Business News Retail

More shops than ever to sell music this Christmas

By | Published on Tuesday 9 November 2010

Music retail might have been going to poo for years now, but, according to the Entertainment Retailer’s Association, more shops will be selling CDs this Christmas than ever before. The trade body reckons some 6628 high street stores will be stocking at least some CDs in the run up to the festive season, compared with 4644 such stores at the start of the year.

The boost has occurred because BHS and Game have announced they will start selling CDs, BP will sell music in 370 of its filling station shops and Tesco will add albums to its Express stores. In addition to that, HMV will open up eighteen of its ‘pop-up’ temporary stores for the Christmas period. 

Presumably most of these shops will only sell the biggest pop releases, but still, it’s all good news for the Take Thats and Susan Boyles of the world, and will presumably help shift some extra back catalogue packages and compilation releases through the power of the impulse buy. 

Says ERA Director General Kim Bayley: “After years of record store closures, this is a remarkable turn of events. A petrol station clearly cannot be compared with a specialist record shop, but this is clear evidence that there is still a lot of interest in the CD format. Combine this spike in physical store outlets with the ever increasing number of digital music services in the UK – now up to nearly 70 – and it is clear that the British public has more opportunities to buy the music they love than ever before”.



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