HMV Canada to close all 102 stores April 30 (Sunrise to take over approx 70 HMV stores)*

Hi All

I was speaking to some friends in the industry and it appears that HMV Canada is in some financial trouble.

The rumour at the moment is that in 2011 they will begin closing down the non-profitable stores.

Their flagship Toronto Yonge St store is going to be slimmed down. One half will be shut once the lease runs out. Some people are saying that the entire operation on Yonge Street will go when the lease runs out.

Some are putting it down to the fact they sidelined CDs much to early and lost much their customer base (i.e. older people that actual buy music)

Over all though it might have a positive impact on the market in the city as the existing trade will go to the smaller shops.

Not sure how true these rumours are but the people who told me have been in the industry for well over 10 years.

Make of that what you will.

Eddie

 

I figure HMV Canada will be completely out of business by 2015, 2020 the latest.


When I worked there 5 years ago, management stopped short of guilt tripping customers into buying product. And even less people buy physical product now than they did then.


They figured video games were going to save the company, but you can buy video games anywhere, and usually for less than what they charge.


You can't make people buy something they can get for free.

 

Yeah, it's looking as if they won't make it 'till '12.

As a customer and former employee I have good and bad memories with the company. But at the end of the day, it's been unprofitable to sell physical media in a b+m capacity for quite some time. If they were smart, they would've gone a route similar to Hot Topic.

I have some good friends that'll be losing jobs. Hopefully they'll land on their feet alright.

 

I've heard stuff about Vancouver from time to time. My local one in oakridge closed earlier this year, though it probably never made a penny.

The Vancouver flagship store cut cds in half after sales were comatose. They didn't pull the rug out from under older music buyers.

I bought 3 cds/DVDs from them earlier today. got a pre-xmas sheet of coupons for thier stuff. Their "deals" were laughable.

I've been waiting for a sale to aquire those Olympic 5 disc Bluray or hockey gold Blu ray for a price I like. $80 and $70 ain't it. They still have a PYRAMID of the hockey set.

 

One of the Oakville stores closed last month...

 

What you describe is the same as the HMV stores in the UK. All games and dvds that you can buy far cheaper elsewhere and a tiny music section that hardly stocks anything. Their classical section is laughable - one generic own label cd for each composer.

I worked for HMV for five years, some very good times. I made it my mission to order in obscure punk, jazz and soul stuff, which did sell through quite well. Our jazz section was mightily impressive.

Sad to see they have gone the way they have. It used to be they recruited real music buffs to work there, now it's irrelevant.

 

I was JUST going to post this.

I had a ritual of going to HMV then Beat Goes On across Dorval and went there a couple of weekends ago to see the windows all papered over.

It was the last, real decent HMV in (our) area, really. I've been to other HMV's where the atmosphere was too intense and the Staff really obnoxious.

The Oakville location was pretty relaxed and their selection of imports was decent...shame, really.

 

I was in one in Halifax a couple of days ago, and actually found 2 Christmas cds I wanted. At least one of them would have been cheaper on-line, but I appreciated the convenience of picking them up.

I was asked if I wanted a 'card' of some sort, and remembering the buy 10, get one free type of deal, said yes, until I was told the card cost $3.

It was also depressing to see the number of cds now in cardboard containers.

 

I've visited the new location here exactly twice, once when it opened and once a few months ago, I'd hardly call it a music shop as CDs seem to be less important than t-shirts, let alone games and DVDs, not bothering with vinyl says it all, at least the HMV owned Fopp still maintains the pretence of being a music shop. I also know from experience that there is still a market for physical product in this city, but the shallowness of HMVs CD catalogue means they are no longer worth a visit.

 

I read the rumour about the Montreal megastore here in another thread recently. Shortly after that, I noticed the HMV at a mall in St-Bruno near my home moved to a new location in the mall. I thought it would be smaller, but they actually kept a large space. Ironically, for current pop/rock releases, they're often not bad price-wise. I also find their website "check store stock" function to work really well now. If course, for anything non-top 40, or for vinyl, etc., they're not so great. Plus, I find their staff's attitude about special ordering is fine before you order, but terrible when it comes to following up.

