Low CD sales kill HMV Shibuya : Business : DAILY YOMIURI ONLINE (The Daily Yomiuri)

[sakurakessho]

Low CD sales kill HMV Shibuya

Hiraku Iwasaki and Etsuo Kono / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writers

After 20 years spent influencing the pop music tastes of a nation, HMV Shibuya has closed its doors, symbolizing the disappearance of music retail outlets and the CDs they sell.

The rapidly rising popularity of downloading songs from

Comments

[amazonstorm]

Somehow... SOMEHOW, this doesn't really surprise me.

Here's hoping that they don't shut down HMV Japan Online. It's one of the few places I can get toku and cds and not pay a fortune

[sakurakessho]

I really don't think that they will shut down HMV Online. It's probably their current biggest revenue source thanks to foreign orders.

The part of the article that I really agree with is that the industry needs to branch out into digital downloads. Only I'd, naturally, add that there needs to be a place for digital downloads to people outside of Japan.

Whyyy can't we just have one big international music market?

[amazonstorm]

A) Because that would be too much like right

B) I imagine that international laws and whatnot would make trying to figure it out a very sticky situation.

It's quite sad, really.