HMV Finally closing down for good?

word on the street, is this is going to be announced next monday 7th Jan, this will be in line, with us digesting the fact that high street media sales are down 17%.

while online sales of all catergories of media, music ,movies, games are up on in the online world, movies being highest i think at 12%
 
[TW]Fox;23472769 said:
GAME had the issue of not having closed stores which they either gained as part of a purchase of another chain (this is where most of the duplicates came from, EB Stores Group purchase GAME in 1998 and rebranded the entire group to GAME in 2002 but kept most of the duplicate estate) or as a result of new store openings in new shopping centres. There remains a market for this sort of content but competing for it with yourself was obviously problematic.

Years ago when competition was stiff multiple stores made sense. If a customer was not near a branch of GAME and wanted a game they could simply go to Gamestation, or Virgin Megastore, or Choices, or Woolworths, or HMV and you lost the sale. Having multiple stores was therefore of great benefit.

But the market changed and the main competitors vanished. Now if you wanted a game you....errrr... Went to GAME. So all the multiple stores did now was increase overheads.

There is still a big market for physical media. Contrary to what this forum thinks most consumers are not like them. Figure released today show that last year 75% of sales were non digital. That's down from the past but its still the vast majority. It will continue to slide but not at the rate some people think.
Click to expand...

I think you are confusing physical media with requiring physical stores. While physical media sales may be still the main format, its a service that is being provided by an ever increasing number of online retailers.

Its not as simple as online = digital and highstreet = physical. The online does physical too, and its that which is killing HMVs highstreet presence. HMV simply cannot compete on price with places like ShopTo.net. Do those figures showing 75% of sales were for physical media break down the channel that it was bought through?
 
At no point have I suggested that all physical media will be sold through physical stores. Obviously people can and do buy physical media online, infact it's how I buy mine.

However this is not new - people have been buying physical goods online for 15 years - nor is it a unique issue for this particular market.

The point a few people were making in this thread is that you don't need physical stores because everyone buys in digital form, which the 75% figure demonstrates is not the case (yet). Obviously online has a chunk of this and that's reflected in the discussion within the thread regarding pricing.

People in here think that because they download music from iTunes and stream movies online everyone does. This is not true.
 
It certainly sounded like that was what you were suggesting when you talk about competition vanishing and "Now if you wanted a game you....errrr... Went to GAME".

There is far more competition now for physical retailers than there ever was before. 10 years ago you had a choice of the highstreet retailers. Actually, no, it wasn't even that, it was a choice between whichever highstreet retailers happened to have stores in your local area. For me when I was younger that was Games Exchange or Woolworths. That was it. Now the competition is whatever local highstreet store you have, plus all local supermarkets, plus the entire internets worth of physical media retailers. Competition for physical media sales is not 'vanishing' in any way. It is growing.

I agree that the competition for digital distribution is limited (although again, still growing), but then thats not a market that HMV are directly competing against is it? As you said, its impossible for them to compete with the near zero distribution costs of digital retailers. HMVs direct competiton is retailers (online and in the highstreet) selling physical media. And in this market, having 5000 staff in 200+ stores while many of your competitors have 10 blokes in a warehouse means you are going to struggle.

HMV need to cull all the highstreet stores that are not profitable (I expect many of the big shopping centre stores are fine), and focus on enlarging their online presence to compete with other online physical media retailers.
 
It's not just unit price Vs unit price although obviously that's a big part of it, attitudes about shopping are changing. It doesn't seem to me that as many families are making a 'day out' of shopping. buying the 2-3 things that they need plus another 2-3 things on impulse. I remember ordering a new mobile phone contract online in 2002 and getting ripped to pieces over it at work that I'd dare combine the internet, my bank details and a mobile phone of all things. Whereas now, if I announced that I was going to town tomorrow to get a new mobile contract, the same stereotypes would be telling me to get on the internet for a better deal.
 
Last edited:
as I said before - even if you forget about online/digital and online/physical they are not even competing with other bricks and morter shops (supermarkets)

I know supermarkets sell some new releases as loss-leaders but not every single dvd / game in store is

when hmv got in trouble last time, they looked at their business model and decided the best way to fix it was to decrease their only unique feature (large range of films / music on the highstreet) and to jump on a headphone and tablet bandwagon
 
MrMarvelous said:
Didn't HMV have some on-line music service they set up a while back? What ever happened to that?
Click to expand...

