HMV, One of UK's Largest Retailers of CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays, Calls in Administrators For Second Time in Six Years (bbc.com) 76
Retron shares a report: Music retailer HMV has confirmed it is calling in KPMG as administrators. The move, the second in six years, involves 2,200 staff at 125 stores. Owners Hilco, which took the company out of its first administration in 2013, blamed a "tsunami" of retail challenges, including business rate levels and the move to digital. It said the stores would continue to trade while negotiations were held with major suppliers and it looked for buyers. Paul McGowan, executive chairman of HMV and its owner Hilco Capital, said: "Even an exceptionally well-run and much-loved business such as HMV cannot withstand the tsunami of challenges facing UK retailers over the last 12 months on top of such a dramatic change in consumer behaviour in the entertainment market."
He pointed out HMV sold 31% of all physical music in the UK in 2018 and 23% of all DVDs and Blu-rays, with its market share growing month by month throughout the year. But he added that the industry consensus was that the market would fall by another 17% during 2019 and therefore it would not be possible to continue to trade the business. Holders of gift vouchers are being advised to consider spending them sooner rather than later.
He pointed out HMV sold 31% of all physical music in the UK in 2018 and 23% of all DVDs and Blu-rays, with its market share growing month by month throughout the year. But he added that the industry consensus was that the market would fall by another 17% during 2019 and therefore it would not be possible to continue to trade the business. Holders of gift vouchers are being advised to consider spending them sooner rather than later.
Ironic... (Score:4, Interesting)
The ironic thing with this story is that 13 years ago, before Spotify and the like, HMV offered digital downloads (as did many other shops, like Tesco and Virgin Records). The downloads were clunky, required Windows Media Player and if you stopped paying the monthly subscription you lost access to the downloads entirely - they'd just redirect you to a login screen if you tried playing them. I only lasted two months as a subscriber back in the day as I realised I'd be stuck paying £10/month forever just to keep access to the tracks I'd downloaded. I still have the (now useless) WMA files as a souvenir!
The modern way of downloading music to keep (MP3s via Amazon, for example), is much better, as the music doesn't expire.
Re:Ironic... (Score:4, Interesting)
There's so many of these retailers who could have owned the future if they got it right. Like you say, HMV was there first and just screwed up the mechanism and didn't support it fully.
Same with Blockbuster, they had a DVD rental by post service in the UK when "LoveFilm" (now Amazon) and Netflix were just a fever dream, but they only did individual rentals and never promoted it for fear of cannibalising the stores (lol). They even made their own films, most notably the Charlize Theron/Christina Rici film "Monster". They had everything they needed to be 2018 netflix and they buggered it up horribly.
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I'd forgotten that little detail too.
Of course given the management, if they'd bought Netflix then Netflix wouldn't be Netflix.
Re:Ironic... (Score:4, Insightful)
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HMV could have killed DRM in the crib. All they had to do was start a massive advertising campaign about how CDs were DRM free and let you rip/mix/burn as much as you like, and how all the download sites were crap low quality overpriced rubbish in comparison.
Once the idea that DRM was shit was in people's heads it could have been dead forever, at least for music and video.
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HMV could have killed DRM in the crib.
Oh really? What special power did they have over any other music seller?
Three letters: "HMV not DRM" (Score:2)
What special power did they have over any other music seller?
A three-letter brand. Just as there had been the anarcho-punk slogan "DIY not EMI" [wikipedia.org], there could have been "HMV not DRM".
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They couldn't do that because format shifting was illegal under UK copyright law until 1st October 2014.
So any advertising campaign encouraging people to rip, mix and burn CDs would have been unlawful and instantly banned by the Advertising Standards Agency.
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In theory yes, but in practice Apple was running the "Rip. Mix. Burn." ads in the early 2000s when the iPod was popular.
Same with VCRs and especially tapes. They used to advertise how many times you could re-record on video tapes using footage of football matches.
