A year later the first of a series of acquisitions would arrive with the purchase of book chain Ottakers, which subsequently merged with Waterstones to give hmv ownership.
Then in came the global financial crash. High street retailers were some of the hardest hit in the chaos that ensued, with many long-established names such as Woolworths, who had once been a competitor, disappearing from view. Music retailer Zavvi, who had taken over the chain of stores previously run by Virgin, also retreated to an online-only presence as the harsh realities of the situation started to bite. By this point, however, hmv was still large and resilient enough to ride the initial wave of fallout from the crash and even expanded further into the territory into live music, purchasing promoter Mean Fiddler and forming MAMA Group, which would run festivals such as Global Gathering and The Great Escape, as well as purchasing the Hammersmith Apollo.
Eventually, though, a combination of steadily falling sales of physical media due to the rise of downloading and the emergence in of Spotify and then other streaming services such as Netflix - as well as other economic factors such as rising rents and changes in UK tax law that dented the profitability of its online sales - all began to take their toll.
In hmv closed 40 of its stores and 20 Waterstones stores as it began to downsize, and the following year also sold the recently acquired Hammersmith Apollo and its majority share in MAMA Group. Finally, early in , after more than 90 years on the high street, hmv collapsed into administration for the first time.
Venture capitalists and turnaround specialists Hilco purchased hmv in and one of its first big moves was a symbolic one. More changes followed as the business re-shaped itself to fit the challenging new climate, with a decline in CD sales offset by a resurgence in the popularity of vinyl, which began its return to the shelves.
A new, editorially-focussed website was launched and hmv once again began to focus on the live in-store events that had been such an important part of its history.
A new transactional website, allowing music and film fans to buy online once again, followed in This time, though, it took less than a month to find a new owner. So is this the beginning of another years? So what of the future?
Why has hmv survived when so many others have fallen? Challenges remain, of course, but as there are music lovers, film lovers and those who love to share those passions with others, and as long as hmv can continue to provide a space for people to enjoy those experiences, we think the future looks — and sounds — pretty good. In the beginning… It may be a full century since the first hmv store opened at Oxford Street in London, but our story actually goes back even further than that — in fact, you could say that our story really begins on May 20 in Hannover, Germany, with the birth of a man named Emile Berliner.
Berliner Gramophone, c. Enter the Dog… Looking to decorate the offices of their new London headquarters, Owen came across an intriguing painting by an English artist named Francis Barraud. So they called him Nipper. New genres in Africa, a really big fire, and war… Ever hear the one about the Indian who went to Africa and accidentally started a whole new genre of music?
Turning 75, Three-day weeks, and Never Mind the Bollocks…. The store, at 50, square feet of selling space, earned a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's largest music store. The company's original Oxford Street store remained in operation, however.
In , the company opened its first foreign store, in Mississauga, Ontario. The Canadian operation was a quick success, prompting the company to roll out its store format across the country.
By the late s, HMV Canada represented nearly stores. Yet HMV's effort to crack the U. Other markets proved equally elusive for the company, such as France, which it entered in the early s, then quickly exited, and Germany. More successful for the company were its excursions to the Asia Pacific, and especially to the Japanese market. Launched in Tokyo in , the company's Japanese branch grew quickly, and, at 40 stores, claimed second place among international operations.
Yet the company's product mix was already beginning to shift, as it added video and then video game sections to capture a share of these rising markets. In , however, the company gained a new branch when parent Thorn EMI added the Dillons bookstore chain. In another expansion move, HMV entered the music recording industry in , when it released its first compact disc compilation.
HMV continued to add new titles in a similar vein through the s, based on its access to EMI's strong backlist. In just six years, it doubled in size and became the UK's largest music retailer. Our Price grew from its humble beginnings in London's Finchley Road, specialising in cassettes and eight tracks, to takeover as the country's second-biggest music seller after Woolworths, and Richard Branson opened his flagship Virgin Megastores a stone's throw from HMV on Oxford Street in But come the s, with the introduction of the compact disc and a 50,ft flagship store opening in a new Oxford Street premises, HMV was back in the game.
The chain was at the heart of the invention of in-store appearances by the biggest acts of the day. Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson, Madonna, David Bowie and Kate Bush were just some of the multi-million selling artists to grace its stores, signing CDs and playing exclusive sets for those who managed to squeeze in between the record racks. The s saw more growth in sales for HMV and more expansion as the rise of grunge and hip hop dominated the charts.
The chain opened its th store in and McCartney returned to Oxford Street to re-launch its flagship, with more than 5, people turning up to watch. And as the DVD format rose in popularity, HMV jumped onboard, helping the company expand to more than stores by In the s, more stars continued to flock to the shops to sell their wares, including Beyonce, Amy Winehouse and Lady Gaga.
But along with new music, it was the decade that saw the launch of Apple's iPod, and the digital revolution had begun. I met the lady at our Laboratory when she came to sing in our Gramophone, and was impressed by her sharpness and brightness. On 8 November, Fred recorded the singing of two teenaged nautch girls aged 14 and 16 — called Shoshimukhi and Fanibala, who kept their faces covered throughout the recording.
Two days later, he recorded Gauhar Jaan singing a thumri. That became the first commercially recorded song in the history of Indian music. Binodini Dasi was the famed Nati Binodini of Calcutta, who had the much-chronicled run-ins with the mystic Swami Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. They set up a plant at Sealdah, near to the eponymous railway station which still exists.
By July , the factory started manufacturing of records. Soon, the factory was assembling machines and manufacturing discs not only for India but for the neighbouring Burma and Ceylon. Many new record labels had set up shop in Calcutta and across the country. As early as , more than 75 brands and labels had flooded the Indian market.
HMV was concerned that its artists were also recording for the competition, sometimes re-recording the same songs they recorded for the Gramophone Co.
By the mids, the Sealdah factory was bustling with activity. In , Nobel Laureate and polymath Rabindranath Tagore was invited there to test the new electrical recording system by recording there. That day, it took the poet extraordinaire three takes to record a rendition of his own poem Choddosho Shaal The Year But it was soon felt that it was ill-equipped to handle the latest recording technologies.
Lata Mangeshkar was the first to organise other singers like her and put pressure on the music labels such as HMV to start crediting the singer on the records. Image via WikimediaCommons. This led to the growth of professional playback singers.
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