The other day The Guardian printed an opinion piece by Penny Anderson about the death of HMV; an event which is going to cost over 2000 people their job. Anderson, a writer and artist (nope, not heard of her either til now) makes the case that the death of HMV means that smaller record shops can serve ‘true’ music fans as if the death of HMV means all those ‘real’ music fans can stop being held back.
This sneering pish can be summed up as well, sneering pish. Yes, HMV made huge mistakes and yes, they’ve failed to deal with the changing times, but to claim HMV was never about ‘true’ music fans speaks more about Anderson’s desperate urge to paint themselves as a hip, edgy outsider than a requiem for a business which in fact has been helping new music develop over the years.
I used to spent lots of time in HMV over the years and ever dabbled with the idea of applying to work there at one point in the 80’s.
HMV helped nurture me. Without it I’d have had the sketchier Virgin or the masses of indie shops which were great but utterly unforgiving in terms of customer service. I shopped there for decades til around four or five years ago I got a high speed internet connection and found I could stick all those DVD’s on external hard drives the size of a boxset DVD. Sure, I buy BluRay’s but physical media is something I buy less and less but I’ll miss the deals or the collectors items HMV used to produce and of course, I’m sorry for the thousands being laid off in uncertain times. I’m not going to be essentially a cunt celebrating it as a good thing for ‘real’ music fans.
But this is the Guardian of the 21st century where clickbait bullshit from wankers is their business model…
My Little Underground 