Emma Cowing: Soundtrack of our lives silenced by HMV loss

WHEN I was a teenager, Saturday afternoons in the summer holidays meant one thing: Going Into Town. This was a complicated ritual involving a gaggle of friends, a bus ride on the upper deck and a cloud of Body Shop White Musk oil so strong it could knock a grown man dead at ten paces.

We’d stalk the aisles of HMV looking for the latest tapes, making our choices based on what we’d heard on the radio or read about in magazines such as SKY or the Face. Radiohead’s Pablo Honey, Nirvana’s Nevermind, Hole’s Pretty on the Inside and, erm, Paula Abdul’s Shut Up and Dance – all of these I bought within the hallowed confines of His Master’s Voice. Then it was off to Burger King to compare purchases, share onion rings and Pretend To Ignore Boys.

For many of us, HMV provided a soundtrack to our lives. It was there with a Tori Amos EP to console us during a breakup and a Now 17 album when we had an “empty” (house that is, to which we would invite a “few” friends); the silent partner in a million human experiences. So, it is perhaps unsurprising this week’s announcement that the store is to go into administration, putting 239 stores and 4,000 jobs at risk, has been followed by a tidal wave of nostalgia. Within hours, the hashtag #hmvmemories was trending on Twitter, as thousands of people shared their experiences of working and shopping in what was arguably Britain’s best-loved record store.

But there have been harsh words, too. One retail analyst called its demise “a structural failure”, describing HMV’s business model as “increasingly irrelevant and unsustainable”. Ouch. The truth, of course, is that few of us shop in HMV any more. The last time I popped in – just before Christmas because it was too late for Amazon deliveries – was the first time I had crossed an HMV threshold in years. I can’t say I was overwhelmed by the experience – things were confusingly arranged and it didn’t have what I was after. Although I occasionally shop in Fopp, which may also go under as a result of owner HMV’s demise, I’ve bought more books than albums there in the past five years. Nowadays, I buy my music via iTunes and my boxsets on Amazon. In an era where 73.4 per cent of music and film is downloaded, I am far from alone.

But I can’t help but think that today’s teenagers are missing out on one of the great formative experiences by doing all their music shopping online. Where is the thrill of hunting out a rare single or a limited edition album when all you have to do is tap the name in to iTunes or Spotify? Where is the elation of finally finding that elusive live album or, indeed, the disappointment of discovering there are none left in stock? Music, as with so many things in life, seemed sweeter, more tuneful somehow, when it had to be pursued. While the digital world makes buying music so much easier – with billions of songs available at the click of a button – it also makes the experience flatter; something done at home, alone, with only the glow of the computer screen for company.

Of course, it is not all over for record shops. Indeed, some argue that the death of HMV, as a large chain, would allow small independent record shops to flourish, particularly those selling vinyl, which has made its own nostalgia-soaked comeback in recent years. Stores such Avalanche in both Edinburgh and Glasgow still do well, as do places like Lost In Music in Glasgow’s west end and VoxBox in Edinburgh’s Stockbridge, both of which sell a large amount of secondhand records.

But the closure, announced yesterday, of cult Aberdeen record shop One Up at the end of the month suggests that the market for independent record stores is not an easy one in these days of Spotify, BearShare and GooglePlay. Meanwhile, management at HMV is confident of finding “a solution”. For the 4,000 who work for HMV, it must be a dreadful and anxious time.

Up in my attic, I still have a huge box of tapes from my youth, even though I no longer have a working tape recorder. I keep them because I simply cannot bear to throw them away, because they remind me of innocence and discovery, and because some of them still smell faintly of White Musk.

I would love future generations to own similar boxes of nostalgia. But, much like HMV, I fear they may have had their day.