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Time shifting is something that has been allowed in UK copyright law since the 1980s, so advertising a VCR that included time shifting wasn't illegal.
Apple didn't really start advertising the iPod in the UK until the iTunes Music Store took off. It was available, but they didn't tell you what you could do with it - it was "hip" silhouette dancing people listening to music, with white earphones and an iPod. Very abstract.
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But Apple was only able to do so after many years of lobbying after having to accept DRM or they would be told to fuck off by the labels.
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Argos and Littlewoods too. They could have been Amazon if only their websites were not total crap. They had a chain of stores that people could have collected from, solving the delivery problem and reducing postage costs to near zero.
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There's nothing ironic about it. HMV simply didn't have any choice since DRM-free music was never gonna be accepted at that time by record labels. That was during the height of their foaming at the mouth over Napster.
And the only reason the "modern way" is better is because Amazon Music opened after the record labels had acquiesced on the DRM issue. Had they tried to open it in the early 2000s they would have had all the same DRM demands that iTunes and HMV had to accept.
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The ironic thing with this story is that 13 years ago, before Spotify and the like, HMV offered digital downloads...The downloads were clunky, required Windows Media Player and if you stopped paying the monthly subscription you lost access to the downloads entirely...The modern way of downloading music to keep (MP3s via Amazon, for example), is much better, as the music doesn't expire.
You're comparing apples to oranges here.
First off, let's set the stage here: We're dealing with a pre-smartphone, pre-streaming internet and device landscape. Spotify doesn't allow you to download songs and play them if you don't pay your Spotify bill, because it's a subscription*. So, how do you enforce a subscription on portable music players that were loaded via a USB cable? *That* is where the DRM comes into play.
Now, the reason this sort of subscription didn't take off is because, in that pre-smartphon
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If Apple hadn't gained such a dominant market position, we'd
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The music executives needed to ditch DRM...If Apple hadn't gained such a dominant market position, we'd still have all kinds of small petty DRM kingdoms in music.
Look, as much as I agree that DRM needed to die (and still does), two points to bring up here:
1.) This was a subscription service. How does one enforce a subscription service without either internet connectivity or DRM? I agree that its demise for permanent downloads was long overdue, but in the context of a subscription service, what alternative is being suggested here?
2.) How is Spotify not DRM? You pay a set fee to access all their music, when you don't pay you lose access. If you use their offline mode,
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If they hadn't have done that,
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Kindle Music uses the download-but-need-to-verify-subscription-to-play model. I played around with it (a big chunk of its library is included with Amazon Prime). Downloaded a few hundred songs to my Kindle to play offline while fishing on my boat. Supposedly it only needs to phone home once a month to keep the downloads playable. It worked when I tested it at home (turned off WiFi and
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It's surprising how much stuff decides it can't work any more when you move to another region too. Anyone who takes regular international trips will be familiar with random media, apps and services deciding that it can't be played in your current locale.
Hilco (Score:3)
They describe Hilco as a restructuring company, this is how that "restructuring" works...
Then sit back ad see what happens, in the unlikely event the business succeeds it can be sold at a further profit to a gullible buyer. If as is more likely the business fails walk away with a big bonus and leave the banks and investors with the loss.
Re:Hilco (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a very biased and simplistic ways of looking at one of the possible outcomes. Or maybe it would happen along the lines of:
1. Be voluntarily appointed as the administrator.
2. Determine what if any of the business can be saved.
3. Inject capital in the form of a high risk loan and a controlling stake of how that loan is spent.
4. Turn the business around into a profit.
5. Recover the loan with interest.
Sometimes you even get number 6: Receive an award for the best turnaround of the decade. Though that isn't relevant in this case. Last time that happened was when this no name company called Hilco was appointed administrator of some music store called HMV 6 years ago and prevented the company from being liquidated. That is a completely different scenario.
In American, what's "calling in administrators"? (Score:1)
In American English, what's "calling in administrators"? This seems like a uniquely British term. Is it like declaring bankruptcy?