I also miss Sam the Record Man. Every visit to Sam's was like a kid going to a carnival. Their staff was generally full of people with commitment to and excitement about music. HMV are often staffed by underpaid, overworked adolescents with no musical knowledge.

I also thought their removal of all Rolling Stones titles a couple of years ago to protest the exclusive Stones DVD release for Best Buy Future Shop was chidish. Why penalize customers looking for Stones music?

 

HMV is a company that lost sight of its core business. The don't call it "Has Mostly Videos" for nothing.

And for a company of its size I was always suprised at how they consistently failed to compete on price.

The really, really sad thing about the place is that they stopped letting the staff pick the music on the P.A. in favour of some in-house faux radio station (that sounded like a low bitrate MP3). You know it's not a real music store when the staff isn't allowed to pick the music on the P.A.

 

I remember going to that store in the late 90's and early 2000's whenever I was in Halifax. I was amazed by the number of deep catalog titles and imports. Went back in 2o05 and noticed that many artists were represented by comps and only the most popular catalog releases. That's when I knew that things were changing.

 

I've never been a fan of HMV but I hope the Downtown store stays intact.

Though not what it once was, (especially when it first opened as Virgin...their catalog was very deep), it's all we have left if you want something resembling a selection.
I was actually impressed by some of the stuff I saw there recently (No-Man DVD Audio, most of the Audio Fidelity golds...at stupid prices mind you, quite a few imports that I didn't expect to see).
In fact I'm headed back there today for a more detailed perusal.

 

This is true, we had a 'playlist'. At first, management wasn't that strict with it and I could throw on some Beatles or something. Then they cracked down and it was all BEP's Monkey Business for 6 months. Inhumane.

 

You want to hear a funny story about a Avalanches single?

My friend used to put on whatever he wanted when he managed a store. Every time he put on the Avalanches single it sold a lot. One day he gets a call from the record company and they ask "What are you doing there with this single because we can't get it to sell anywhere else. You're store is accounting for the majority of the sales." He just told them "Nothing. I play it in the store and when I do it sells."

Revolutionary no?

In house radio will just play the newer more popular stuff. If you let staff pick, even if you tell them to make sure to play certain things as well as their own it's much better.

What I find interesting about the industry is that they seem intent on making their demise come a lot sooner.

There are people who want to buy physical media and rather than try and entice those in they shun them.

Eddie

 

I moved to Vancouver in 2003. At that point, there was a Virgin Megastore in downtown not too far from where I lived. It was great. They had three floors, CDs on the main and top levels and DVDs on the bottom level. They carried lots of imports and obscure artists. The prices were high, but coming from the U.S. everything in Canada was more expensive.

When they went out of business, HMV took over. It stayed the same for a while, then quickly went downhill. The last time I was in the store, they had moved the DVDs to the main level and the place was pretty empty. Their sales weren't.

I'll always have good memories of that store!

 

I happened to be in the Toronto flagship store on Yonge St. yesterday. A not bad selection but I couldn't believe how high some of the the prices were. Examples: the AF Love It To Death was about $35. Amazon.ca has it for about half of that. I was planning to buy the Kinks The RCA Years box. They had it there for $64.99. I ordered one from Amazon for $20 less and free shipping.
Some CDs were priced competitively , but it seemed like a lot were way overpriced.
So I'm not really too surprised if people aren't buying CDs there.

 

Peter, exactly my thought as I started reading the thread. Sam never got back on its feet after spending money to go online. I'm sort of getting used to see them vanish from downtown Montreal. First there was Sam, then Music World and now HMV (if rumour proves to be true)... I hardly shop at any B&M music stores anymore.

 

Darn, HMV is the only place here with any kind of selection. On the other hand there's a big mountain of box sets that's been growing for years. Every time I look at at I figure things can't be going too well. If they'd only knock a hundred bucks off the price of the Neil Young Archives blu box that's been sitting there since the day it was released, I'd buy it.

Guess I better scour their racks for interesting things before they do die.

 

Yeah, their selection was excellent but everything was priced too high. I used to look for things there and then walk a few blocks to A&B and, if they had them, buy them for a few bucks a CD less.