HMV

I don't really view the closure of HMV with a great deal of nostalgia. I never did like the megaliths of music retail - Virgin, Tower Records, HMV. I always liked small record shops, and when I lived in London in the 1980s and 90s I spent my Saturdays going from one record shop to another. I got to know the guys behind the counter and would spend hours thumbing through the racks of records, asking to listen to the odd track here and there, taking home a new find with a real thrill of discovery. The big shops never really offered that level of intimacy or shared love of music in any case, so I never used them. I didn't like the warehouse feel to them, or the anonymous corporate ambience in the stores. So, as all the little shops got forced out of business by the big multinationals, now the multinationals themselves are closing. Like most people I suppose I've moved to online music buying, made my home into a record shop. But I do try to support the one or two (literally) small records shops left in Edinburgh, Coda and Avalanche.
Even so, it does seem like the end of an era to see HMV closing - all 6 shops in Edinburgh closing down, and a smaller subsidiary shop, Fopp, that they bought just before the end likely to go too. On Princes Street a few years ago HMV and Virgin were within spitting distance of each other - soon they will both be a memory, but not particularly missed by me at least.
This was the Princes Street HMV store today - 5 days before the doors shut forever.