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

Discussion in 'Marketplace Discussions' started by Sound of the Suburbs, Feb 3, 2019.

  1. Man at C&A

    Man at C&A Senior Member

    Location:
    England
    No worries :righton:

    I ultimately do want them to survive and don't really mind if it takes selling other stuff to young people who wouldn't normally go in for it to happen. I just can't see £10 boxes of cereal being a good seller though. HMV is bizarre at the moment.

    Even though you are negative about vinyl, which is fair enough, there's a lot that's crap about it, you got it spot on with all that cynical 'limited edition' 'splattered vinyl' '1500 only numbered edition' 'HMV exclusive' with a miniscule difference nonsense. All us genuine music fans who like records want to do is buy an LP at a fair price, but HMV are cynically exploiting vinyl buyers, particularly newcomers, along with treating us like idiots, expecting us to give them £35 - £50 for a run of the mill album without looking elsewhere. It's arrogant pricing. The strange thing is, a fair bit of the stock is well priced. It's just bizarre. I wish they'd see the sense in fair pricing across everything and keeping the people who spend money on records regularly onside. As long as they are doing what they are at present, they deserve criticism. Let's face it, the CDs are mostly as expensive as they can get away with too.
     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2021
  2. Ste_S

    Ste_S Forum Resident

    Location:
    Birmingham, UK
    To be fair, for some of the back catalogue CDs they stock, they're almost giving them away. I've been hoovering up Blue Note and Impulse CDs for whenever they have them for £3.99 for example.
     
    Man at C&A likes this.
  3. wallpaperman

    wallpaperman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Edinburgh
    I don’t doubt your knowledge about vinyl prices for one minute, it’s not something that I look at really.

    I mentioned Assai which is a independent shop with branches in Edinburgh and Dundee, and spent 10 minutes having a cursory glance at their vinyl prices compared to HMV.

    The prices for the likes of the new War On Drugs, Richard Ashcroft, Abba, Ed Sheeran (yikes) are all very similar, Assai slightly higher for most of them. Same with recent box sets like The Beatles and George Harrison.

    I appreciate that is a tiny sample and other indies must be able to sell cheaper than Assai.

    HMV do seem to be trying to get £25 for Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’ which seems slightly optimistic, good luck with that.
     
    Eric_Generic likes this.
  4. Exitmusic

    Exitmusic Forum Resident

    Location:
    Leicester U.K
  5. wallpaperman

    wallpaperman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Edinburgh
  6. Ste_S

    Ste_S Forum Resident

    Location:
    Birmingham, UK
    Man at C&A likes this.
  7. wallpaperman

    wallpaperman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Edinburgh
    Announced today that HMV are returning to Princes Street in Edinburgh (main shopping street, , rather pretty, views of Edinburgh castle etc), six years after they left.

    Brave move I guess, even though Princes Street is full of crap shops these days, it still has an aura, and rent cannot be cheap. It must be about a 5 minute walk to the Fopp in Rose Street.

    Can’t find out if HMV’s current shop in a shopping mall in Leith will remain open, I hope so, as it’s much more convenient in a lot of ways.
     
  8. RobNeil

    RobNeil Forum Resident

    Location:
    Midlands, UK
    I was in HMV a couple of weeks ago and they had The Fall's Are You Are Missing Winner CD at......27.99.
     
  9. Dave S

    Dave S Forum Resident

    To be fair, it is the 4CD set, although priced £8 more than Cherry Red.
     
    RobNeil likes this.
  10. RobNeil

    RobNeil Forum Resident

    Location:
    Midlands, UK
    Still a bit steep.
     
  11. coffeetime

    coffeetime Senior Member

    Location:
    Lancs, UK
    Called into the Blackpool store yesterday and left with the 3 deluxe hardback Now Yearbook ‘82. ‘83 & ‘84 sets. The ‘82 & ‘84 sets were the same price as Amazon, and the ‘83 set £21.99 - handily beating what the set is fetching on ebay now it is harder to get hold of. First in=store purchase since picking up the Let It Be SDE last year, will likely pick up future Now Yearbook deluxe instalments (fingers crossed) in-store now that both label and store look to be putting in some effort.

