I went there in the summer, good shop. They have in store gigs and interesting selection of vinyl and cds.
I paid an annual visit to an HMV last week. It was difficult to navigate, gloomy and expensive.
Unsurprisingly, I didnāt buy anything.
Iād rather visit an independent record store and pay an extra couple of quid for a more enjoyable experience.
Iāve bought nothing from HMV for at least two years mostly because all the stores are in shopping centres and I donāt want to go there.
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^This.
I often use the branch next to Bond St tube for some āoff radarā purchases. Mostly, I buy online as there is nothing near to where I live. The independent in Wallingford is useless. Nice bloke but useless.
HMV is round the corner from work. Years since I bought owt though.
Vinyl used to be crammed into racks so it was hard to browse & sleeves got damaged.
So then they put albums on shelves. One wrong move & the album fell off & hit the deck.
Indie shop for me or buy direct off a bandās site.
For new vinyl, not sure there is anywhere else locally other than HMV, and they kept a decent selection. Still, not all that surprising, its a huge store, mostly selling CDs and Bluray, with falling sales of both of those they seem to have turned to tat.
Going to HMV in Nottingham as a student in the early 90s was one of the highlights of the weekend. I remember their classical shop which was behind massive, soundproofed glass doors at the back of the shop.
Hanging round HMV was a Saturday morning ritual for me in the 70ās. It was a completely different animal then though. The shops were heaving and dark with current music paraphernalia plastered everywhere and loud music blasting out. I also remember the glass encased classical music sections, other worldly areas that probably helped put me off classical music for years 
sadly corporate driven expansion and bland brand uniformity took away the local feel and identity of their core shops.
Many fond memories of buying Anime VHS tapes and hiding them from the parents.
Of which Oxford Street and Oxford were, in the late 90ās, wonderful places with people who really knew their stuff.
I still have albums with āOur Priceā stickers from those times.
I remember that the price of an album was similar to the price of a concert ticket.
I swapped my copy of Lamb Lies Down on Broadway for a concert ticket to see Genesis at the Empire Pool which was about the same price.
The days when bands toured at a ,loss to promote record sales seem in the very dim and distant past!
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Just been down to my local store to see if there was much vinyl going at decent prices but was hugely dissapointed and I totally agree with the comment about ramming the racks full so you can browse easily.
Canāt say I will miss them here.
We have a Fopp, here in Cambridge, and I think the most disappointing thing is the price of old stuff. Way too high, and it is very hard to carry much stock.
We have so much music available now, you have to move stock quickly, and to do that, you have to orice it well.
They donāt, and the bloody charity shops are worse. Very high prices.
Habe you seen the price of rent for a unit on a high st? Plus business rates and the mountain of other overheads? Landlords need to wake up and smell the coffee, as do Councils.
Imagine what it would be like if Labour got in! God help us.
What has Labour (in opposition) got to do with High Street rents?
That is the free market working right there.
Much the same as it is now. God helps those who help themselves I am told. Perhaps we are fecked.
Give it a fucking rest.
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Most of the problems shops have with rents are the contracts they signed in the first place. No one should be signing anything for more than 5 years with break points.
In Debenhams case they sold the family silver (the freeholds) and then signed 25 year lease back deals based on 2010 figures
Solved an immediate cash flow problem and put a nice profit on the balance sheet (or drove down debt) but a couple of years on they are fucked and donāt have the equity to ride the storm.
Absolute piss poor management, they are now very much in the shit because of previous decisions.
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In my youth Virgin Records in Bristol town centre. Never really liked HMV, used to go to independent record shops.
Now, most purchases are in charity shops (CDs only), online (mainly ebay) and I rearely buy from Amazon now as the prices have skyrocketed, especially CDs.