life.
World's. Largest. Independent.
- lowimpakt0
- ^lowimpakt
- oooh, wish I went there when I was in Cardiff years ago.....vaxorcist
- if i'm ever in cardiff (unlikely) i'll be sure to pop inhans_glib
- Well obviously, the welsh haven't discovered the Internet yetset
- < This, what on earth is the point now the internet existsanimatedgif
- Was dissapointed I could find anything in there I wanted to buy when I went there.webazoot
- that sounds very dissapointingset
- ah... the mindset of that old movie High Fidelity, describes 90's Wicker Park Record geeks perfectly....vaxorcist
- DaveO0
I used to love the Oxford Street store, good selection of dance music that was already out & popular, and actually a cracking indie 7" section.
I think it's all cyclical though – the giants die because they can't support their inflated infrastructure, perhaps the independents will return? Maybe only vinyl will survive as a tangible format against the CD?
- Physical formats will still exist in indie shops that can adapt to market changes quicker than the giantspig
- sine0
lazy alert...
did hmv still record and produce, or just sell records in the modern era?
- pig0
- Horp0
Also, the cashier's desk was lost behind badly piled mountains of really horrible cheap shit like fizzy sweets, shitty collectors sticker sets, crappy cheap magazines etc... felt like a Soweto newsagents.
Horrible experience.
- Horp0
They did put a large foot on the throats of independents, but I doubt the independents would have survived until now anyway. One of the longest standing and most respected independents here in Brighton disappeared within the last 12 months... Revolver Records... and I'd wager that was a result of online rather than the two HMV stores in Brighton. Revolver's stock in trade was hugely different to HMVs.
I hadn't been into a HMV for a few years, but went into the main Brighton branch over Christmas. I could not believe the state of the shop. The had attempted to evolve and diversify I believe (in response to earlier comments) and had given over 50% of the store racks to second hand CDs, DVDs and hardware. Ironically it felt a tiny little bit like the first days of Urban Outfitters, when it was largely second hand, and (briefly) felt like a cool new un-brand. Not a good fit for HMV though... it just smacked of desperation.
They hacked the store into 50% jumble sale, 30% electronic gadgets and peripherals, and 20% was left for the core product of music. The music was so tightly crammed in that it largely all had to be re-classified as Pop/Rock, with a few nods here and there to Blues, Classical, Easy Listening, Jazz etc etc. Pop/Rock was the dominant category though, and the stuff they'd got listed under that heading was amusing and alarming in equal measure.
I care that retail is dying. I don't care that HMV is dying however.
- 20% to angry birds merchandise from what I sawanimatedgif