RIP HMV

When I saw the news yesterday that HMV had gone into administration I can honestly say I'm absolutely gutted. Not just because I have a fiver's worth of points on my loyalty card but at the loss of a 'music hub'.

HMV and music shops like it have  always been a haven to me. Here in Eastbourne we didn't actually get HMV until around winter-time 2005. I was so excited as prior to that it was an exotic breed that I only say on trips to London or Brighton. The only music shop that we had in Eastbourne once MVC and Ourprice (ask your parents) closed down was Powerplay, an independent store that was my Mecca when I was at college but rather lost it's appeal when I got a job working in a call centre for its sister company (no amount of CD discount is worth that!).

What I loved about HMV was the ability to have a good old fashioned rummage through the CD racks, the small smile of recognition when you realise someone else is looking at the same section/artist as you (or the opportunity to hide the X-factor flavour of the week albums behind something I considered musically superior in the knowledge that the kids will thank me one day).

I loved the delight of catching sight of CDs that I'd had to get on import from the states a few months previously, glad that the bands must be catching on over here. I always felt a state of calm in-store, around fellow people just like me. I could have spent hours in there if Helen or Mum hadn't hoicked me out, in fact they began referring to it as 'the five minute shop' which I felt was most unfair.

There is a burgeoning set of Vinyl shops popping up here and in the surrounding area, we have The Vinyl Frontier https://en-gb.facebook.com/vinylfrontierrecordshop/, Pebble Records https://pebblerecords.co.uk/ and my favourite Resident in Brighton http://www.resident-music.com which is absolutely fantastic news for independent music and for old people like me who love vinyl. However truth be told, I always feel a little uncool and awkward in the stores, years of being told that I was weird for liking different music to everyone else I imagine or the time a classmate tried to take my Blink 182 album off of me "I need to take this away as you're not cool enough to like them". So I do spend a lot of time looking more at my feet rather than the records 😂.

I think HMV's appeal to me was as a everyman kind of store, however awful your taste in music was (sorry, apparently I'm a music snob) you could find it there or they could order it in for you. If you were lucky enough to get a knowledgeable staff member on the till they'd recommend other albums/artists you may like based on your purchase.

Obviously the rise of downloads and streaming has done for HMV and the other high street music retailers, my friends are incredulous that I still mainly buy CDs (I will download a single song that I like on occasion) and laugh at my inability to work Spotify. Perhaps it's a boat I've missed because of my age or perhaps it's the impersonality of streaming and download services, I like to physically 'hold' my music. Of course I love being able to carry my entire music library around with me on my MP3 player (although don't get me started on the teeny, tiny storage space on the only ones on the market now) but I love the satisfaction of having a huge CD collection that I can lovingly flick through.

I'll be genuinely sad to see HMV go it's like the loss of an old, faithful friend and who doesn't love a company with a cute dog in their logo!!!

RIP HMV you will be missed.

Love Jen
XxxX