HMV RIP?

[Hot Pepsi]

I don't think you're playing devil's advocate so much as putting forward an excellent defence of CDs. [

[One caveat, though: they are not as semi-indistructable as once publicised and I have quite a few which skip or freeze mid-track. But maybe that's the CD player's fault as well.]

I will even go so far as putting forward a slight case for the cassette (slight pun there, I suppose!). I still have quite a few of us and putting one on from time to time, with no real possibility of skipping tracks, forces me to listen to songs that in the past I either missed or didn't take to much, and occasionally I'll realise that it wasn't so bad - or even that it was pretty good but lost in the headlights of better songs - after all.

Compared to downloads or streaming services, CDs take up space, especially in a car, can easily be misplaced or damaged, and cost a lot. A single CD doesn’t cost too much or take up much space, but in the aggregate a collection of them does, especially compared to streaming music stored in the cloud.

And someday somebody will have to move all of those CDs from your house or flat. Maybe it won’t be you. Maybe you’ll be dead. But they’ll have to move out sometime somehow and the boxes of them will be heavy and that person will curse you for it.

Cassettes don’t last, especially if they’ve sat in a car for a long time. The magnetic stuff on the tape becomes unglued or whatever. VHS tapes are even worse, I suppose.

[Sporting]

And someday somebody will have to move all of those CDs from your house or flat. Maybe it won’t be you. Maybe you’ll be dead. But they’ll have to move out sometime somehow and the boxes of them will be heavy and that person will curse you for it.

Someday me or one of my family will have to deal with all the stuff one or more of us have left behind when we die. Unless we live with virtually no personal possessions this is inevitable.

[Sporting]

Cassettes don’t last, especially if they’ve sat in a car for a long time. The magnetic stuff on the tape becomes unglued or whatever.

I have many cassettes which have lasted nigh on 40 years and still going strong, which is long enough for me. Mind you, they've not been sitting in a car.

Sorry you must feel I'm snapping at you but I don't get your seemingly 100% or near enough antipathy to things physical!

[ursus arctos]

I see Reed as championing a vigorous antidote to the constant exhortations to acquire more stuff that are a ubiquitous part of life in these United States in a way that just isn’t the case in other places I’ve lived.

I don’t agree with all of it (we still buy CDs), but I certainly do understand it.

[Sporting]

I understand it too, just not so vigorously!

[DCI Harry Batt]

I don't like stuff.

[WOM]

One of my favourite business truths is that all failure is a failure of management. And one of the most notoriously difficult things to manage is change. Not because we don't see change, but because responding to it is fraught with...well...everything.

If HMV was to survive, it needed to do more than emulate its 'killers' (i.e., online ordering, flexible delivery, streaming, downloading, etc) but become something altogether new. Maybe become a form of 'third place' [to Reed's point] focused on music and popular culture. Maybe a coffee shop where music lovers could 'be'. Maybe more of a bookstore with readings and intimate concerts. Maybe something else entirely.

Sears is a great example of failure of management. They just kept clinging to an outmoded idea in hopes of some magical turn of the tide. Walmart is at least trying to emulate the Amazon game plan, but is also doubling down on doing groceries really well as their new niche. Toronto used to have 50-odd taxi companies. We're down to roughly one since Uber / Lyft, and it's the one that bothered to put out an Uber-like app instead of just moaning about how Uber was unfair.

Our HMV stores are now Sunrise records, which is an older Canadian brand. I went into our local one three times this Xmas shopping season; once with my 16 year old. We left all three times with nothing. She couldn't wrap her head around the idea that you'd need to buy this 'item' when you could stream / download it and then just move on with your life. And she ain't wrong.

I saw this neat/crap painting years ago that showed a blacksmith hammering a horseshoe, and out his open shop door he watches his first car drive by. Dead obvious, but deftly captured, is the moment of recognition that the game done changed.

[WOM]

I don't like stuff.

No shit, Sherlock.

[Prester John]

I used to be a champion of the physical format, but having two young boys under the age of six quickly put pay to that. It's very difficult to maintain an orderly collection in good condition with two restless souls sharing your living space.

Streaming works brilliantly for me. Some time ago I moved all my digital files to Spotify and so virtually my entire collection is readily available there.

[WOM]

As for the HMV / surly staff thing, I thought that was almost the price of admission. Pretty much everything from High Fidelity to comic-book guy is built on the premise of the aloof / condescending record shop staff.

[DCI Harry Batt]

No shit, Sherlock.

Hahahahaha

[ursus arctos]

It is almost as if every element of majoritarian US culture was designed specifically to piss off Ton Ton.

[Beatle Simon]

Maybe it won’t be you. Maybe you’ll be dead.

If public information films make a comeback, HP will definitely be writing them.

[DCI Harry Batt]

It is almost as if every element of majoritarian US culture was designed specifically to piss off Ton Ton.

Where's that "like" button?

[WOM]

What...so you could hover your cursor over it, brow furrowed, in a paralytic state of cognitive dissonance?

[DCI Harry Batt]

MIAOW!

[WOM]

<wink>

[Pietro Paolo Virdis]

I used to be a champion of the physical format, but having two young boys under the age of six quickly put pay to that. It's very difficult to maintain an orderly collection in good condition with two restless souls sharing your living space.

