Rush my money to the record shops

[venta]

Crap.

HMV is going into administration.

And if HMV goes, it'll take Fopp with it (I imagine).

And that'll be the end of the big high street record shops.

If it causes an outbreak of independent record shops, then hurrah! I fear it won't. And I like record shops.

I don't browse well online, not for music or for books. I want to pick stuff up, and look at it. I want to own a CD, and a nice cover, and some sleevenotes. I want to be able to wander into a record shop, and listen to what's playing. I want to flick through CDs and see what's on offer.

I'm a dinosaur.

Time for a ceremonial trip to HMV on the way to work in the morning.

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I have heard speculation that whilst shops-as-mini-warehouses (that is, "traditional" shops) are on the way out, they may ultimately be replaced by shops-as-catalogues. People who want to browse things can turn up to these locations and paw through books, discover unexpected CDs and so on, then wave their phones like magic wands and the thing they've bought will be posted to them from a warehouse that has more than one copy.

If anything these might end up being better than old-style shops, because with less space devoted to inventory they can have more shelf space.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Like a sort of neo-Argos. Could work!

Although Argos too are shifting an increasing proportion of stuff through their website these days.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

It's the opposite of Argos, actually. Argos shops have (almost) no products on the shelves but do keep stock for sale on site. These places would have shelves full of products, but no stock for sale on site.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Oh... to me that seems like all the inconvenience of going to a physical location combined with all the inconvenience of having to wait for your goods to be posted. It's like the worst of both worlds!

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Well, if enough people agree with you then this approach will fail. :-)

It's not really the worst of both worlds, though. Because what it does achieve is to satisfy all the requirements in your original post above. Traditional shops may do this to your satisfaction, but if they can't stay solvent then how much people like them is irrelevant. After all, I like free cake, but that's not a viable business model either!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'd certainly be willing to experiment with these new places if they start showing up. Though I think calling them 'shops' would be a mistake. Maybe if I think of them as cool clubs to learn about new stuff they'll seem more appealing!

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Definitely possible. To start with, these places wouldn't be of great value to distributors because the whole point is that once you've found a product you can theoretically order from anyone online (this being the problem at the moment - people browse HMV then order on Amazon). So these places might be more like curated collections. The nicer they are to be in, the more coffee, cake, wine and so on they can sell to the people visiting.

[lnr]

Urgh, except then you still need to deal with couriers!

[venta.livejournal.com]

If they follow the nice-coffee-shop model bateleur and I were talking about above, then maybe your new CDs/books could be delivered to the shop and you could pick them up the next day (and have more coffee and more cake and find more new things while you're there :)

[lnr]

Not too bad for me - I live out of town but work fairly close and can pop in on lunch breaks, though it can be a bit draining. No good at all for Mike - who works even further from the shops than he lives!

[zenithed.livejournal.com]

I gather Amazon are looking into having more physical places where you can pick things up, looks like you can do it at corner shops already: http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/amazon-extends-collection-points-to-4500-convenience-stores-50008955/ Does rely on there being one of the signed up ones nearby though.