so many cd's are available dirt cheap online/ebay/supermarkets and then theres i tunes etc if you like that sort of thing, and with there silly prices i really am suprised how HMV are pulling of still being in buisness? i never shop there.if you can wait 48 hrs you can have a cd from anywhere in the world (virtually) and at leaset 25% cheaper i recon

IME HMV is as competitive as the other sources you mention

ps note the deliberate showing of age faux par by calling them a record shop.almost all HMV staff nowadays are guarenteed not to know what vinyl even looks like…

hmmm maybe i should be geting back in there pieface..interesting.

My local one has recently been done up. It has relatively few records, a lot of games, quite a few DVDs and (wait for it) a small cinema.

They must be struggling to sell music, but they seem to be selling a certain amount of other things OK.

Maybe they're a front?

Do you think everyone who goes in comes out?

How much human flesh does a giant lizard need per day?

Maybe they are kept alive by http://www.hmv.com

I used to love browsing in record shops, but these days don't know where to start looking… internet is perfect for music buying.

Most of the HMVs I've been in have a vinyl selection.
I find HMV quite competitive price wise. They are in the town centre so it's easy to just pop in and browse when you have some time to kill.
It's a shame that most towns seem to have lost their record shops so while I used to never go into HMV I now find myself going in there quite a bit. The main problem I find with them is that they have all the same stuff…

HMV's diversified into selling stuff other than CDs and records. That's how it survives. Zavvi went bust earlier this year – that was a retread of the old Our Price model.

Although theres bargains to be had online, either buying cds or buying/sharing downloads…… Not everybody is online, millions aren't, and many who are still choose not to buy online. And once all your competition has gone down the pan thats plenty of punters. They probably sell more DVDs than CDs these days, and I'd say the DVD market is a bit more conservative than the CD market, particularly in respect to downloading.

I did think its was clever thinking to hand over/ rebrand all the virgin shops to Zavvi so that when they folded it wouldn't tarnish Virgin's other operations.

IME HMV is as competitive as the other sources you mention

it depends what you are looking for..

Commercial mainstream chart crap, probably similar.

non commercial, no chart stuff, then I only look online.

My local HMV is always pretty busy with people buying, as above theres more DVDs and game stuff than cds, but the sale stuff and 2 for £10 is great for filling up your collection/trying out something new for little risk. Full price stuff is only £1 or so more than online sellers and you get it there and then.

I too have wondered this, especially after gagging at the prices they charge for DVDs. All my music is bought as MP3 now, and there's no way I'd pay HMV prices for a DVD.

2 for £10 is great for…………..trying out something new for little risk.

Isnt that what Spotify is for? 😀

Just looking it up… Zavvi / Virgin was bigger than HMV, and the biggest uk retailer, so by folding they've left HMV with their existing market and the customers that were shopping in Zavvi. Given that in most towns HMV and Zavvi were nextdoor neighbours I'd imagine HMV are pretty happy just now

The way I look at it is this:

When buying luxury goods such as CDs and bike bits, I don't NEED them, therefor I'm buying more than just the physical product. I want to enjoy buying it, and feel good about who/where I've purchased it from.

Buying off the internet rarely delivers on those fronts. I know I could probably find that rare Mulatu Astatqe CD on the web somewhere, but would much rather just keep looking in CD shops, maybe buying some other CDs in the meantime, until I stumble across it somewhere. At which point I will get far more pleasure out of buying it than if i had just trawled through the google ads until I found it. If i never find it, so what, its just a CD. If I'm convinced it really will be the earth shattering musical find of the decade, and really can't find it in the shops, I'll maybe admit defeat and buy it on the web.

Hopelessly outdated/stupid attitude I know, but internet shopping takes the fun out of consumerism for me…

People still buy CDs but not as much with mp3s downloaded for peanuts or free, but HMV do sell DVDs, BlueRay and games and books.

Hasn't Zavvi just been replaced with HEAD? or is that just where I live?

I rather agree with 13thfloormonk.

try this site for uber cheap mp3s. mp3panda

its costs about 50 American cents per album

If I want a CD (or track) I want it NOW! Nothing more instant than buying a download. Perfect.
Still like to own CDs, so I like them falling through my letterbox. Certainly don't wanna get off my arse and go look for them amongst all those… yeuch! people!

My only experience of downloading tunes worked out more expensive than going to HMV and buying the CD, which also came with a free bonus CD.

went in to HMV in York yesterday, i had to chuckle at the 'Children's Books' stand

it was full of disney DVDs

Unfortunately the Internet has spelled death for the music album. Mp3 downloads and spotify have made discovering new music as convenient as buying a cup of coffee, sadly it has also removed all the fun too. Gone are the days of making mixtapes and studying the album covers for hours and while HMV are still running they must be the only one.