    Despite the usual American & Japanese ‘candy’ & pophead figurines etc, it was heartening to see music being equally prominent with DVD/BluRay etc, and a suprising number of boxsets given the store has been reluctant to stock all but the biggest guaranteed sellers before now (Beatles etc). Shame I’ve already got all of the boxsets I would have otherwise have been interested in.
     
    Eric_Generic, carlwm and wallpaperman like this.
  12. Pop_Zeus

    Pop_Zeus Forum Resident

    Location:
    Southport, UK
    There are some bizarre price differences between Fopp & HMV considering they're owned by the same company (at least I think they are). The other day in Manchester I picked up the recent Piroshka CD for £8.99 in HMV. Round the corner, Fopp were selling it for £15. Still, I like Fopp and picked up the recent Low, Courtney Barnett & Throwing Muses albums. I like that Fopp round their prices up (so something is say £13 instead of £12.99). I guess it makes little difference if paying by card, but I used to hate that awkward moment when paying cash . . . standing there waiting for my 1p change, thinking "What am I gonna do with a penny?" or telling them to put it in the charity box and thinking "What are they gonna do with a penny?"

    I also overheard someone ask a staff member for a certain title (didn't catch what), and he replied "Everyone keeps asking for that. We got one single copy on release day, it sold right away and we haven't had any since. Brexit is to blame for a lot of things being slow to come in."
     
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  13. lwh1

    lwh1 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kent, England
    The Canterbury branch is moving to a new (and what appears smaller) store within a few weeks.
     
  14. Pouchkine

    Pouchkine Forum Resident

    Do some of you buy Classical Music Cd's? Have you notice the Naxos albums being much more costly in recent times?
     
  15. coffeetime

    coffeetime Senior Member

    Location:
    Lancs, UK
    Still buying classical CDs here. I did look to see if HMV Blackpool had either of the recent DG John Williams CDs in (Vienna & The Berlin Concert), given the releases were about as high profile as classical gets. No CDs, no BluRay, no deluxe BluRay/CD packs. Didn’t look at the Naxos discs - how much are they going for in HMV on average?
     
  16. Pouchkine

    Pouchkine Forum Resident

    I don't know in HMV but here in Canada the Naxos CD's have gone from 12,99 to 16,99 in the few stores that still sell music.

    Do you think they didn't have those John Williams CDs because of low demand or because they have problems getting them?
     
  17. coffeetime

    coffeetime Senior Member

    Location:
    Lancs, UK
    The last time I looked through their classical section properly, they had plenty of Decca titles (including the then latest releases by Nicola Benedetti) but little to no Deutsche Grammophon, even the latest releases. Given that Decca & DG are effectively the same label, I'm guessing it might be a case that purchasing for the provincial stores like Blackpool get releases from Decca and the usual classical compilations (the frequent 'Classics from TV/movies/adverts' etc). It surprised me given that John Williams' music is well known far beyond classical listening circles and is a mainstay of the lighter UK c;lassical radion stations (Classic FM, Scala Radio etc).

    The last classical titles I picked up from HMV were in Liverpool back before the store moved and downsized, eg John Williams/Anne-Sophie Mutter's Across The Stars, Lang Lang's The Piano Book etc.

    DG have been giving the recent John Williams the Berlin Concert releases (plural - several CD/BluRay & multidisc options) a big promotional push in continental Europe, even going as far as having a tram repainted for promotional purposes:

    [​IMG]

    All that said, I don't envy HMV's purchasing dept. on this. Do you buy John Williams classical stock to put in stores that may or may not sell, vs a few extra Adele albums on vinyl or Beatles Let It Be boxset that likely will sell. Or do you concede the classical market to those with deeper shelves (Amazon) or are specialist classical retailers (Presto)? And what about arists that are less well known and even less likely to sell than Williams?

