Music Zone has gone into administration
Music Zone, the UK's third largest music and film retailer, has collapsed into administration.
Nervous investors are cutting and running
The decision by our bankers to recover debts and withdraw credit facilities without notice and with immediate effect left us and our private equity backers with no real alternative other than to appoint administrators
Woolworths and HMV have warned investors that the combination of poor sales of DVDs and CDs and a bitter price war will hit profits.
So Darwin strikes again?
In Future of recorded music on the line Martyn Sloman writes in a letter
I was puzzled by Martin Kettle's article ( Going off the record January 4) bemoaning the demise of Tower Records due to internet sales and predicting a future with far fewer shops selling CDs and DVDs. He claims record stores were for his generation a repository of knowledge and discovery without which his knowledge of music would be much the poorer. Born in the same year as Martin, I can't help feeling that he is romanticising the past something rotten.
In that article Kettle writes
The demise of Tower Records is a watershed moment for the sale of recorded music. From now on, no American city will have a large record store. And where New York leads, the rest of the world will surely follow. In Britain we still have similar outlets - mainly HMVs and Virgin Megastores - but the clock is ticking for them. I doubt there will still be a large record store in this country in a decade's time.
Philip Bradbury points out the web enables him to find what he is looking for allowing him to sample, educate himself and filter in a way he never was able to do before.
Tellingly
Huge chains such as HMV and Tower have basically become corporate money-making machines run by accountants for sheep who would simply buy anything that was hyped to the hilt. Once upon a time the local record shop was independent and run by enthusiasts who tried to bring interesting music to the masses simply out of love for the music. Then, as the major record companies established retail monopolies (Tower is the exception that proves the rule) and took over the high street, fuelled by the huge profits of the CD-reissue market in the 1990s, smaller, independent sellers resorted to mail order and the internet and have carved a successful niche for themselves.
Greed and hubris always comes home to roost. You reap what you sow. And I disagree with Kettle he should be listening to the many internet radion stations, last FM or Pandora.
Video of Blunt single gets mobile premiere || The battle for the internet begins || Nails into the coffin of the iPod: revisiting blog "2006 the year iPod died" || Sharing music of unsigned bands || Like minded music fans come together at pitchforkmedia.com || The green shoots of the semantic web
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Posted by: scuz | February 22, 2007 at 05:30 PM