They do seem to be the Woolworths of the music retailers, they seem to sell everything

Deep down I want music to be something more than just a list of files on my computer.

Watch Jimi hendrix at Woodstock, then try to make the connection between the fireworks on screen and

c:/music/hendrix/are_you_experienced?/purple_haze.mp3

Removes a little bit of the magic for me… 🙄

>I know I could probably find that rare
Hmm.
It's not like yer average HMV has a load of unusual albums squirreled away on their shelves.
Pretty much everytime I go looking for anything in the Metal section all I find are albums at 14 quid plus (compared to 10-11 online) or at 10 quid when the slightly 'nicer' digipack versions are the same price or cheaper online. Occasionally there's 'n-for-m' offers but there's rarely enough to make up the m, never might the n.

The online hmv store *is* more competitive, tho' it's still typically a quid more than other online shops – but if it's in stock I'm not gonna grumble for a quid.

Mind you, there's an independant (rock/metal) record shop in Camberley, their prices can be comparable with the online shops judging from when I've been there, but it's a bit of a journey from where I live…

"Deep down I want music to be something more than just a list of files on my computer."

A stack of plastic discs on a shelf? I've thought about this quite a lot, because I used to feel we were losing something, but ultimately music is sound. Everything else is just gimmicks, picture sleeves and hard copies aren't the essence of music and their demise doesn't herald cultural entropy. I'd rather listen to a decent radio station or lastfm, be connected with the creative world as it happens and discover new things every day.

Music, and the way we use, share, experience it, is changing radically, as are attitudes to ownership and intellectual property. It's a radical change in a short space of time, though, and I can understand why people aren't comfortable with that.

As regards the OP, HMV.com was always supposed to be the same price as its stores, to avoid taking away market share. They make a lot of their money at Xmas, and likewise with Waterstones, which they also own. Rather a bizarre choice of acquisition give it's in the same retail/online dilemma as HMV.

In the early days of radio, music publishers tried to prevent radio stations from broadcasting their songs because of the impact it would have on sheet music sales, up to that point if someone wanted to hear a new song they had to buy the music and play/sing it themselves. So if you heard a song on the radio you didn't need have it on paper to play it yourself.

But back to the OP… HMV are in business because some people like to go shopping, and shopping is an end in its own right. Even if actually buying things in shops is going out of fashion.

Virgin-Zavvi-Head transfers – I see the local Head has a closing down sale on, so they are dying too by the look of it. Most CDs under £5. Oddly a large area of stock has become a whole load of porn DVDs (they must had done some mass purchase somewhere).

Hopelessly outdated/stupid attitude I know, but internet shopping takes the fun out of consumerism for me…

Ssssssshh, some poeple think the internet's real 😉

… ultimately music is sound. Everything else is just gimmicks, picture sleeves and hard copies aren't the essence of music and their demise doesn't herald cultural entropy

Well said.

HMV has smaller loss as competitors collapse:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8407378.stm

HMV was packed yesterday in bristol when I went in! PACKED I say!

And it seemed to me that all the music and film that I wanted was as cheap as net prices…. In some cases cheaper… 2 for a tenner and 4 for twenty deals all over the place.

Oh and it is nice to actually go an get something every now and again.

X-Academy Pop Rivals Tedium makes them a lot of money. The zombie hoards that are into that 'music' probably haven't figured out which sequence of keys they have to beat with a rock to make the pretty sound come out of the magic computer box.

HMV are becoming a very serious competitor to GAME and Argos as they have diversified into other digital media.

Everything else is just gimmicks, picture sleeves and hard copies aren't the essence of music and their demise doesn't herald cultural entropy.

+1

When I used to take the quality of the sound more seriously, I spent a lot of time setting up my hi-fi just so. I would rather listen to it sitting equidistant between the carefully position speakers, and enjoying the superior reporoduciton.

But, the trouble is, most of the music I listen to is badly recorded, or swiped off the radio, or on knackered LPs.

It made me realise that the process of music delivery – the medium (CD, LP, whatever) and making an effort to listen to it – was getting in the way of the true essence of what it was i was doihng: letting some people, in another time and space, connect direvtly with my emotions.

I have gone full circle and away from the oddly male desire to own, collect and hoard: I just want to listen to wonderful, glorious, inspirational, soul-touching music.

And I don't care what the format its, whether it's well recorded or not or whatever. I just want sound.