    I've been tempted to try out the Birmingham HMV Vault store to see how that holds up these days. Once upon a time, HMVs Manchester & Oxford Road, London had vast classical sections in their own glassed off, semi-soundproofed departments with the stores themselves. When I got chance to go in them, you KNEW you were in a classical store that demanded a little reverence and hush from customers!

    Will check out the Naxos discs next time I'm in - they have an entire section with their (admittedly small) classical section for them, and I've a few in my collection from across the years when I wanted to try either a particualr composer or era out with minimal financial risk.
     
  18. Eric_Generic

    Eric_Generic Enigma

    Location:
    Berkshire
    Those were the days!

    EG.
     
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  19. followmehome

    followmehome Forum Resident

    Location:
    England
    LOL Sure. HMV having issues with getting new releases in began several years ago when some distributors wouldn't send them any stock because there was no guarantee they would stay solvent. If Amazon and various independent record shops can stock something, but HMV can't....
     
    Graham likes this.
  20. shanebrown

    shanebrown Forum Resident

    Location:
    Norfolk, UK
    It's interesting you say that, for I was wondering the same thing, only to find they have also gone up on Amazon. The older catalogue Naxos discs on Amazon are still around £8 (still more expensive than they used to be), but the newest releases are between £10 and £13 - so basically the same as in HMV. They are also at that higher price on Naxos's own website.

    I'm surprised there hasn't been news items online or even Gramophone magazine about these changes, but haven't seen any. For the most part, I'm not willing to pay those prices for Naxos discs. Yes, they're often very good and they also are willing to record more obscure pieces, but I tend to grudge it because these prices are not in line with what Naxos has purported to be. If I'm paying those prices and want something a little more obscure, I'm much more likely to look at CPO or Hyperion or Capriccio instead. There may be logical and unavoidable reasons for the Naxos price rise - but I haven't seen a similar price rise in other independent classical labels.
     
    Pouchkine likes this.
  21. shanebrown

    shanebrown Forum Resident

    Location:
    Norfolk, UK
    The Norwich store has a small classical section, but mostly priced roughly the same price as Amazon. I don't object to paying another pound or two to support them, having said that. They have a fair amount of DG releases as it happens - and often at surprisingly low prices. I got the Trifonov Rachmaninov discs are £5 each last year, for example.

    The biggest problem I see with their classical section is common sense from the point of view of what stock they receive. This isn't the fault of the Norwich store, but that of "head office." There are sometimes five or six copies of the same title, for instance. Or maybe four or five versions of the same work in different recordings. I'm not sure how many Mozart Requiem recordings the people of Norwich require! But, again, this isn't the store's fault, but that of whichever supernatural entity orders in a big glass building that orders the stock. I should add that they do have the John Williams discs, though.

    I have to say that HMV are very much part of my lifeline. I live literally next door to them, and so go in often, and so am rather well-known there. The staff are superb, and sometimes the only friendly faces I get to see and have a chat with in the course of a week. Most of them are knowledgeable, too, about what they are (or are not) stocking (which wasn't always the case in HMV in years gone by). And that's what we get from a brick and mortar store, I guess. The question is whether we're happy to (sometimes) pay the extra for it.
     
  22. Sci-Flyer

    Sci-Flyer Forum Resident

    Location:
    Scotland
  23. DML71

    DML71 Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    Reopening the store in watford this summer and one in Luton.

    Surprised but pleased to hear. The old one in watford closed 3 years ago.
     
  24. Valen2260

    Valen2260 Forum Resident

    The new Edinburgh store is awful, and such a wasted opportunity.

    The whole ground floor is taken up with toys and sweets.

    The upper floor has only a couple of racks of cds, with every genre crammed in - so you've got Black Sabbath next to Beethoven etc. Abysmal selection, and the the new release section is worse than a supermarket section of new cds.

    The movie section in the basement is poorly laid out and missing several genres. Ocean Terminal is a palace by contrast.

    Such a shame.
     
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  25. Eric_Generic

    Eric_Generic Enigma

    Location:
    Berkshire
    Kingston Upon Thames needs to come back.

    Cannot believe they closed it.

    EG.
     
    Rufus rag and LivingForever like this.

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