Comments on: The Death of the Record Shop

By: Ian Massey

Ian Massey — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 20:40:09 +0000

I firmly believe that the likes of HMV are instrumental in their own demise. Over the past few weeks, I have bought (or had bought for me) CDs by Parade, Mostly Autumn, Panic Room, Mermaid’s Kiss, Galahad and Nick Harper. While I didn’t check whether any of these were available in either of York’s two HMV stores first, past experience tells me that they won’t have been. OK, I may have been able to order some of them from the HMV website but that doesn’t really help the shops, does it?

HMV shops stock current chart music, films and games – if you want anything else you have to go elsewhere.

Personally, the only time I shop in the likes of HMV are when they have items in the 2 for Â£10 sales that I want. General on-line shopping (at, for example, play.com) is cheaper and, in general, I would rather my money went as directly as possible to the bands in question. Hence, for much of my purchases from the “smaller” bands, I prefer to buy via their own websites or at gigs.

It is a sad fact that on-line retailing of items such as CDs, books, and games is, eventually, going to kill the high street outlets for these items. The only person I know who still does the majority of her music shopping at HMV is my mum (and that’s only to buy CDs as presents…)

By: DJ_K666

DJ_K666 — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 17:49:16 +0000

Tell you what, you ought to come to Brighton. There are record shops (and I mean RECORD shops not CD shops) here that have proper racks of 12″ records taking up most of the floor. One of them has all the CDs, books and videos upstairs and all the vinyl taking up the whole basement floor. It may not be on the high street but it’s certainly enough like the old school record shops you used to get for my liking.

By: Gregory Spawton

Gregory Spawton — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 08:37:08 +0000

Direct purchasing from bands is probably having an impact, but only because the internet allows easy access to band shops. The internet is at the root of most of the other causes of the decline of record shops too – the growth of downloading (legal and illegal), the ease of comparing prices so individuals can hunt for bargains, the reduced costs of offering internet-only shops such as Amazon (which chases the price of products down) etc.

Borders has just closed in Bournemouth, a great loss in my opinion. But, like many others, I’d use it for browsing the books and then buy more cheaply online.