HMV had a couple of attempts quite a few years ago that just failed, then about 3 years ago they bought 50% of 7digital who then made their web store for them. Recently that web store now just redirects to the main 7digital website:

http://www.hmvdigital.com
 
I have bought a load of stuff from HMV recently and you can get some great deals. Plus, I actually like buying in person rather than awaiting the post and inevitably going to the depot as the partner and I actually work all day.

As long as you are not thick enough to buy something grossly over priced then you're okay.

The real issue is with uncommon stuff: 'specialist' music tends to be overpriced and hardly ever on offer.
 
Last edited:
As we have been on about blockbusters. Blockbusters UK is healthy. I used to work opposite one and come mid to late afternoons they we're busy.

But I am aware blockbuster US is struggling so bad tho but it has been said if blockbuster US goes under UK will and can still operate.
 
nshire said:
As we have been on about blockbusters. Blockbusters UK is healthy. I used to work opposite one and come mid to late afternoons they we're busy.

But I am aware blockbuster US is struggling so bad tho but it has been said if blockbuster US goes under UK will and can still operate.
Click to expand...

I haven't been in one for years, are they still doing the same thing? Movie and Game rentals?
 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20885506

More than £1bn was spent on downloaded films, music and games in 2012, the highest annual total.



Sales increased 11.4% from 2011, meaning that a quarter of the entertainment market is now digital.


But figures released later by entertainment retailers will also show a big drop in physical sales - more bad news for high street shops.


Sales of CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray and video games fell by 17.6% in 2011 although they still make up most of the market.
Click to expand...
 
[TW]Fox;23475281 said:
Err we've kinda been discussing that for most of the thread? Did you really need to link and run? :p
Click to expand...

Well, there was a feature on BBC news just now about it. Thought it might prove interesting ballast to the topic.
 
Its a shame they only state a 'drop' in physical sales, rather than an actual amount. There is a big gap between the rise in digital downloads and the fall in highstreet sales, which is presumably filled with people buying physical media from online stores.
 
Last edited:
Not sure if streaming media is there yet, I much prefer the significantly higher quality sound/video a Bluray possesses versus streaming. Blurays are expensive but so is going to the cinema.

Music is almost there, I use Spotify but if I like an album I buy it anyway so I can own it in a uncompressed format and I am not "renting" it.
 
arknor said:
Once high street stores realise the competition is the internet and not each other maybe they will start doing something towards atleast being semi competitive with places like amazon instead of charging +20% + the postage /packaging costs one might expect to pay for next day delivery.

we all know they have overheads but so do amazon look at the size of the amazon warehouse its like a small city and cant be cheap.
then theres all the posting + packaging retail chains need to get with the times and streamline to survive and stop relying on out dated busisness models
Click to expand...

The cost, say, per square metre of a large warehouse in the middle of nowhere on land that isn't in great demand is pretty cheap compared to in demand premises on a high street that can carry quite a high cost per square meter.

Add to that maintenance costs due the higher rate of ware that a retail premises will endure due to the footflow, as well as employing hundreds or thousands of staff around the country trained in retail service, things like public liability insurance for the premises, areas that don't do well in terms of sales, the costs of transporting stock to stores and everything else.

It's much easier, cheaper and straight forward to just operate a number of large warehouses with minimal staff and other things that add to overheads. Plus, the customers end up bearing the cost of most of the transportation of the goods unless they choose free shipping.
 
[TW]Fox;23472314 said:
The PC gaming market was a small fraction of the overall retail market. It made no sense to keep offering it full support at retail especially given how well suited digital distribution is for pc products.

So they updated the business model as everyone says is needed....
Click to expand...

I've never really got why you see so many people crying about the lack of retail stores selling boxed PC games, the retail shops haven't been able to compete with the online places in years, and then digital distribution.

If you want the boxed copy, buy it online and wait a day, with places like shopto offering quite low prices and near enough always next day delivery there's little to complain about, and the "I MUST HAVE IT NOW" brigade can just use digital distribution.

Yeah, Steam's prices can be high for recent games but there's plenty of places selling games that register and download through Steam at better than Steam prices, like Greenmangaming.
 
londonbairn said:
Not sure if streaming media is there yet, I much prefer the significantly higher quality sound/video a Bluray possesses versus streaming. Blurays are expensive but so is going to the cinema.

Music is almost there, I use Spotify but if I like an album I buy it anyway so I can own it in a uncompressed format and I am not "renting" it.
Click to expand...

I'm not a fan of streaming, but if you've got a decent connection it's fairly easy to download a high quality movie in little time.

100Mb will do around 10GB in 10 minutes. If a service was brought out for movies where people could download HD movies the way they do Steam games, things like piracy would probably drop as a lot of people do it for convenience.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom