Remaining Irish HMV stores to shut within months as retailer takes on Netflix giant

Jimmy Garlic · 23-07-2016 04:51PM

MilesMorales1 wrote: »

Makes me wonder how bookshops have largely survived and not been swallowed up by the digital age.

Because Kindles etc failed miserably. They were unpleasant to use, hard on the eyes, and almost useless in strong sun. Physical books are winning back the ground they lost because they are superior. Physical music formats will be back too, real music fans will want more and more physical copies as time goes on as it's a more reliable way to keep a music collection. Digital files are fine for disposable, forgettable, corporate formula ''music'' of little or no artistic value such as the crap produced by Beyonce etc, but not for real music, I want to be able to hold a Pink Floyd album in my hands, be able to read the sleeve, keep it in an actual music collection etc.

timthumbni · 23-07-2016 05:35PM

Jimmy Garlic wrote: »

Because Kindles etc failed miserably. They were unpleasant to use, hard on the eyes, and almost useless in strong sun. Physical books are winning back the ground they lost because they are superior. Physical music formats will be back too, real music fans will want more and more physical copies as time goes on as it's a more reliable way to keep a music collection. Digital files are fine for disposable, forgettable, corporate formula ''music'' of little or no artistic value such as the crap produced by Beyonce etc, but not for real music, I want to be able to hold a Pink Floyd album in my hands, be able to read the sleeve, keep it in an actual music collection etc.

What kindle did you try? I prefer books myself but the kindle I thought was great in the sun. The kindle tablet is different but the actual kindle reader is fine in the sun.

Irish_rat · 23-07-2016 05:55PM

Spartan08 wrote: »

I was at the Crescent too. Everything is 30% off off the label price, even when iytsays something like 50% off on the item, it's 30% off the sale price

I must go there Monday.

Spotify is great don't get me wrong. I use it daily for years now and the customer support is excellent too.

But you can't beat the quality on vinyl. I love collecting some of the best albums out there. Some artists have signed copies and handcrafted which is a nice touch IMO. You are also giving support directly to your favourite bands and its really appreciated.

Jimmy Garlic · 23-07-2016 09:33PM

timthumbni wrote: »

What kindle did you try? I prefer books myself but the kindle I thought was great in the sun. The kindle tablet is different but the actual kindle reader is fine in the sun.

One of the first ones that came out. I didn't find it great. Wife got it in 2009. Maybe they have improved.

timthumbni · 23-07-2016 09:41PM

Jimmy Garlic wrote: »

One of the first ones that came out. I didn't find it great. Wife got it in 2009. Maybe they have improved.

Mine was one of the smaller later ones right enough. You could read it outside in Nevada. Though still a very underwhelming experience compared to a book. I love the smell of a book. Even used books especially older ones have that worldly smell.

Grayson · 23-07-2016 09:44PM

timthumbni wrote: »

Mine was one of the smaller later ones right enough. You could read it outside in Nevada. Though still a very underwhelming experience compared to a book. I love the smell of a book. Even used books especially older ones have that worldly smell.

I love libraries because of the smell

Jester252 · 24-07-2016 09:42AM

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

Are Gamestop on the way out also? Very little stock at their Crescent centre location.

Gamestop has swswitchedo more "gamer gear"

The one in Crescent is a Gamestop +.
It is more of a clothes shop than a game shop.

They will be fudged when the bottom falls out of POP vinals market.

MilesMorales1 · 24-07-2016 09:46AM

Gamestop rebranded itself away from games into that 'loot' ****. Load of nonsense.

mikeym · 24-07-2016 11:18AM

Netflix is grand for tv shows but the movie selection is not the best cause of Sky Movies.

Even Sky Movies is struggling to attract subscribers because they show the same movies all the time.

The cinemas are still making money because people want to see new movies in good quality.

People will still pay to watch movies.

Cienciano · 24-07-2016 11:27AM

Jimmy Garlic wrote: »

Because Kindles etc failed miserably. They were unpleasant to use, hard on the eyes, and almost useless in strong sun. Physical books are winning back the ground they lost because they are superior. Physical music formats will be back too, real music fans will want more and more physical copies as time goes on as it's a more reliable way to keep a music collection. Digital files are fine for disposable, forgettable, corporate formula ''music'' of little or no artistic value such as the crap produced by Beyonce etc, but not for real music, I want to be able to hold a Pink Floyd album in my hands, be able to read the sleeve, keep it in an actual music collection etc.

Failed miserable? They sell $5 billion worth of kindles a year.
Physical music formats are niche, they'll never be mainstream again.

Anesthetize · 24-07-2016 11:44AM

Jimmy Garlic wrote: »

Because Kindles etc failed miserably. They were unpleasant to use, hard on the eyes, and almost useless in strong sun. Physical books are winning back the ground they lost because they are superior. Physical music formats will be back too, real music fans will want more and more physical copies as time goes on as it's a more reliable way to keep a music collection. Digital files are fine for disposable, forgettable, corporate formula ''music'' of little or no artistic value such as the crap produced by Beyonce etc, but not for real music, I want to be able to hold a Pink Floyd album in my hands, be able to read the sleeve, keep it in an actual music collection etc.

Pink Floyd sound pretty damn good in FLAC format. I also have a Kindle and it's almost like reading paper. This post is full of crap.

Jester252 · 24-07-2016 11:03PM

Cienciano wrote: »

Failed miserable? They sell $5 billion worth of kindles a year.
Physical music formats are niche, they'll never be mainstream again.

Physical media won't go away until internet speeds can support downloading and streaming in most of the world.

Even now most of Ireland and many 1st western countries can't support the death of physical media.

What is going exist is the brick and mortar shop that only sells one type of physical media for a higher price.

Right now if you wanted to buy a book, movie and game, you will have to go to three shops, find the product that they might not have despite the stock checker saying they do and pay a major markup.

On the other hand, you can log into Amazon, buy the items in your underwear with ease for a cheaper price.

At the moment the only advance of a shop is getting the produce right away.

mdwexford · 25-07-2016 12:23AM

Jimmy Garlic wrote: »

Because Kindles etc failed miserably. They were unpleasant to use, hard on the eyes, and almost useless in strong sun. Physical books are winning back the ground they lost because they are superior. Physical music formats will be back too, real music fans will want more and more physical copies as time goes on as it's a more reliable way to keep a music collection. Digital files are fine for disposable, forgettable, corporate formula ''music'' of little or no artistic value such as the crap produced by Beyonce etc, but not for real music, I want to be able to hold a Pink Floyd album in my hands, be able to read the sleeve, keep it in an actual music collection etc.

Yeah massive fail, what a ridiculous statement.

"Morgan Stanley estimates that Amazon sold $3.57 billion worth of Kindle e-readers and tablets in 2012, $4.5 billion in Kindle device sales in 2013 and $5 billion in Kindle device sales in 2014."

riclad · 25-07-2016 01:30AM

There,s maybe 1000,s of teens out there who never bought a cd, they use spotify, or youtube , they watch movies on netflix or cable tv.
The concept of owning physical media may be gone for the next generation .
When you have 40meg broadband whats the point of owning a cd, or a dvd .teens are growing up downloading apps ,
they may never bother buying a disc in a box,
apart from console games ,which you can swap or trade in at the game shop.
i buy cds, i never bought 1 vinyl record .
IF i wanted to watch a recent film i had to go to xtravision and rent or buy it when i was a teenager.

LunarSea · 25-07-2016 04:00AM

Jimmy Garlic wrote: »

Digital files are fine for disposable, forgettable, corporate formula ''music'' of little or no artistic value such as the crap produced by Beyonce etc, but not for real music, I want to be able to hold a Pink Floyd album in my hands, be able to read the sleeve, keep it in an actual music collection etc.

Even as someone that has a reasonable sized collection of physical albums (about 200 on vinyl, about 1,000 on CD), this is utter, utter nonsense.

I obviously like holding my music too, but there's plenty of new, interesting and niche music (and it is the music we're most interested in, right?) coming through the likes of Bandcamp. Far more interesting than what dinosaurs like (what's left of) Pink Floyd are doing (they peaked at "Meddle" for me and wouldn't even be in my top ten prog bands).

SB_Part2 · 25-07-2016 09:43AM

Sad to see this happening. The internet in my house, despite being the fasted Virgin can offer struggles with Netflix.

Cienciano · 25-07-2016 01:20PM

Jester252 wrote: »

Physical media won't go away until internet speeds can support downloading and streaming in most of the world.