Re:In American, what's "calling in administrators" (Score:5, Informative)
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Why is this modded Funny instead of insightful? It's a perfect explanation.
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If only there was like a website or something, where you could type words and phrases you don't know the meanings of and it would sort of tell you and all that.
That'd be just dreamy.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=calling+i... [lmgtfy.com]
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First sentence should end in a question mark. The second isn't actually a sentence, since it has no finite verb in the main clause. Third one has commas in random places, plus names of countries and words derived from them should be capitalized.
You're hardly in a position to pontificate about good writing.
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Well you can go to discogs and buy pretty much any vinyl, cd / cassette in physical form if thats what you need.
How many shops have they got in the UK exactly?
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UK high street is dead. Even the huge clothing stores are struggling or being sold off.
Other countries aren't far behind.
You can accept it, or you can adjust your life to suit.
Another 20 years, you'll have a few huge supermarkets offering virtually everything (usually after inviting big brands into their stores to gain custom and habitualising people to using them, then stripping them for their own in-store brand... Specsavers in your local ASDA? Give it a year), high streets sold off for housing, and eve
Re: Oh well... (Score:2)
Agreed. High street, at best, has to become more like a showroom for stuff, fronting for a big online business.
I was working for an electrical store in '96 when I had a secondment to the head office. I happened to bump in to the Chief Exec and had a chat, I told him he should look at this internet thingy and his reply was "We don't see the internet as a big part of our strategy".
These idiots can be so short sighted it fucking hurts to see them taking home such large salaries.
I also remember seeing a Microso
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I happened to bump in to the Chief Exec and had a chat
Sounds legit.
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Maybe not in your world. I deal with C-level staff regularly.
Didn't bother reading the article. (Score:2)
Their Market share is increasing. But their profits are down. They are Selling CDs, DVDs and Blue rays.
There is a general decline (for good or for bad) in demand of physical digital media, as we are shifting over to streaming services.
So a lot of companies who sold this stuff has stopped doing such, so their market share is increasing in products that less people want to buy.
Back over a 100 years ago. many companies can be making buggy whips, each one being a large growing industry. Each one would have a f
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Unfortunately UBI hasn't had a good test to show that it works. It sounds good on paper, but in practice it hasn't shown to be practical.
What really is needed is increased Adult vocational education and training. There are still a lot of jobs, however they need skills that a lot of people do not have. That retail job that you lost may need to become a call center job, or a home health care nurse.
In many ways it is kinda unfair to load kids with the responsibility to make career choices at the age of 18.
Exceptional management? (Score:2)
So if this is "exceptionally well-run", what do you call it if the market changes were not just anticipated a bit better than this, but also an alternative busines strategy started?
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Big surprise (Score:4, Interesting)
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Ahhh HMV Canada memories (Score:2)
a place where you could go and find lots of electronic music that you wanted but didn't buy because of the "Import Sticker" and $50+ price tag lol. Then Napster happened although FTP and upload/download shares were common between the IRC nerds.
They still sell stuff on disks? (Score:2)
I threw out the optical drives from my computers (never any others) years ago and never missed them.
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Real music is live music. Live musicians make much less than they did before all the ripoffs of recording radio and tv took over.
Yes, I too prefer popping down to my local concert venue when I want a bit of background music as I'm doing the ironing on a Sunday afternoon.
The golden days of CD singles at HMV (Score:2)
I had fond memories of HMV in the 90's/early 2000's before downloads/streaming took over. It was the go-to place to get new CD single releases and the UK prices were amazing back then (99p for 4 tracks - often with 3 non-album new songs - or 99p for 8 remixes of a track).
UK CD singles were such good value that the record industry decided to impose more and more draconian rules to ensure that they'd ultimately die off. Examples included raising the typical prices several times (yes, there were 1-track 3.99 p
2018 .- streaming sales surpass cd (Score:1)