i think it's terrible that so many people are going to be left jobless from this, no matter what your feelings on the chain are.
and it is always a little sad when a record store closes down. i have to admit that i never shop there because there's none in the city centre.

what i'm hopin is that the financial crisis doesn't hit the smaller stores in dublin such as road, city discs and freebird. i think dublin would be a much poorer place without them. i'm actually going to make a point of stoppin into city discs on my way home this evening.

also, i have to admit that i do get most of my music online like most people, generally it's just easier and the selection's better.

i will probably end up movin out of dublin in the next year or 2 and i figure after that all my music will be bought online. it's very hard to get converge albums and dubstep compilations down the country

Good riddance. It was the worst music store Ive ever been in. The selection was Absolutely brutal. I feel for anybody losing their job, but this was bound to happen. Atleast in a company like zavvi, a large amount of the workforce would be part-timers, students etc...
Tower and occasionally City Discs suit all my requirements so long may they survive.

Golden Discs is easily worse. I mean I agree, Zavvi was pretty dire in terms of selection. I blame this partly on the current trend to take up over half of any mainstream record shop these days with DVDs, videogames, books posters and assorted tat and partly on Universal music who have a big say in dictating shelf space in most retail chains.

Even still, not everyone lives in Dublin and has a City Discs/Tower/Road Records they can browse, another record shop going under just isn't good news, at least in the short term until absolutely everyone and their mum goes digital. Sure most dedicated music fans have copped on to using 7digital/Amazon MP3/Emusic to legitimately obtain music these days, or even ordering CDs off CD WOW/Play but I reckon the majority of people that actually pay for music these days still buy it in a shop. If the dedicated music shops go under, that just leaves the supermarkets, which means music selection will be limited to endless driving rock/movies/soundtrack compilation albums, MOR stuff like Duffy/Amy winehouse and if they're feeling adventurous Snow Patrol-esque indie-lite. Pop music a mainstream medium would be dead, well even deader than now (Ironically this in a year when there has been so many brilliant straight up pop singles). It'd be like a throwback to the pre 1950s, pre pop world, for a few years anyway.

I'll be honest, I never had any very negative feelings on the place. I thought it was a decent enough shop anytime I went in. Their dance music and heavy metal sections were always pretty well stocked, which i always thinks is a plus. admitedly, the selection wasn't the greatest the last time i went in ( about 6 months ago) but it was by no means the worst chain out there. and not all the staff were part timers, there's going to be a lot of people that will be hit badly by this

and you're right binokular, golden discs is feckin appalling, i try to avoid the place like the plague.

picked up the new freq nasty cd in city discs at the weekend, it's deadly

They ain't honouring gift vouchers & that's ashamedly legal. AS PJ once said "such a shame, shame , shame".

yeah, that is pretty poor form. apparently they had a really good sale over the weekend where they were trying to get rid of the last of their stock.

I'm more annoyed about road shutting down

Posted By whiterob81 on 05 Jan 2009 04:23 AM
Their dance music and heavy metal sections were always pretty well stocked,

Well stocked dance music section in the sense of having CDs on the shelves, but I always found that Zavvis selection of dance music, as with most record stores was picked by people that didn't actually like dance music. Far too many compilation CDs from irrelevant 90s style superclub brands like Euphoria and Hed Kandi, trance and outdated acts. Can't really think of many dance/electronic music release purchased through a mainstream record shop by me in recent times, but then again I guess thats largely due to the dance/electronic community embracing digital formats far more readily than other genres offering high quality digital releases through the likes of Beatport.

I did pick up the odd drum and bass compilation there. They always sold Fabric compilations at pretty low prices which i really liked. Got the Andy C and DJ Hype one there and that was deadly.
I suppose I'm still relatively new to a lot of forms of electronic music and still only buying the odd compilation here and there as opposed to seeking out individual tracks by particular artists. so in that sense I found zaavi ok.

Yeah, it was a hell of a sale - most of their stock is now gone, apart from a load of Charlie Chaplin compilations. I'm just waiting til it gets to 50% off so I can buy Fallout 3 and PGR4...;-)

Of course, now they've been bought over by HMV, who I've always preferred anyway. What's the verdict, music-wise: HMC or Zavvi? Or are they all the same?

Posted By Archie on 20 Jan 2009 12:58 PM
HMC or Zavvi? Or are they all the same?

Back when it was "Virgin Megastore", it was better than HMV. The Virgin Megastore in Cork City used to be great, used to be surprised at how leftfield some of the stuff they used to stock was. I was able to pick up stuff like Solex first album, Adult and SYR recordings CDs in there, which was great because it meant I didn't have to go to a nearby indie record store (that shall remain unamed) that seemed to be staffed by real life high fidelity types that would try to get me to by Boreds of Canada CDs. After the management buyout of virgin and it became Zavvi, so now I'd have to say HMV is better, but only just.

 

Boreds of Canada... :)

i love charlie chaplin films, gonna have to pick up some.

Solex, that's a name I haven't heard in a while.

Freebird used to have pretty obnoxious staff working for them up here too. They've improved considerably in the last few years

Oh I hate going in to Freebird. They always make you feel so uncomfortable.

Ever been in one of the giant Virgin Megastores? Like in New York. Now that's fun.

Oh I hate going into Freebird. They always make you feel so uncomfortable.

Ever been in one of the giant Virgin Megastores? Like in New York. Now that's fun.

I did go to the virgin megastore in times square in November. It was feckin heavenly, i loved it. it was so well stocked. bought an armload of stuff. it reminded me of coming up to dublin when i was a young lad to buy records that i couldn't get anywhere else.

When freebird were on Eden Quay, the staff used to be a desperate, pig ignorant lot. They seemed to have improved a good lot since moving to cope st. Maybe the move overground helped

Only ever went into Zavvi to check out the sale CDs and DVDs I found most things were over priced.