Even now most of Ireland and many 1st western countries can't support the death of physical media.

What is going exist is the brick and mortar shop that only sells one type of physical media for a higher price.

Right now if you wanted to buy a book, movie and game, you will have to go to three shops, find the product that they might not have despite the stock checker saying they do and pay a major markup.

On the other hand, you can log into Amazon, buy the items in your underwear with ease for a cheaper price.

At the moment the only advance of a shop is getting the produce right away.

You don't need an amazing internet connection to download an album. Even with a bad internet connection you'll get it in half a hour. Never mind illegal downloading which a lot of kids these day do which has the advantage of not costing anything.
Streaming HD is a different story alright

anothernight · 25-07-2016 03:34PM

riclad wrote: »

There,s maybe 1000,s of teens out there who never bought a cd, they use spotify, or youtube , they watch movies on netflix or cable tv.

Not just teenagers either.

Chain Smoker · 25-07-2016 04:08PM

Jimmy Garlic wrote: »

. They were unpleasant to use, hard on the eyes, and almost useless in strong sun.

Have you actually used an eink device? They're very easy to read outdoors, are about as hard on the eyes as a book, maybe less so in that the page stays flat and you've a lot of flexibility with font sizes and line spacing

murpho999 · 25-07-2016 04:28PM

Jester252 wrote: »

Physical media won't go away until internet speeds can support downloading and streaming in most of the world.

Even now most of Ireland and many 1st western countries can't support the death of physical media.

What is going exist is the brick and mortar shop that only sells one type of physical media for a higher price.

Right now if you wanted to buy a book, movie and game, you will have to go to three shops, find the product that they might not have despite the stock checker saying they do and pay a major markup.

On the other hand, you can log into Amazon, buy the items in your underwear with ease for a cheaper price.

At the moment the only advance of a shop is getting the produce right away.

There's a lot wrong with this post.

Just because some people may have bad internet does not mean that everyone does. Ireland actually has pretty decent broadband nowadays especially around large urban areas where the most people live.

You don't need that great internet to stream music and it really is the way to go. I also think streaming/downloading videos is well within the grasp of many now.

I haven't bought a CD in about 15 years and never buy DVDs or Blu Rays as I'd just download everything. It's instant, convenient, cheaper, takes up less shelf space and easy to store.

I don't get this thing of having to have a physical copy to feel one owns it.

ScumLord · 25-07-2016 05:10PM

Jester252 wrote: »

Physical media won't go away until internet speeds can support downloading and streaming in most of the world.

Even now most of Ireland and many 1st western countries can't support the death of physical media.

I would have thought the vast majority of Irish people can get some form of broadband. Worst case scenario you get a poor 4g connection. My town got upgraded to fiber lately and I'm now getting around 40mb, the 8mb connection I had before this one was perfectly fine for streaming HD off netflix.

I've completely stopped downloading for the most part. There are only a few things I'll still go to the effort of downloading.

Anesthetize · 25-07-2016 07:10PM

murpho999 wrote: »

There's a lot wrong with this post.

Just because some people may have bad internet does not mean that everyone does. Ireland actually has pretty decent broadband nowadays especially around large urban areas where the most people live.

You don't need that great internet to stream music and it really is the way to go. I also think streaming/downloading videos is well within the grasp of many now.

I haven't bought a CD in about 15 years and never buy DVDs or Blu Rays as I'd just download everything. It's instant, convenient, cheaper, takes up less shelf space and easy to store.

I don't get this thing of having to have a physical copy to feel one owns it.

I still collect CDs because they're my physical format of choice and you can get them cheap these days. I have a small vinyl collection as well but vinyl to me seems like more of a vanity format. Most of my music collection is digital files though.

I agree with you regarding people having to have a physical copy to feel one owns it. Materialism should not be an indicator of how much somebody enjoys something. Some of my favourite albums I don't even own a physical copy of.

riclad · 25-07-2016 10:41PM

I presume most people over 40 bought cd,s ,books, films on dvd, or vhs tape .
I,m saying theres teens who just buy music online or stream it or use spotify.
My first pc had a 20gig hardrive ,i had a 56k modem.
Record companys had no protection on cds .
i never bothered ripping a cd to my pc.
i used it to play games like doom.
if you wanted a good music collection you bought cds .
Now you can have 1000s, of songs on your phone .
Every pop song is on youtube .
i used to buy xbox games from hmv.

