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

[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.