HMV: Give the Dog a Throne

It may read like a news archive piece from the heady retail days of 1995 but the stats don’t lie (apart from when they occasionally do)-HMV became the top dog physical music retailer of last year, even surpassing Amazon and its merciless ‘Black Friday’ deals.

Year-on-year sales of CDs were up by 1.5% and vinyl rose by 170%, amounting to total music sales of £365.7m in 2014.

HMV’s owners Hilco Capital, who bought HMV out of administration in 2013 revealed the figures, also stating that HMV now operates across two-thirds of the shop space it had before collapsing, as reported here in The Telegraph.

Chief Executive of Hilco Paul McGowan said: “HMV has captured more and more market share in a year when major new movie releases have been scarce and there have been only a few major album successes”.

McGowan continued: “With a bumper year of new releases already planned for 2015, we expect to have overall growth in like-for-like DVD and Blu-ray sales as well as continued growth in the physical music sector with vinyl also expected to continue its revival”.

DVD and Blu-ray sales were also up by 0.5%, despite an overall decline in that market. Vinyl sales were the highest last year for the retailer since a mid-90’s peak, with over 350,000 records sold- despite this it does remain an incredibly niche part of the market at a reported 2%.