Streaming works brilliantly for me. Some time ago I moved all my digital files to Spotify and so virtually my entire collection is readily available there.

Do yourself a favor and export it all (your playlists) to an Excel file or similar. Every now and then (once every 6 or 12 months), after that. It’s quite simple and only takes a few minutes.

One of these days Spotify - who have not made profit since launched - might shut down overnight and it's not like they will have a hotline ready where you can call in ask them to send you your playlists. It will simply vanish into thin air like a stolen hard drive.
It's not like Spotify and equivalent is the final frontier. Something might replace it tomorrow.

If they shut down, at least you will have a document to use if you want to build them lists on whatever hyped comes next.
This is the downside with digitally stored in a cloud and not on something you can hold in your hand. Which of us haven’t heard of someone sending all pictures taken on their mobile to a cloud, and photos from years back disappeared overnight? The equivalent to coming home from work and watching your house burn down to the ground, with all your family albums inside.

Export the lists today. Especially if you’re up there in the thousands of songs, and have managed to remember songs from way back which you haven’t heard in years. It’s a bastard and very annoying if it happens, and you can’t remember much beyond the 50% core you had there. A simple file in Excel or .csv will be a relief in the midst of all the cursing.

Edit: Spotify actually has a built in feature to sort this export. A simple Google shows how it's done in a few steps

[adams house cat]

I've heard many people ask, I've asked it myself, "What was the first record/CD you bought?" Never heard anyone ask "What was the first tune you downloaded?"

Different values, I guess. And I probably move in the wrong circles.

[Hot Pepsi]

Someday me or one of my family will have to deal with all the stuff one or more of us have left behind when we die. Unless we live with virtually no personal possessions this is inevitable.

Yeah, so you should start shedding it before you go and accumulate as little as possible. You can’t take it with you. It only takes one afternoon cleaning out the garage or basement of an elderly or deceased relative to teach one that harsh lesson.

I have a fair pile of shit in the back of my basement that is not doing me much good but is too good to just toss in a landfill and yet I don’t know where to take it so it can find a good home. So I try, in vain, to keep it organized and I do give away stuff very freely, however.

I’m praying that we figure out soon how to recycle everything efficiently and use way less material. Too much plastic. Too much packaging.

As you can see, I’m very troubled by the problem of “stuff.”

[Hot Pepsi]

I've heard many people ask, I've asked it myself, "What was the first record/CD you bought?" Never heard anyone ask "What was the first tune you downloaded?"

Different values, I guess. And I probably move in the wrong circles.

That’s because people our age got our first album at an age when possessing anything of our own was a big deal and made a big impression. Whereas we started downloading later in life when such things don’t create strong memories.

But I cannot remember either with any clarity. I suspect the first album I bought or was given - on cassette - was Business as Usual by Men at Work, but I’m not certain. I think the first thing I downloaded was something that was being pushed as download only (later releases on CD) by They Might Be Giants, but I can’t recall precisely.

I remember the acquisition of the hardware more than the specific albums - first radio, first cassette player of my own, first CD player, first MP3 player.

[Hot Pepsi]

I see Reed as championing a vigorous antidote to the constant exhortations to acquire more stuff that are a ubiquitous part of life in these United States in a way that just isn’t the case in other places I’ve lived.

I don’t agree with all of it (we still buy CDs), but I certainly do understand it.

This is correct. Thanks. It’s been especially acute for me lately for various reasons.

I also read enough sci-fi and care enough about the natural world to dread a future where we are all just surrounded by mountains of garbage.

I’m not living a full minimalist lifestyle. Not yet anyway. And I haven’t gotten rid of the CDs I do have. But I don’t want to add any more stuff unless it’s cost effective or really necessary.

America’s economy would collapse if everyone did that. But the economy that would rise to replace it would be so much better.


I can see how acquiring media would be attractive in Manhattan or London where there are still great shops that sell it (for now).

On the other hand, storage space is at a premium. You could probably figure out the exact monthly or yearly price of the square centimeters each CD or book is taking up in your place and would find that it’s kinda a lot.

[Hot Pepsi]

Good advice, PPV.

[Sporting]

Hot Pepsi: I am acutely aware of the need for recyling and we - our family - do the very best we can to use as little plastic etc. as possible and it does shame me how supermarkets, food companies, etc. wrap stuff up in far too much other stuff, as it were.

That said, you wrote: "so you should start shedding it before you go and accumulate as little as possible. You can’t take it with you."

True, I can't take it with me. But the point is that a lot of the things I've accumulated I'm either using now or enjoying the fact of being able to use it in the future. I have cleaned out on a couple of occasions things left behind by the deceased and though for obvious emotional and personal reasons this is unpleasant at the same time memories have been brought back, such as when I came across photos stored by my mother which I had never seen - or had forgotten seeing - before.

[Hot Pepsi]

Digitizing and then backing up one’s photo collection is a big chore that so many people say they’re going to do, but don’t.

But storing all those photos in good condition can also be a challenge. In the future, all our pictures will be digital from the beginning and, hopefully, we’ll back up the valuable ones in a few places.

Of course, when pictures were harder to take, develop, and store, each one was more valuable to us. So we have lost that sentimental connection to photos now that we can take endless photos and video everywhere we go. But there’s no way to put that genie back in the bottle.