Anesthetize · 25-07-2016 11:24PM

riclad wrote: »

I presume most people over 40 bought cd,s ,books, films on dvd, or vhs tape .
I,m saying theres teens who just buy music online or stream it or use spotify.
My first pc had a 20gig hardrive ,i had a 56k modem.
Record companys had no protection on cds .
i never bothered ripping a cd to my pc.
i used it to play games like doom.
if you wanted a good music collection you bought cds .
Now you can have 1000s, of songs on your phone .
Every pop song is on youtube .
i used to buy xbox games from hmv.

With Spotify these days it's so easy to stream
There's so many artists, we're living the dream
Back in the days we had CDs and tapes
Filling our bookshelves and taking up space
Thousands and thousands of songs on your phone
To listen to on travel, and when you're alone
No matter the format and no matter the song
When you enjoy the music you can't really go wrong

ButtersSuki · 25-07-2016 11:31PM

30% off everything in Grafton Street branch today - assume the same in the others. Picked up a few things.

As for physical copies, I haven't spent several thousand euro building an audiophile quality set up for music and film to listen to an MP3 file. I admit I'm a bit nerdy on these things and the majority of people wouldn't notice, but it's what I like.

Jimoslimos · 25-07-2016 11:50PM

Chain Smoker wrote: »

Have you actually used an eink device? They're very easy to read outdoors, are about as hard on the eyes as a book, maybe less so in that the page stays flat and you've a lot of flexibility with font sizes and line spacing

A lot of people confuse e-ink Kindles (e.g. the Paperwhite) with the tablet like Fire (previously called Kindle Fire). Should have given them different names to begin with

dublinman1990 · 31-07-2016 02:36AM

Yeah; it does appear that is an era that a very slow demise to physical media.

However with movies; 4K Blu-rays are taking off right now with a seemingly popular demand. Their sales had begun with figures that were 4 times the opening sales compared to Blu-ray discs from 10 years ago. These figures tell us that there is still some appetite from people in other parts of the world to purchase movies in the physical market for collectors like ourselves. But this type of market is still really niche of a niche if most people don't have the right equipment to play the format.

With music; the quantity of the content available either through physical media or streaming/downloading is very useful to music lovers as they have lots to choices available to consume the content in front of them in a matter of seconds.

With books; I have a preference of having physical books myself as I have opportunities to re-read them without the need of having an internet connection. That's what sold me on books all of the time. With downloading books onto a device; you are at the whim of relying to a service provider to make sure it does not shut down on you at any given time. Also; say if you had a total of 20 books on a Kindle device; Amazon can still have the authority to say that due to breach of their T&Cs, they can deny & take away your access of your purchases instantly. All of the hard work that you had to take the time to download your books have been a waste of your time on your part. It does seem to be a very unfair punishment if you had been there taking the brunt of it yourself. I had seen a youtube video of a woman from the UK who had this happen to her without a moment's notice from Amazon. She felt humiliated over after what had happened to her downloads. She is probably stuck on physical books for the rest of her life to contend with the loss of her books that were a good help to her when she needed them.

With HMV closing down; my time in there had been very good to me. I had bought a good few DVDs and Blu-ray discs in there over several years. I also had bought some CDs in there that were rare to get anywhere else in Ireland. There was a lot of things I bought simply just for convenience & impulse buys. A lot of the movies I bought there was sold on the cheap with the recent Blu-ray sales over the past year or more. I in my mid 20's now & I have never had downloaded a film or TV show online because I don't have really good internet for it. I can download music sometimes from Groove music but I don't the app much at all if I'm honest.

Their proposed movie service when it launches online has to have be priced at realistic levels for consumers to allow it receive some competition from Netflix. Their catalogue cannot be overpriced out of the market because it's not feasible to do this with some providers other than Netflix doing this already. They need their catalouge to include new releases on downloads to create a decent level of demand so it can allow themselves have viability in their business model to attract new customers. The quality of the movies have to be decent ones so that customers can stay with them in the long term.

Remaining Irish HMV stores to shut within months as retailer takes on Netflix giant

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