Tuesday 11 January 2011

"Do you have a soul?" "That all depends"

A couple of musically themed articles/pieces I've read today.  One writes off "rock" as a genre, and the other writes off the record shop due to the recent announcement of HMV closing.

I guess the second is more nostalgia for record shops of the past, like the one in High Fidelity.  The author yearns for the old days of spending hours in a record shop surrounded by other music fanatics and thinks that these are disappearing just because HMV is closing 60 stores.  Whilst I admit there is increased competition due to the internet and as a result the industry of a high street music store is definitely in decline I don't think this has particularly effected HMV.  I don't know their revenue split between high-street and online but it increased by 3% in 2010 and profit after tax rose by 11% and nothing in their financials gives me cause for concern, so people should stop digging their grave.  It would be foolish for them to withdraw from the high-street all together because it would reduce their exposure and the public would probably assume that it went the way of Woolworths.

That said, although the author specifically mentions HMV he is obviously not talking about the soulless corporate giant that it now is.  I do still go there but they are over priced and hardly offer that High Fidelity experience.  These places do exist though, they are just much harder to find.  I share Mr Manzoor's

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