http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2013/01/hmv-and-music-business?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/bl/hmv
This article only confirmed that which has been, to all of us who consider ourselves lovers of PCs, a very obvious spiral towards death for the music store.
I used to work at HMV, for a fateful few months after I was 'excused' from my job at a hotel in Banff. I met my wife over the worn corners of the listening bar - the black counter's edges chipped and completely worn white from countless CDs zipped clean of their cellophane skins.Â
I saw vinyl records as the last possible salvation of the record store, but for now they are too few and too elitist to make a mark in corporate coffers of the scale of HMV.
Perhaps it is somewhat fitting then, that HMV and Tower Records (both now defunct in their countries of origin) still exist in Japan. I'd like to say that Japan is a large, multi-faceted version of the story of the record store today.Â
Like the music store, Japan enjoyed a period of intense popularity. Exports from Japan and the Japanese influence on societies around the world had a heyday. It was called an economic miracle. Remember when Japan was the future and everyone wanted to check it out? Remember when Japanese tourists were ubiquitous?
Do you remember when you stopped hearing about it? Do you remember when Japanese products became irrelevant except in a few markets? Probably all you recall is that their was a big row over a bunch of crappy islands and a bunch of old-balls nationalists in China and Japan spouted a bunch of jingoistic bullshit and made all Asia listen.Â
Like the record store, Japan clung tightly to an inflexible and outdated business model. They saw the future rushing up to push them into obscurity but closed their eyes instead and tried to will the problem away without making any major changes.Â
If I was Japan, I'd be doing absolutely everything in my power to deal with the population problem. If I was HMV I'd have changed business models completely, following in the footsteps of netflix or itunes.Â
But I'm getting sidetracked.
I guess the most telling thing about the fact that Tower Records still has some massive shops in some of the most iconic and socially important areas of Japan is because the society is in many ways still insulated from the 21st century. New Release CDs are well over 30 dollars in Japan but yet people still buy them. How can a country hope to go on, when they're spending THIRTY DOLLARS ON A CD AND FOURTY DOLLARS ON A LARGE PIZZA?
The economy has been in constant decline, the population is shrinking and 12 hour work days are the norm. Doesn't anyone see that working harder and longer isn't going to fix anything? What do you guys think?
Send me a question or a message.
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