If there’s one thing that the demise of HMV has reminded us it’s that change is automatic but progress is not.
The company stood still and acted as if the digital revolution wasn’t happening.
It could be argued that their executives acted with arrogance, clinging to their once-dominant position and not accepting that things had changed, massively.
Now they’ve gone all Kodak.
Sad but inevitable: it’s where Mrs P and I met for the first time, in 1995. I’d worked at the Trocadero branch for 14 months then moved to the Brent Cross shop, which is where Shoelace became a Christmas temp and our lives changed for ever.
This piece from the Independent in 2013, shortly after the first time HMV went into administration, makes some good points:
