Flawed business model.
Last year I said HMV were on their way out. Put simply, they had a high street business, which made huge losses. And they had a live music business which made a decent profit. The first was in a dying market, the second was in a thriving market.
So they sold the profitable, growing, live music biz, in order to prop up the dying retail music biz.
Idiots. If they had dumped the shops and kept live music they would be prospering now. Though I don't think that they had really cracked it in live music. Something that is possible, has been done at small venues, but could be a killer for big bands, is to sell a recording of the concert you have just heard, the actual concert, not just the songs, as you leave the venue. I think fans would go mad for that.
Ah well, I will just go on buying CD's & DVD's from the charity shops, car boots and ebay, where people who have ripped them to their ipods sell them off - at least till their hard disk crashes and they don't, of course, have a backup.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
