Forum - View topicNEWS: HMV Canada to Close All 102 Stores by April
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mgosdin
 Posts: 1302 Location: Kissimmee, Florida, USA |
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This was mentioned in the Audio Forums yesterday as HMV was a prime source of records. Sad in that many folks will be losing their jobs.
Mark Gosdin |
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kinghumanity
Posts: 365 |
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Is it really a surprise that a CD/DVD store is losing business in 2017?
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ikarisama
 Posts: 32 Location: Penticton B.C. |
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I will miss their music section. But I stopped shopping at HMV for everything else years ago as my local comic shop usually has lower prices on anime and graphic novels. Though I am sorry for those who are losing their jobs.
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 23770 |
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This does indeed suck. However, I am an example of somebody who stopped buying stuff at stores like HMV because I can get the same things way cheaper online. RIP, bricks & mortar retailers.
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CandisWhite
Posts: 282 |
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HMV had tried to re-brand itself as the niche shop where you could get the stuff you couldn't get at Wal-Mart and locally, from what I could tell, was doing okay; I think that it was the big shops still left that were just not grabbing the business. Around here, the quirky shops (for video and books, anyway-We've got some great comic shops on the north side) are mostly downtown so it's either the mall or big box stores to get your immediate anime Blu-ray fix and a small but established (i.e. not downsized) HMV was at a local mall; That same mall has a quirky shop that sells off-beat, not junky, product so it's a place where teens and millennials shop. Plus, that HMV was a place that parents could just drop into to find "Yo-na of the Dawn?" and "The Sailor Moon S Part 1 Limited Edition; That's the only version she wants." Places like that big flagship store in Toronto, on the other hand, probably had sky-high rents and had to compete with the other niche and/or hip shops that flooded the area to get the ever-dwindling physical shopping dollar. HMV might have been able to make a go of it if they could have completely re-branded as a niche shop, expanding more into other non-video items and jettisoning the dead weight places, but was just not able to make it to that point. RIP HMV. Will have to find somewhere else to get my anime. Best Buy's selection, according to their website, seems okay so maybe there. Not eager to support Amazon with all of my purchases (have been forced to buy some things there in past) and am not a big fan of couriers ( G-rated version) so Right Stuf is a last, nowhere else to go, resort. |
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MoonPhase1
Posts: 492 |
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I almost always pay things with cash and not really into having things delivered, so I need stores to stay open. I usually only order online during something like Rightstuf's Holiday Sale. The rest of the year I buy Anime at places like Best Buy and Wal-Mart or any other retail store that sells Anime which does include stores that sell used ones which are mostly of titles that are long since OOP. Just can't beat being able to buy and watch Anime on the same day. Plus no shipping fees and just less things to worry about. |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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Tower and HMV didn't close because of disks, they closed because of CD-- The CD music industry didn't die because we "hated plastic" or "physical things", it was because a song-based MP3 industry meant we could buy singles, not albums, and didn't have to buy the whole cow just to get a hamburger. That has zero to do with the fate of DVD or Blu-ray, since movies and TV boxsets are disks you DO buy to get the entire package to keep on your shelf. Just that B&M record stores were often the worst places to get any disks, let alone wildly overpriced retail anime, since the wholesale-warehouse model of RightStuf and Amazon could offer discounts that the physical stores couldn't. Suncoast, OTOH, that was another matter. 
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stararnold
 Posts: 227 Location: LaSalle, Quebec, Canada |
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Over the years, visiting HMV meant I could buy rare anime DVDs that no other store would bother to sell. If not for HMV, I would not have been able to buy a physical copy of Gaiking: The Movie Collection, which other retail stores in Montreal where DVDs are sold do not sell apparently. Sadly for me, no anime DVDs are virtually available for purchase at my nearby Wal-Mart shop and my nearby Best Buy shop is apparently short on anime DVD options to buy on location. Then there is the matter of Toys 'r Us, which ain't got the guts to sell any anime DVDs above a PG-rated level. At least I can use a virtual debit card to make a purchase at RightStuf's website, not that I ever ordered anything from there before. Still, it'll suck for me to have to deal with shipping fees should I decide to order from an online shop, but it looks like we otaku in Canada are running out of options on how to buy what anime DVDs we want for our respective collections. |
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4469 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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I have a local anime shop (The Comic Book Shoppe's Anime Stop sub-store) for anime but I will definitely mourn having HMV as a local bricks-and-mortar option for movies and music beyond what little you can get at Walmart. Yeah, we still have a few local record stores in Ottawa but those places are largely vinyl and I'm just not hip enough to listen to music on vinyl more than occasionally. (I have a vintage Sony turntable at home, but I can't exactly bring that on my bus to listen to music like I can with my CD Walkman.)
Even the mall HMVs had a decent selection of classical music CDs; the classical music selection at Walmart is pretty much limited to compilation albums organized around vague themes like "Classical Music for a Rainy Day". So, yeah, it looks like I'll be buying a lot more physical media from Amazon (or other online retailers) than before, not by choice but simply because it'll be the only place left to buy niche-ier movies and music. |
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FLCLGainax
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So it's gone the way of Virgin Megastore. Bummer. I remember visiting the HMV in Montreal years ago.
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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HMV sold many of their stores over here some years ago, operating on a minimal basis in many conurbations thereafter. Indeed, they vacated their largest retail space in London to return to their original, smaller location. One presumes they manage to sustain themselves on passing trade, technophobes and the like.
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jdnation
Posts: 1998 |
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Man... a good bulk of my Anime collection is thanks to HMV. Though nowadays I do shop around and see who offers the best price between the few things Walmart gets versus HMV versus Amazon and go for the best deal. Though if the difference is minimal I'd buy it at HMV rather than Amazon just to have it immediately. But over the years, new anime releases were harder to come by at many HMV outlets, and the downtown Toronto store was usually the best place. Sad to see it go... Other than a few smaller stores that most people usually find at conventions, it seems like Amazon will be the only alternative because WalMart is usually less than 50/50 of finding a new anime release.
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Tenchi
Posts: 4469 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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^ 50/50 at Canadian Walmarts? I can't speak for every Walmart but from my own experience, the anime selection is basically limited to Ghibli films, Dragonball Z, Naruto, occasionally Sailor Moon, and a handful of other popular anime shown on Canadian cable.
Although, going back a decade or more, you used to sometimes see random volumes of Geneon, Viz, and ADV Films shows in the Walmart DVD bargain bins. |
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Somer-_-
 Posts: 986 Location: Canada |
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I was wondering why my local one turned into a hot sauce store.
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marshmallowpie
 Posts: 300 Location: Nova Scotia, Canada |
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Kinda sad, with all the jobs lost and yet another hole in the mall, but not really a loss for me when it comes to buying anime. The anime section at the store nearest me was like 80% Bleach, Naruto, and DBZ. HSC was slightly better, but not by much. I don't think I ever saw a single Sentai title in either store.
As bad as their selection was, I think they're the only place around here that actually sold any anime though. Never been in the Halifax BB, but Dartmouth has absolutely nothing. At least I have Chapters. |
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