The silencing of his master's voice

© HMV/James McCauley

What Ho!, viewers. It's been a while since I've blogged, but it's the Christmas holidays and, in a welcome break from work (coupled with food-induced imobility), I'm back in front of a steaming keyboard. What has coaxed me out of a lengthy absence from the blogosphere has been the troubling news today of HMV's second collapse in the space of six years, barely three days after gift cards (or "record tokens", in old money) would have been received by teenagers eager to get out and spend their newly acquired wealth on music, video games, DVDs (or, for the more resolution-sophisticated, a Blu-ray Disc) or any other of the home entertainment-related items HMV is still, evidently, selling via its bricks-and-mortar retail outfits. Except that they wouldn't have been. 

The HMV Group Plc, to give the chain its proper name, has become the first casualty of Christmas 2018 after poor sales and 'footfall' (i.e. the number of us walking through its doors) in the run up to the big day. Should the 97-year-old company disappear completely, it will not only wipe out 2,025 jobs but also it's status as the last remaining high street chain selling physical music and video products, unless you count Sainsbury's knocking out Ed Sheeran CDs and Davina McCall DVDs as a legitimate part of the media purchasing culture.

No one, frankly, should be surprised, as sad as this news is. HMV came close to collapse almost exactly six years ago, as the move towards online streaming led to sales diving by more than 10% and HMV calling in administrators. The company was eventually taken over be restructuring specialists Hilco who closed half the group's stores leaving 125 open, including the flagship shop on London's Oxford Street. The restructuring appeared, at least for a couple of years, to work, and in 2015 HMV even overtook Amazon as the UK's biggest phyisca-format music retailer (though that number also included HMV's online sales). Before that milestone, Hilco executive chairman Paul McGowan told The Telegraph in 2014 that the HMV business was now "very profitable" and did not have a single loss-making store left in the UK. Four years ago things did seem to be looking up: quarterly sales were improving by almost 10% and sales of albums over-the-counter were up by 12 per cent. 

The problem with this picture - and you'll understand me typing this through gritted teeth - is that while there have been improvements in the sale of vinyl records (and hats off to HMV for making vinyl gondolas the centrepieces of its stores), these have been somewhat niche sales by comparison to the relentless rise of online streaming services. Why go out and browse for new music or a DVD when it's there on your phone, iPad or PC at the click of a button? The culture I have enjoyed since my teens of curating music ownership and, later, my video library when VHS came along, has been eroded by the convenience of not having to get off the sofa to go and buy it.

I know there's not much point resisting this, Kanute-like. The inexorable growth of Netflix, Amazon Prime (even at the expense of Amazon's own retail operations), iTunes and all the rest has done for the home media library. Up to a point, of course. I can see the point of no longer buying DVDs and Blu-ray Discs: when you can rent (or 'own' them) in high, 4K quality without them taking up space in your living room shelving, it's a no-brainer. And it's not even an argument to say that there are films and box sets that you do watch again and again, because unless you are the most compulsive-obsessive about The Godfather or The Sopranos, you're not going to sit through either every day of the week.

Music, however, is different. Yes, I can listen to a Beatles playlist on Spotify (as I did, perfectly happily while wrapping my Christmas presents last week) via my iPad, but that is not the same experience. Perverse - and somewhat fetishistic - as it may be, as long as I still get a thrill from buying something new from my local record shop, getting it home, unsleeving it and either putting it on the turntable or in the CD player, I will continue to be that middle-aged bloke who readily parts company with a stupid amount of hard-earned for a 'super deluxe edition' of rare and previously unreleased Tom Petty songs. Thus, I'm quite proud to be keeping my local independent record shop, Casbah Records in Greenwich, in turnover. And, before anyone asks, I'll only order something from Amazon if Graham, Casbah's always helpful co-owner, is unlikely or unable to get it in.

At the time Hilco was claiming that HMV was on the up again, Paul McGowan said that it had strategically focused on offering something that other retailers couldn't, like in-store live performances. That, however, might only have a limited appeal, especially in generating impulse purchases. McGowan was, obviously, correct when he said that clearly Amazon or Tesco couldn't and wouldn't compete with that. But here, however, is where independents do the fan experience better. Banquet Records in Kingston-upon-Thames, annexed its main retail space to create a dedicated performance room, and has also become involved in local promotional gigs by heavyweight acts like The 1975. In a high student catchment area like Kingston, that makes eminent sense and hard to imagine HMV matching.

