See more Latest videos. See more Latest pictures. Martha Argerich. The history of HMV in pictures With HMV possibly being rescued thanks to Hilco, we take a look back at the golden era of the famous record shop, label, recording studio and factory. Jazz radio Factory workers Factory workers make the cylinders for HMV's gramophones in Dawson, Clark, Hambourg Listening booths As the HMV shops became more and more successful, listening booths were installed so that customers could try before they bought.
Into the seventies This shot from shows shoppers eagerly browsing records in HMV. Nina Kotova Classical music has always been an important part of HMV, as this in-store performance from cellist Nina Kotova showed. HMV today The recent recession and a changing digital marketplace have seen many physical retailers struggle, and HMV has been no exception.
Yet HMV's effort to crack the U. Other markets proved equally elusive for the company, such as France, which it entered in the early s, then quickly exited, and Germany. More successful for the company were its excursions to the Asia Pacific, and especially to the Japanese market. Launched in Tokyo in , the company's Japanese branch grew quickly, and, at 40 stores, claimed second place among international operations.
Yet the company's product mix was already beginning to shift, as it added video and then video game sections to capture a share of these rising markets. In , however, the company gained a new branch when parent Thorn EMI added the Dillons bookstore chain. In another expansion move, HMV entered the music recording industry in , when it released its first compact disc compilation.
HMV continued to add new titles in a similar vein through the s, based on its access to EMI's strong backlist. In , however, the company was given new scope through the three-way merger between HMV, Dillons, and the fast-growing Waterstone's bookstore chain. By , HMV had grown into an internationally operating chain of more than music stores. Yet EMI, which had found itself among the smallest of the major labels, began a push to achieve scale in its recording and publishing operations, leading to its interest in spinning off HMV and Dillons.
In the meantime, Waterstone's, founded by Tim Waterstone in , then brought under the WH Smith retail umbrella, had developed into one of the United Kingdom's leading book chains, with an emphasis on so-called "high brow" and often hard-to-find books. The Dillons chain was subsequently merged into Waterstone's, which became the brand for the entire book division. The strategy appeared to backfire, as Waterstone's sales slumped in the new millennium, and new store openings were put on hold.
It also led to charges that HMV was in the process of "dumbing down" Waterstone's, and to Tim Waterstone's resignation as company chairman in Waterstone then began lobbying to regain control of the bookstore. In the meantime, HMV had discovered a new retail frontier, the Internet. In , the company opened the first of four international e-commerce sites.
It became their official trademark in and while the Gramophone Company was never officially called His Master's Voice Company, the famous pooch on the records meant it was how the public knew them. As a result, it was a natural choice of name for their first store. The shop at Oxford Street was destroyed by fire in and a temporary shop was set up on Bond Street until its reopening in - with the addition of an air-raid shelter for World War Two. Despite the horror of the war, music lived on, with patriotic songs becoming popular throughout the s and s.
HMV also introduced listening posts so customers could come in and listen to records before they took them home - an initiative replicated across the industry. Come the s, the world was set to be shaken with a more positive force, as pop music exploded. More than million singles were sold through the decade in the UK and HMV became a magnet for music lovers. These included as Cliff Richard, who cut a demo in the shop's studios and then secured a deal with the shop's parent company EMI, and Brian Epstein, who wanted to do the same for a then-unknown act, The Beatles.
By , HMV began to expand, first in London and then through the rest of the country. In just six years, it doubled in size and became the UK's largest music retailer.
Our Price grew from its humble beginnings in London's Finchley Road, specialising in cassettes and eight tracks, to takeover as the country's second-biggest music seller after Woolworths, and Richard Branson opened his flagship Virgin Megastores a stone's throw from HMV on Oxford Street in But come the s, with the introduction of the compact disc and a 50,ft flagship store opening in a new Oxford Street premises, HMV was back in the game.
The chain was at the heart of the invention of in-store appearances by the biggest acts of the day. Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson, Madonna, David Bowie and Kate Bush were just some of the multi-million selling artists to grace its stores, signing CDs and playing exclusive sets for those who managed to squeeze in between the record racks.
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