As can HMV at times too but would be a shame to see it go

Will not get better when Hmv goes….

I hope the dog gets rehoused anyway and not put down.

I read somewhere that Apple have an eye on the HMV Grafton street premises for their first Dublin store.

Should that not be an “i” lol

Tower records is a independently owned shop hence the higher prices.! Support the smaller guy before the big multinationals .!!

Where u read that?????

That i agree with, I read a great piece with a former Indie record store owner who said you have to sell CD’s because it’s the physical media most people want so it gets them in but there is no margin in it. In store he pushed vinyl big style, gets the collectors in on top of the normal shoppers plus there are much bigger margins with it. Plus a 12″ record is a truly awesome thing, if only they could find a way to stop vinyl records degrading every play I’d be on board in a huge way, the sound from a new one is something to behold.

Sad to see Fopp go…I used to do alot of shopping in the one in Glasgow. Great place for vinyls too.

Oh no!!! I’d forgot fopp were bought out by them!! The amount of money the one off market street in Manchester took from me when I lived there!! That’s even sadder than the core business, they were cool stores!

All i can say is a sad day if it does go especially for a company which has been trading for near on 60 years ,high streets slowly being destroyed sure Limerick city centre is like a ghost town these days

True, sad day if it does close and as for Limerick City/Centre it’s no help to high street stores like these who need footfall and people, the city is dead. Go to City Centre about once a yr as a “must go/ have to go” and that’s at Xmas. Just for the sake of saying was in the city.

@gerard if that was the love/hate box set u were looking for its cause hmv don’t deal with rte anymore as rte won’t allow there DVDs to be put on sale

Yea before Xmas ’twas Love/Hate but can’t bide well for a big company like HMV if they don’t deal with the main media group of a country like RTE who put out loads of there series on DVD ?? But had similar Fob off last wk over Revenge box set. Got told by limerick store we only got 3 copies, underestimated DEMAND ???? Writing on the wall…..

Agreed I was UN both limerick stores last week the X sticker sale reminds me if when zavvi closed down in the cresent with 25% off all stock, I really hope it stays open, I’m hoping that this is just the hmv board putting pressure in there banks to restructure there loans and keep moving forward, they could do with a down scale

Say them at that X sticker stuff last week in the Cresent and was wondering what they were up to ?? It looked very ODD……

Hate to say it but I reckon the Irish wing of the company will be the first to get the chop dramatically if not completely rid of. They’ll want to keep their key stores in the UK, where the footfall will be higher.

They’re not accepting gift vouchers anymore

I did last week thankfully !! But as a company they surely knew they were in trouble before today and at Xmas the gave out vouchers for money off in there own stores !! Found my own receipt from per Xmas and ’twas €5 voucher off purchase over €35 (to be spent in January) which is a lot, don’t know if the voucher increased if u spent more than what I did pre exam ?

Fully Agree Mac. It’s nice to open the cd and look at the artwork/booklet!

You are so right!

Flicking through the DVDs and CDs doesn’t save any businesses, if once you get home you illegally download/buy online said movie/song.

It may sound nice and old fashioned saying you love flicking through the selection in a bricks and mortar store, but clearly not enough people actually put their money where their mouth is or this situation (and the many casualties in this industry which have gone before it) wouldn’t be happening.

The amount of great albums i have bought without intending to after a day of flicking in HMV!!

If they had taken the business online when the new market emerged then they’d be in a different situation but just like other bricks and mortar stores they thought they were invincible. I feel sorry for the staff. And I do have many memories of the Cork store. Spent quite a fortune there when I was young. But times change…

It’s not worth saving,within 5years cd’s will be in the past.
ITunes/mp3/youtube all more competitive and you don’t have to travel to a shop

Modern technology will see many more companies fold in the future.
Take for instance Netflix.
They are a most serious competition to the likes of Extravision etc.
Entertainment business must be one of the most competitive to date.

Apparently stores have been instructed not to accept gift vouchers from tomorrow morning. Two weeks after Christmas, that’s beyond cynical.

I hope physical music never dies away MVM, it has a magic that computer files living in a cloud never will. The anticipation of waiting for an album to come out, buying it on the way into school/work, checking out the booklet and artwork all day during breaks and the trip home and then finally playing it when you get in. That not to mention the tinny sound of mp3s when played at anything approaching a loud volume and joy of actually owning something real and tangiable. Hopefully Tower can ride this storm, they’re all music fans have left in Dublin now.

@josoph,I do agree with what you are saying I still buy the odd cd but most music I get is downloaded for free

*joseph

Yeah, I can’t bring myself to download music illegally and if I’m paying i want the physical product. Would only use iTunes for the odd EP or single that was only available online.

I see what you’s mean about cd’s becoming obsolete but I don’t thing that’s the problem. I buy most my albums on vinyl because I prefer having a physical format rather then just a downloaded copy. This might sound sappy but I think you connect more with a physical copy you have to look after but I haven’t bought a CD in years. A lot of small, indie, record stores are doing ok for themselves. Thing it’s hitting the chains worse now as they put so much money into stock and locations.

Vincent ya better hope they don’t ban vouchers cause otherwise I’ll be marching out of there with that wire box set so help me god!!!!

Thats fair enough and i see uv got loads of likes there so i dont know why im taking you on.. But im 18 and no-one i know buys cds, at least not many, everyone has thousands of songs on their ipods these days and they are all free downloads.. Im just a normal person at my age, not a criminal :p if you pay for music youre just seen as wasting money.. Clearly you have traditional views of having a hard copy.. Cd players are outdated, people have docks for their ipods instead.. I got a box set of love/hate for xmas.. When i showed people they asked “why didnt you just watch it online”..

Sad but true. Anyone with a bit of cop on would have seen this, they’ve veered towards the technology end of things in recent times, too little too late I’d imagine.

Peter I hate to break it to you but copyright theft is illegal! The reason I won’t do it isn’t some kind of moral crusade to not break any laws ever, it’s that I’m an enormous music fan and one I want the artists to make money from their efforts and two I want it to still be financially viable for artists to make music and for people to nurture and promote them, if it isn’t all we’re left with is manufactured pap which has its market but has no artistic or musical merit. Don’t get me wrong I’m not some kind of crusty old Luddite, I’m 29 and part of the original Napster generation, I see the advantages of mp3s and adore my iPod for commuting and in the car but I wouldn’t play an mp3 through my stereo in a billion years, sounds pretty crap once it gets up loud, if physical media was to die out I would be hunting lossless versions of albums online and would wirelessly hook the library up to my computer with AirPlay or whatever has replaced it by then.

Always found HMV to be a bit cheaper than the others on the launch week. Recently picked up a WiiU and it was 30euro cheaper in HMV than in GameStop for the basic model and 50euro cheaper for the Premium model.

Ya hmv are always cheaper for games in the first month, forza was €42 at launch it’s still €58 in GameStop

What really shocked me was how cheap they are in comparison to steam, you would expect steam as the online equivalent to be cheaper in line with an iTunes or amazon mp3 store but far from it. Football Manager 2013, €25 on disc in HMV, online on steam €50!

Back up back up back up. Oh yeah don’t forget to back up your data.

Anything bought from the iTunes store is automatically stored in the cloud so you should be able to download it an unlimited amount of times

BACK UP!!

You can redownload up to 3 times which is a con if u buy it you should have unlimited acess to it but yet again it has to be said if you buy something in iTunes you don’t own it you just own the rights to download it 4 times

The staff have been ordered not to accept them

Waffler – HMV will still be trading tomorrow. Voucher holders are in a precarious position, they are technically at back of the queue – only bright light is purchases made via credit card may be eligible for refund.

True, a few more years and there will be more and more high street store going online with one or two flagship stores in say Dublin and Belfast. Bye, bye city centers as you know them.

Might be too late word has it the staff have been told not to accept them from close of business tonight .

I think our local high streets and shopping centres are going to look very different in another 30 years.

High Streets eh? Irish misnomer notwithstanding, terrible shame about HMV, some of my favourite shops to ‘lose’ an hour in.

Yep, empty

You can buy albums online with HMV

pub?

Dont know how game closed they were way cheaper than gamestop. Cant wait till they close

Game closed because they were much more expensive on new release titles and GameStop being an american company had lots of deals done with developers for exclusive dlc and packaging, also gamestop killed game on 2nd hand games, in fact it’s probably the reason GameStop is still there cause since game left the market GameStop have upped all there prices

I always bought my games elsewhere. They’re the dearest around, even for the second hand games they’re always about €5-10 more. I don’t understand how a massive chain is always more expensive than everyone else.