In 2013 retail analyst Mark Saunders told The Guardian that HMV's business model had "simply become increasingly irrelevant and unsustainable". Then music and film downloads accounted for 73.4% of media purchases. Today that ratio is higher still as Netflix, Apple, Spotify and even YouTube have eaten further into what used to be regarded as "home entertainment", but is now available digitally across everything from mobile platforms to big-screen TVs as, simply, an app. Of course, evolving consumption habits isn't the only set of nails being hammered into HMV's coffin. The British high street is currently a turbulent place to be. Hilco's McGowan said, in a statement, that "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," with the chain's collapse coming on top of retailers like Poundworld, Maplin and Toys R Us entering administration, with others like Superdry, Carpetright and Card Factory issuing ominous profit warnings.

HMV's travails, however, go beyond simply being another victim of high street pressures, even if high rents and low consumer confidence have had their impact. The simple fact is that people are now going no further than an app, a mouse click or a remote control button to acquire home entertainment, even if the industry body, the Entertainment Retailers Association maintains that physical music, video and games products still represent a £2 billion market, with the likes of Sheeran and films like The Greatest Showman contributing.

The question for me is, realistically, how long this market will remain. There is a generation of teenagers which, for the most part, doesn't actually own any music or video. And they're not even paying subscription services, either: YouTube does, it would appear, constitute a large proportion of entertainment consumption for digital-native teenagers and twentysomethings. Seeing my girlfriend's 17-year-old-daughter enjoy listening to music on vinyl is one of life's genuine pleasures, but even I know that she and her friends are following a latent fashion. I, for one, will continue to buy albums, but even I've stopped buying DVDs altogether. Mind you, I very rarely have the attention span these days longer than watching a Mock The Week repeat on Dave, so perhaps I'm losing the ability to do anything more than point a remote control at a set-top box. Maybe, even, I'm the cause of HMV's collapse? I hope not. Sad as it is to see a venerable and historic name go into administration for a second time, reluctantly I've got to accept that it's just the way it is, even if with the  chain's demise disappears the emotional enjoyment of endless Saturday afternoons browsing for new music that I couldn't wait to get home, unpack and play. Forget the arguments about sound and picture quality, it's that fetishistic, tactile experience that will die when the physical media experience finally pops its clogs. Today's news about HMV doesn't half feel like that is accelerating.

Is Apple heading for a mid-life crisis?

I'm an MS-DOS man myself," so I was informed, 26 years ago, by Brian the IT man who'd come to fix an Apple printer in my office which, thanks to my impulsive then-boss, had universally ignored company IT policy and had Macintosh computers installed or every member of the Sky TV press office. We were regarded as freaks for having these small, squat greyish boxes with their tiny screens.

Around the same time the publishing industry was in the throes of revolution. Proper revolution. Desktop publishing was taking over, which meant that anyone working in the media was getting to play with Apple technology, either for composing copy or laying out pages.

The media world, insular beast that it is, fell in love with the Mac. But it was a lonely world to occupy. Microsoft was the king, the PC was still overwhelmingly a business tool and home computer ownership was still rare. Even when Apple ventured, properly, into the consumer technology space, first with its iMac and then the iPod, there was still a latent feeling that it was a niche brand selling expensive devices to a clique of design-conscious (some might even say design-obsessed) geeks and posers.

That, however, as we all know, was about to change. The company that began on April 1, 1976, with Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne selling computer kits to hobbyists - each hand-built by Wozniak - is now the most valuable company in the world, estimated to be worth more than $700 billion with a cash pile of $218 billion. Perhaps more importantly, it's Apple's ubiquity which is the most breathtaking. At last week's Apple 'townmeeting' in Cupertino, CEO Tim Cook revealed that there are now more than one billion active Apple devices in use around the world.

Of course, this has much to do with the incredible growth spurt Apple experienced after the company - under Steve Jobs - launched that first iMac in 1997. It's unique popularising of what had been a dull, beige worktool - coupled with a sprinkling of Jobs fairy dust to talk up the-then nascent "digital lifestyle", was a stroke of genius (and, of course, designer Jony Ive deserves a lot of credit for making the iMac something you wanted to show off, rather than hide beneath a dust cover when not in use).

What followed - the iPod, iTunes, the iPod, iPhone and iPad - until Jobs' death in 2011 was, in relative terms, akin to the rapid spread of human civilisation. The iPhone and iPad, in particular, were genuine game changers (a phrase I hate, but can't ignore in this context). I probably use my iPad now more than any other technology device I own, such is its versatility and convenience. This, though, is the essence of Apple, and probably why my home is full of its hardware. Take, for example, the little Apple TV. Even though it is, to all intents and purposes, a screenless iPhone, it, too, is versatile and immensely convenient: Netflix, iTunes, YouTube and my music collection and much, much more all there in that little black hockey puck hidden beneath the TV. Or my current iMac - a machine I don't really regard as a PC but as a thin but nourishing slice of design and technology excellence.

However, not everything in my walled Apple garden is rosy. iTunes has now become a bloated mess, with Apple Music - a clunky attempt to take on streaming services like Spotify - lacking any relevance to us earlier Apple adopters who liked the triumvirate of the iMac, iTunes and an iPod to easily managed music collections. And in promoting the iPad Pro as a 'PC killer', there's every chance that it might start to cannibalise sales of its own line of MacBooks. As delightfully thin as a MacBook Air is, the 9.7-inch iPad Pro is pretty close to replacing that, too.

And then there's the Apple Watch. Really, are they being bought in quantity? Are we that in need of convenience that we can't be bothered to pick up our phone to read our e-mail or retrieve a boarding pass? With this, Apple have over-stretched themselves. Under Jobs, the company found a way of selling snow to the eskimo: computers, digital music players and mobile phones existed long before Apple applied their touch to them, but each time they managed to come up with a compelling - and often impulsive - reason for you having to own one. Not with the watch.

Apple does have some history in launching things people don't want, or don't want just yet (the Apple Newton and their 'cube' Mac computer for a start), so there's every chance that the Apple Watch may develop into a bigger business. And that is what it needs, desperately. The new iPhone SE and indeed the iPad Pro 9.7 may keep revenue ticking over as replacement sales, but there is a genuine sense that the Apple magic has plateaued.

Businesswise, there is still plenty of potential for Apple in developing markets like China and other parts of Asia, where disposable incomes are increasingly in range of Apple pricing (it still amazes me how Apple could become some dominant given that their products still command a mighty brand premium). But what is clearly lacking from Apple is a vision of its future.

We can safely assume that there will be an iPhone 7, perhaps in September or next year, followed by an iPhone 8, 9, 10 and so on. iPhones will get even thinner (probably dispensing with the headphone jack, thus forcing us all into buying new headphones...) to the extent that they will cease to feel like phones at all. Similarly, the iPad will continue to get thinner and lighter, more powerful and better suited to productivity, thus fulfilling Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller's prediction that the PC is under threat from the tablet. But in neither product lines is there any sense of true evolution, apart from design and performance improvements.

In the Mac department, Apple trundles along. MacBooks will continue to be popular with students and design types and iMacs will continue to be the choice of those who need a desktop and prefer it to be stylish (such as the White House, if House Of Cards is to be believed...). However, the Mac range accounts for less than 9% of Apple's annual revenue. Ironic, given that it represents the company's origin.

So, as it turns 40, Apple faces a mid-life crisis of sorts. Like many in their 40s, life can be good: a comfortable income and a healthy career. But as with many when they hit 40, questions start to emerge. Is this all life has to offer? Could there be more?

In converging computing and consumer electronics, Apple may have hit the motherlode - and the stratospheric financials underline this. But they are also discovering - as both traditional computing and consumer electronics manufacturers have found - that when everyone owns the 'must have' keeping the cash registers working is the biggest challenge. The consumer electronics industry, in some part, has been usurped by Apple. Bar the screen, my Apple TV box alone provides all the content that three or four separate devices used to provide. This has been the existential challenge for the CE industry now for nearly two decades, reflected in the fact that the likes of Panasonic, Hitachi, JVC, Sharp and even Sony have contracted or even disappeared completely as Samsung, with its deep (and riskily-so) pockets have taken over. Philips, my old company, has sold off much of its CE product ranges, and while innovation continues to be vibrant in, for example, its TV business, it can't be fun competing any more.

Apple long ago stopped acting as a computer company in the consumer world. In some respects, it has invented a category all of its own, somewhere in the midst of making products that serve lifestyle, entertainment and productivity needs. But that still doesn't guarantee a future. Plenty of big technology brands have fallen by the wayside as markets have matured and standalone devices that could have been milked for money have become obsolete.

We are now coming to the end of the first digital era, one that was defined by portable content, miniaturisation, and the Web. Around the corner lies the 'Internet of Things' and 'Machine-to-Machine', in which sensors and devices fragment and talk to each other autonomously. Some have predicted that the smartphone in its current guise could be obsolete by the beginning of the next decade. That's only four years away. For Apple, who's iPhone represents almost 70% of its income, that's a future that will have people within the company's shiny new spaceship HQ in Cupertino thinking very long and hard about where they want to go over the next 40 years.