Looks like HMV in the UK may survive after all...

Day in Leeds today....wasn't aware the HMV had moved. Old store was huge, over 2 floors and usually threw up something interesting. The new one is AWFUL. 80% toys, by the look of it. My first and last visit.

 

Visited the rehoused Canterbury branch. Absolute waste of time, still selling sweets, toys and other unconnected ****e.

 

So much for Sunrise getting HMV back to its roots of selling music, eh.

EG.

 

What's the point of using the name HMV if it's not for music?

 

Sadly I think HMV will sell very little music compared to the tat. The mainstream market for physical media (I hate that term) is miniscule and the people who do still buy it are bright enough to shop around and not just pay an absurdly high price unquestioningly to HMV. They'll be getting a small amount of a small market. It'll be all the stuff we don't like seeing keeping it going. For the committed music buyer it's a depressing place to be nowadays. They don't serve much of a purpose for that kind of customer anymore.

 

Powerful brand recognition. It's not HMV legally and hasn't been for years. It's Sunrise using the name. HMV has a lot of nostalgia connected with it, Nipper, the gramophone. Barely anyone in the UK cares or even knows about Sunrise. This is on the back of the receipts.

 

The Doncaster branch has more vinyl than CD.

 

It seems about equal in Middlesbrough, if anything I'd say there's more CDs, but of course vinyl is far more noticeable taking up more space. To be fair to them, their CD prices are mostly OK.

 

The CD racks in Doncaster is awfull. Just vertically crammed along side of each other. All you can see is the spine of the CD case. You literally have to pull each one off the shelf to see what it is!

Lincoln's more friendlier though, easier just to 'flick' through the CD's which are artist listed. Same with the Nottingham branch.

 

A worrying and depressing sign of how little the "new" HMV is actually about selling serious music can be gleaned by searching for "Mike Rutherford" on the website. You get all the Mike & Mechanics stuff (overpriced, natch) but no sign of the just-released Music-on-CD repress of his Smallcreep's Day album.

EG.

 

At last there's an HMV sale! I was in the Middlesbrough branch today and the sale is pretty good. Not incredible, but decent. Plenty of vinyl and CDs, though the vinyl mostly seemed to just be reduced from absurdly expensive to expensive. The best deal I saw was Iggy Pop's last album on vinyl for £7.99.

 

Yes some nice half-price boxsets, apparently.

EG.

 

Last time I went to the HMV in Derby, I was pleasantly surprised to see how many CDs they had. Wasn’t so thrilled at the cost of some of them, but when I looked at the vinyl (plenty of that too) they seemed quite reasonably priced by comparison.

 

I deleted my post by mistake so here it is again:

HMV has just opened a new store in Bexleyheath which isn't too far from me - Bromley was the nearest to me before.

I went in there today and was pleasantly surprised. Around 50% of the store is merchandise, games and toys but they have a decent amount of CDs vinyl DVDs and Blu-rays. Their prices were pretty reasonable as well - comparable with online.

They had a store there before but it closed around 10 years ago. The fact that they have come back bodes well for the future of physical media, HMV and the high street perhaps?

 

I didn’t see it coming but my 14 year old daughter loves HMV and actually pesters me to take her there. Unless there’s an Anime shop around it’s actually her number one destination if we visit another town or city.

Of course I don’t mind, I can always flip through the records.

As Sounds of the Suburbs mentions above it’s mainly for Merch, games etc.

Maybe they’ve found themselves a niche afterall.

 

I've no problem with HMV selling the merch and other stuff for the kids if it keeps them going and CD and vinyl in town and city centres. The vinyl prices are often bafflingly high though. CDs mainly aren't so bad. I am surprised to see them opening new stores. There's often no-one buying anything when I go in and rarely a queue.

 

Funnily enough my local HMV disappeared because the shopping centre it was in closed down for redevelopment, but they’ve recently announced that they’re reopening an even bigger store next year. I was quite surprised by that.

 

I find HMV's vinyl prices uncompetitive and have little difficulty finding better prices elsewhere but their CD prices are fine. In fact, I bought 3 CDs in HMV just today.

 

Likewise. I'll quite happily buy CDs from HMV, but rarely vinyl. Shame, as I live in Birmingham, where they have the 'Vault' and do have a great range of vinyl.
However, when I can get next day delivery from Amazon for a third to a half of HMV prices for vinyl, what you going to do?

 

I went into HMV Tunbridge Wells last week and I couldn’t believe how their stock of cds had reduced since I last went in there a year ago.

 

1/3 to 1/2 by Amazon. That says it all.

 

The vinyl prices are a bit baffling (not that I buy new vinyl), but I find relatively little difference with Amazon when it comes to CDs and blu rays - in fact HMV can be cheaper, particular in the specialist music areas. I'm always surprised at how many shelves there are of DVDs, but apparently they still sell well, as does the merchandise, so I'm told. Mostly I get blu rays from them, providing they stock them. It's a shame they don't have a deal with Eureka, as I'm sure it would benefit for them and HMV for there to be some arrangement. But it is what it is. They're still here, and still opening new stores, so they can't be doing too badly.

 

If they are opening new stores then the swag is moving off the shelves. Here in the U.S. media chains have bit the dust.

 

Ditto in Canada.

 

I visited the new store at Bexleyheath as well. I think this store shows the new direction it's taking, with vinyl dominating. The CD section is smaller compared to its nearest stores, at Bromley and Bluewater (The Bluewater one is also much bigger than the Bromley one).

The Bexleyheath CD section has all genres mixed in. In the other HMV examples mentioned above, Pop/Rock, Hip-Hop, Soul, Dance, Metal are separated, while the Bexleyheath one has no separation, so I think that's why the Bexleyheath one looks larger than it actually is.

Despite the Bexleyheath one being smaller, it did have 1 copy of "essential" albums stocked - i.e. 1 copy each of the first 5 Led Zep albums, the essential Metallica albums, Pink Floyd - DSOTM, 1 copy of each of the Arctic Monkeys albums, etc.

If someone is after a wider selection, I would advise going to the Bluewater store instead, as it's only a 30 min bus ride (TfL route 96) from Bexleyheath.