HMV Digital

There was an advert in the Sunday Times (28 March edition) from HMV, who are looking for a new Head of Digital to spearhead their music download service, which will apparently be “the best downloading service the web has ever seen.” They already seem to have one, however, but it’s powered by OD2 as all these things seem to be in the UK. Sadly.

I’m just going to jot down some thoughts (in no particular order) about how I’d approach the job:

• First question: should the site be standalone from HMV’s current e-commerce system, or should there be greater integration? The end-user is looking for music by specific artists—why should it be powered by a disparate system on a different server? So my answer is that they should go for greater integration. The results page should then just give me the options available for purchasing a track or album—order a CD, or pay to download it.
• As far as possible, support as many formats as possible, and offer users a choice (if they want, and a sensible default if they don’t want to make a choice). Not quite everyone in the world uses Windows, and Macs are pretty popular with musicians, so why lock them out?
• Why is there no user participation on the website? No user reviews, ratings or seemingly any kind of personalisation, other than a wishlist. How do you expect to keep people coming back to you online if they don’t have any kind of investment in the site?
• Discovery of new music: this is such an important aspect of online shopping, yet so many sites continue to overlook it. Bizarre, when you consider that “People who liked this, also liked…” is one of the reasons behind Amazon’s tremendous success, and that the serendipitous finding of an obscure old album or a cool new band is one of the main reasons people actually still shop in physical stores. User created content is also a big part of this (witness Amazon’s Listmania lists).
• I don’t mean to be twee, but how about an HMV branded music player that has links into the store? Stop me if you’ve heard it before, but no traditional music retailer has done anything like this.
• Embrace mobile music (beyond iPod and MuVo devices). It’s coming, so you might as well start preparing now and get ready for it.

Having read through the above, there’s nothing that anyone else couldn’t have thought of, but I have to wonder why “the UK’s premier retailer of music”, who have a “reputation as one of the world’s most innovative music retailers”, hasn’t yet taken any kind of initiative in this space.

It needs to get far more aggressive in terms of making people aware of its download services, as I didn’t even know they had one until I looked out of curiosity. And if they really want “the best downloading service the web has ever seen”, they’re going to have to do far, far more than just relying on OD2 to do all the hard work which leaves their service looking and feeling identical to all their competitors who also use OD2.

And fix the pricing. Why on earth does it cost nigh on three times as much for a single track on HMV’s site compared to iTunes Music Store (£1.49 versus $0.99, at the current exchange rates that’s $2.71 vs $0.99, or £1.49 vs £0.55)? Rip off Britain indeed.