Customer service killed Game and price is killing HMV. Soon GameStop will be the only real place offering physical copies of games as a core part of business.

For physical shopping for games, places like CEX will win out over all the above.

not just, the effects of internet technology, itunes, netflix has done a lot of harm too, its the whole online thing.
even bookstores, even printers! ipads, .pdfs, .epub files, apps, the whole bloody lot. more and more people just don’t want clutter in their lives. where can you put it all?

exactly, and the problem is we’re not, we’re over populating. jobs for everyone? i think not. i’m glad i won’t be around to see it, madness.

Indie labels sell to indie stores on a sale/return policy, HMV buy the CDs outright. The head of Domino records was quoted as saying it could affect labels like his in a big way and he is lucky enough to have a headline act in the Arctic Monkeys.

But when you buy an album from iTunes you don’t actually own it. iTunes do. So save hmv

€24 for an album!!! Where did you pull that figure from!!! Even in the tiger they were only hitting €20, which was still ridiculously expensive. Most new releases in there now are between €10.99 and €13.99, maybe a couple of quid extra if you want the fancy one in a gatefold sleeve with the extra DVD and all that jazz!!! And €15 on iTunes is a big big big bit of an exaggeration too!!!

iTunes is crap, most artists are now uploading their music themselves on their own servers to cut out the likes of these making money off them. Flac and Wav are now becoming the demanded standard, lossless quality. When something new comes out, go find that artists web page for more info. Bandcamp is also another new one, payment goes directly to the artist. Hate itunes mp3 quality, go buy it elsewhere if you can, hopefully from the artist homepage.

The latest NOW compilation was €24 before Xmas
Was €15 on iTunes

Ah compilations are always that bit more i suppose, I didn’t think of them, wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole to be fair, fair play. Still you are getting usually 40 odd songs for that amount, I wouldn’t argue that was extortionate.

Not my cup of tea either but if kids can go into hmv buy €25 iTunes credit and then buy lets say the NOW album plus another album from iTunes for the same money as HMV charge for the NOW CD you can see why as a business it’s failing.

YouTube and mp3 converter software that’s free to dl every song you could possibly want

perfect example, the new Scott Walker album, buy it direct from his label 4AD as mp3 for $8, on itunes? €8.99, thats $12! but on his label site you can also buy the Flac for $10! still less than itunes and far superior quality, you can make your own mp3s from the flac files later with any free converter online such as XLD.

Don’t get me wrong i have great sympathy for the employees. I think what you are seeing though is people reacting to yet another sign of the disintegrating of the area of the entertainment that in some ways means more to more people than any other.

HMV have provided a great service to the domestic Irish economy in the form of employment and tax revenue for the economy. Buying product online may be better value for you individually but in the bigger scheme of things all the cash you spend on home entertainment is leaving our country and heading elsewhere. Unfortunately this is not a good thing for our economy.

Sorry Eddie, but the staff were just hawking plastic boxes. HMV were never passionate record shop people. It was just cheap staff in t-shirts, punching the buttons on the till. I’d give Tower records staff a lot more credit, but still it was just a chain, nobody had a real passion or sense of pride over their stock like a vintage wine merchant.

We should instead value more our tiny one shop bookstores and music retailers who have real rarities or inspired stock on the shelves to inspire purchasers. True lovers of their content. Winding Stair Bookshop, Freebird Records etc.

I agree the indies were the guys who provided a nice human touch to the music buying experience. I always encountered friendly staff at HMV though too.

Isn’t Tower independent?

WHY DIDN’T YOU WARN THEM?! OMG! LOL! smileyface. FFS. Perhaps shoppers, especially seasonal shoppers, don’t always check brands/shops of long-standing for signs of imminent economic demise, despite it being so obvious to the learned.

Myself and girlfriend got eachother the same box set. I returned one and they would only give me vouchers. this was a couple of weeks ago. absolute bullshit.

Of you compare the prices of new albums in hmv with that of iTunes they work out either tha same or cheaper in store if the album has more than 14 tracks, 99% of new albums in hmv are 13.99 in I tunes most albums work out a euro a song some time 1.29 so hmv has been competitive for the last few years

You did in your h*le pay 40-50 for a new release movie. 25 at the very outside.

I think some blu rays hit about €30 when the format was new but €50 is a shocking exaggeration.