Its quite sad in some ways. I have many happy memories of buying CDs and browsing at HMV in my youth. I have to say also many angry memories too of, "how can they charge £16.99 for a flipping CD!?". They did themselves no favours either when piracy meant that £16.99 was competing with £0.00.
Their entry into the digital market has been poor and outshone by everyone else. Online presence also poor, the last time I bought DVDs from them it took 2 days to ship items that were in stock. Can anyone imagine how well service like that competes with Amazon?
As others have said physical media accounts for a small amount of music sales, but continues on as long as the big players eat up a lot of the profits to be had in downloads. As I understand it, CDs are more profitable to record companies than an equivalent download. Had this been different CDs might not exist at all by now.
I have recently become a spotify convert after years of having music digitally ripped to a server. Pains me to say it but nothing else beats the convenience and range spotify has. If they went lossless id endorse them even more, as it stands the high quality streams are excellent regardless. Success of such services make HMV a complete irrelevance.
I don't really buy CDs now, but I buy "special" stuff on vinyl, and 99% of the vintage music I play is from vinyl or shellac where I appreciate the authenticity and want to play it back on period equipment. I have eclectic tastes
The £30 vinyl reissues of music originally mastered for CD as found in HMV simply doesn't appeal, I don't see the point. Does anyone else? Perhaps not.
In the forest fire that is modern retail, I think the problem with HMV is a product that is no longer viable filling their stores, they retail it to a decent enough standard within their stores.
Why on earth the likes of WHSmith still exist, when their in store standards are so hideous is beyond me. See the
@WHS_Carpet twitter page for evidence
