The impending death of the last remaining high street music retailer HMV fills me with immense sadness, for it will take with it to oblivion my favourite shop in the whole world, FOPP. My sadness is, of course, nothing compared to the tragedy facing the 2000+ employees of HMV who have returned to work following a Christmas break, only to find they are likely to lose their jobs.
The decline in CD sales has never been matched by the upturn in vinyl records and Christmas saw the DVD market collapse completely, as consumers move towards outlets like Netflix, Spotify and Amazon Prime. The end is nigh for ‘hard’ music and movies.
I am one of the minority who still insist in buying music rather than obtaining it through the legal theft that is streaming. It is hard to be overly critical of people who can spend relative buttons on, say, Spotify when it costs upwards of a tenner to actually one album. The way we consume our media has changed forever. There is probably no going back.
This is a disaster for musicians who are striving to make their way to success in the music business. Not long ago, musicians toured to promote an album but now they put out an album to promote a tour. That’s where the money is. The established artists will continue to do all right but new artists will struggle even more. I predict that the end of HMV will merely encourage the nostalgia behemoth that increasingly dominates our music. More Spice Girls reunions, more Steps and all manner of rehashed confected mediocrity. So sad.
At a time when the music scene is more vibrant than ever, the death of HMV is desperately sad. My thoughts are those wonderful staff, particularly in FOPP and all new artists who will find it ever harder to get their work out there.
