Former retail giant HMV has confirmed it's going into administration after being denied a £300million loan.
In Australia, of course, HMV's stores were purchased by rivals Sanity Music all the way back in 2005, with most stores subsequently shutting down or carrying on as Sanity outlets. The last HMV store in Australia (the Queen St store in Brisbane) closed down in 2010.
Still, the UK chain going into administration is a big deal for the four thousand employees whose jobs are at risk, and for an industry that might still have harboured a secret desire that brick-and-mortar record stores would somehow defy the odds and carry on.
This would appear to come as confirmation that they won't, at least not by following the monolithic HMV model.
