HMV has managed to defeat Amazon as the UK’s biggest seller of physical music, according to new data from Kantar Worldpanel.
Based on music sales for the 12 weeks to September 23, Kantar reported that HMV increased its market share to 28 per cent, moving comfortably ahead of Amazon’s 21.1 per cent to become the biggest physical music retailer.
HMV has faced plenty of pressure as the UK’s last bricks and mortar music chain, but the results found gifting sales were up 21 per cent over the period, which also contributed to HMV’s second consecutive growth of market share.
“Everybody at HMV is incredibly passionate about music and particularly the physical product, from our central support operations, through our distribution centres and, of course, in store with our amazing staff delivering gold standard customer service day in, day out,” HMV head of music John Hirst told Music Week.
He added: “Whilst the customer still wants physical music – and they really do – we’ll be here to put it in their hands.”
Hirst noted that part of HMV’s success had come from turning their mail order service into a clear competitor against Amazon’s, a service Hirst said the retailer would be looking “maximise” in the run up to Christmas trading.
“From an HMV point of view, we’ve comfortably outperformed the market all year,” he said.
“We could really do with Q4 comparing favourably to last year and then if we can outperform the market, as we have done for the rest of the year, it will put us in a really positive place come the end of the year.”
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