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.