His (Mortal) Voice: what the two-time death of HMV tells us about the modern high street

I’m hardly the first person to throw the BBC in the bin. I respect their journalism and reject (most of) the hearsay that calls them thralls to the government position. Sure, they occasionally present news in an overtly straightforward way, without considering the systemic cause of the problem (see: late capitalism) but they’re not alone in that. To attack the BBC in principle is to attack an institution that most Britons instinctively respect and value – and thanks to hits like Top Gear and Doctor Who, consumers all over the world lean the same way. Yet, I can’t help but feel that the BBC’s tact on the recent fall into administration of His Master’s Voice, or HMV to his friends, is a tad off the mark. Immediately, as is so tempting nowadays, they err on the side of blaming digital streaming services: much like Netflix foresaw the collapse of Blockbuster, so Spotify, Amazon and Google have brought the downfall of outlets like HMV. Why buy a CD, DVD or any other physical media when you can find it on the internet for pennies, or stream it legally for free? Digital sales of music overtook physical in 2012, after all. The problem is – as is always the case – you can’t blame a single factor for a collapse like this. What happened to HMV is just like what happened to Toys 'R' Us, and Poundworld or Maplin before them. It’s an avalanche that will continue to threaten chain after chain until the yoke is broken.

The high street shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all kind of experience. When you walk into a clothes shop, the experience you have between walking in and walking out with a ridiculous jumper is completely different to the experience you have upon walking into a bookshop, a chocolatier or even a music store. The shopping experience is, or at least should be, tailored to the product. It’s for this reason that clothing stores have fitting rooms, and music stores used to have listening booths. Bookshops never needed these, because the customer was always at liberty to have a flick through the book on the shop floor. Now, in HMV, the CDs have cellophane wrap - and figuring out if you like them pre-purchase is a non-starter. If Primark wrapped all their clothes in plastic wrap, their physical sales would collapse overnight; without the opportunity to try clothes on - which is the defining experience of visiting a physical clothes shop - the only distinction between buying in person and buying online would be the extra time taken and the piecemeal exchange with the cashier.

Given that HMV have long since removed the opportunity to “try before you buy” a CD, or, god forbid, a video game, it raises questions about the value that such a retailer provides to the high street beyond the token ephemera that doesn’t need testing. A poster of the Beatles or a bobbly toy of Kylo Ren isn’t a sufficient defence for high-rent high street property alone. You could say the same for Maplin: take away their HDMI cables and sound systems, easily found on the internet, and what remains but jokey keyrings and novelty blow-up keyboards? Furthermore, the experiences we have in these places aren't enough to justify their physical existence. Following the proliferation of IT problem-solving videos and live-chat forums on the Web, the value of Maplin's expert staff probably went through the floor. It’s the same with HMV; if I have The Needle Drop at my back, why do I need to ask a member of staff if Imagine Dragons’ new record is actually terrible? I know it’s terrible. I just know.

Meanwhile, cafes and other social spaces are bearing through these trying times for the high street. This is not surprising. There is no online equivalent of meeting a friend for a coffee. We should have realized by now that technology cannot synthesise human company; quite the opposite. Bookshops, including independents, weather the high street storm for the same reason. They provide their customers with a unique experience, an environment; a moment apart from the monotony of the modern commercial district. Meanwhile, no one has ever been given a second wind by a Maplin or a Poundworld. These stores are dull, emptied of their personal content and then filled to the brim with commercial content instead. Why would we leave our house for the sake of commercialisation? We get enough of that at home, broadcast through myriad screens and speakers. HMV died because it didn’t need to sell what it was selling, and what it did sell simply assisted in dulling us to the banal commodification of our despairing days.

To see what HMV should have done to survive, we could take Rough Trade as a close example. While small and far less ambitious by comparison, Rough Trade’s business model, and tight links with bands that record on their (fiscally separate) label of the same name, helps encourage an active space in-store. Local, impromptu gigs in their branches are frequent and the thoughtful composition of their stores gives credit to the idea that humanised spaces are more attractive to consumers. HMV’s mechanically designed, ill-lit rooms accompanied by trash music and disinterested staff seem moot by comparison; to proclaim that they died simply because of the boom in digital is disingenuous. They died because they ignored the changing image of the high street and refused to engage more with customers. As a result, they went the same way as their inconsiderate, corporatised contemporaries.

But I’m not happy with this hypothesis alone. I don’t even think that the growth of streaming necessitates the death of the music store – if it did, Rough Trade would be going the same way as HMV. We only need look to the growth in vinyl sales to see the waters changing; buying physical music isn’t dead yet. Cassette culture and its forebears might be a thing of the past, but the habit of scouring record shops in search of lesser-known bands and independent artists has yet to founder. Part of HMV’s failure was its unimaginative response to the growth in vinyl: sell a greater quantity of records and all will be well. But it isn’t that simple; record shops across the country continue to survive, if not thrive, because they do not aspire to cater to everyone. Instead of providing the whole world with a mediocre experience, record shops provide a quality experience to those that could actually give a toss.

We need to be honest with ourselves. HMV’s two-time failure shows that the one-size-fits-all experience, co-opted by the 21st century high street from the 20th century shopping centre, has failed. We don’t want our high streets to be homogenous, commodified blocs where every shop front leads us into the same experience. For goodness’ sake, now more than ever, we have to be given a real reason to leave the house. We need to turn shops back into places, and re-inject the personal into the purchase. It’s about time retailers faced the music on that one.