It has been revealed this evening that high store music and entertainment chain HMV is approaching administration, hot the heels of other massive established names like Comet and Jessops.
Though how Currys are still in business when I couldn't even get a takeaway there last week, I don't know.
HMV's potential demise is not a surprise. Zavvi went to the great high street store in the sky many years ago following the collapse of Woolworths leaving HMV the only major music provider in city centres following the failure of Borders. Throw in the cutting-back of Game stores and HMV stood as one of the only providers of games too. However, even with a big sale this January, HMV always stood out as the expensive store with CDs much more costly than other stores and, in the face of increasing competition from online stores like Amazon and Play, who have offered a more varied, convenient and cheaper service through the benefits of being an internet store and, well, exercising certain loopholes when it comes to all things tax, it was never going to win.
HMV is a sad loss to the high street. I regularly used to go in and browse and have often bought CDs there but, like many others, purchase most of my music, games and DVDs online so it would be hypocritical of me to wave a finger at the public and blame them for the demise of the shop when we're all to blame for our change in habits, just like corner shops shut as we flock to Tesco, Asda and the ilk, local bookshops close as we boot up the e-store on our Kindle, and pubs shut left right and centre as we enjoy the cheap booze that supermarkets bring.
Even so it's a shame and will be one more empty property in a rapidly depleting high street created by a recession that seems to not be ending.
I predicted several years ago that HMV would be an extremely likely candidate to go out of business and thus I am proved right, however many more hardy companies have fallen by the wayside between then and now that I wouldn't never have thought of. I also considered WHSmith to be a difficult prospect to survive but they seem to be doing OK.
Perhaps blame can be laid not wholly at the customers door but at the big online companies who have offered such a cheap prospect to consumers through their tax loopholes, that we've all been willing to exploit, and through that they've continued. Which, I suppose, therefore makes us to blame. We like the idea of thriving city centres filled with bustling shops offering us tangible products whereas in reality we like our entertainment cheap, easy, sent through the post or illegally downloaded, and the outcome of that is for shops to follow one after each other in a game of consumer dominos.
And if HMV leaves our high street, there will be precious few shops left to cater for the music hungry consumer if they want something other than the top ten from a local supermarket. Independent stores will still be round but they're hardly flourishing. 'Track Records' in York, my home town as a young man, shut down taking with it many memories and a wider choice than you'd get elsewhere and that city is struggling with shops closing, but not as much as my home town of Bradford that now will look even more like a ghost town. The irony in York, though, was our old Game store was recently taken over by Jessops. God help the next business that moves into those premises.
In our minds eye we want to pet and look after Nipper and see him around us forever, but it seems His Master's Voice will soon be put down by a vet called internet shopping. Now there's a stretched metaphor.
Monday 14 January 2013
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