Why The Death of HMV is Really The Death of Discovery & Choice...

For the second time in under 6 years HMV has entered administration and risks being the next Woolworths, Toys R Us or JJB Sports.  And for the second time in as many years I’ve seen comments such as ‘Good’, ‘About Time’ and other negative opinions flood my social channels.

Before I address this, it’s worth reflecting on why have they failed a second time. The illusion here is that HMV wasn't successful.  It was. HMV sold 31% of all physical music in the UK in 2018 and 23% of all DVDs and Blu-rays. Its market share consistently grew month by month throughout the year.  The problem is that the overall market is shrinking at such a dramatic pace (as a whole it’s predicted to fall by 17% during 2019) and the increased cost of running the business has crippled its margins (HMV paid ￡15 million UKP each last year).  

So is HMV leaving the high street REALLY good thing?

Taking out the human factor (the 2200 jobs that are at risk and many more in the wider supply chain) there are bigger concerns at play.  There is an illusion that HMV is in direct competition with or a threat to independent record shops. An idea that the decline of a behemoth like HMV will aid indie shops and the high street. That may be true (although those indie shops will never fill the job void HMV will leave behind) but, in real terms the death of HMV will have a much wider impact on both music and film.

Imagine this… 10 years ago if you wanted to pick up a DVD or CD you could go to Blockbuster, Woolworths, Virgin, HMV or many other outlets. There were shelves upon shelves to browse, catering for all tastes from Art House to Blockbuster, Independent to Anime, Hip-Hop to Trance and beyond. You could find releases from 1950 to today, across Vinyl, CD, DVD and more. You’d have tens of thousands of choices.  

Jump forward to a world without HMV.  We’ve already lost Blockbuster, the mom and pop video store, Woolworths, and Virgin/Zavvi. There’s a small selection in most supermarkets, I know, but, that probably represents a minor percentage of what a shop like HMV can stock.

But we have Netflix, right? And Prime Video? Surely that makes up the gap. It does - to a point.  Try searching for ‘The Rock’ (not the actor in the 1996 Michael Bay film). You won’t find it on either. Try your local supermarket? Not there. Try HMV. There it is on DVD, DVD Double pack, BluRay ready to be picked up and taken home.  

Yes, you can get it on Amazon but even with Prime that’s delivery tomorrow at the earliest.  And this is the same with music.

There’s a 'discovery' issue here also…

I used to run a media production company.  Two of our films were released in the UK. Without Hollywood studio style promotion how can people actually SEE your film? Supermarkets rarely stock lower budget films and when they do, the deal is usually pay to display. This is where HMV and Virgin came in - the eponymous 5 for ￡25 offer. Our films were always the fifth choice. You’ll pick up the latest Transformers or Mission Impossible but, after you have the four films you really want, that's when you start to decide based on cover or title. Looking back to the heady days of the 80s, before the IMDB or Empire, I used to decide what to rent based purely on title or cover. It’s how I found Never Too Young To Die,  Stone Cold and Empire Records. It was this impulse buy discovery that lead our second film to sell in excess of 40,000 copies in the UK (those numbers would be under 5,000 now).

I love Indie shops and I try to support them when I can but, the death of HMV hammers the final nail in the coffin for archived physical media and, more specifically, Indie media.  Independent record shops won’t stock 5000 + DVDs or CDs.

Oh and from an artist's perspective Spotify or Netflix offers tiny rewards compared with physical sales.  You could command a ￡100k pre-sale back in the early 2000's for a single territory (Say the USA) on a good low budget film. Now? Nowhere near that.

Losing HMV is a blow for choice and blow for discovery. It’s no surprise that when HMV were heading towards the cliff, once again, it was the record and media companies they went to first - HMV knew they were among the few to appreciate the negative affect their death would have on the wider industry.

When HMV goes (and it will - few white knights will jump in to save this brand a second time) it will be a loss for consumer, for artist and for choice.

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