HMV

His Master's Voice redirects here, for the novel by Stanisław Lem, see His Master's Voice (novel)

His Master's Voice, usually abbreviated to HMV, is a famous trademark in the music business, and for many years was the name of a large record company. The name was coined in 1899 as the title of a painting of the dog Nipper listening to a wind-up gramophone. Their retail stores are currently the #1 high street music retailer in the UK (excluding Supermarkets), but has fierce competition across the UK with Virgin Megastores and more recently Music Zone.

Contents

1 The origin of the trademark image
2 The Gramophone Company becomes \"His Master's Voice\"
3 The HMV Group (retail)

3.1 Mergers and attempted take-overs: 2005 & 2006
3.2 Ottakar's Takeover

4 HMV Australia
5 See also
6 External links
7 Notes

The origin of the trademark image

The famous trademark image comes from a painting by English artist Francis Barraud, A.R.A. and titled His Master's Voice. It was acquired from the artist in 1899 by the newly-formed Gramophone Company. According to contemporary Gramophone Company publicity material, the dog, a fox terrier called Nipper, had originally belonged to Barraud's brother Mark. When Mark Barraud died, Francis inherited Nipper, along with a cylinder phonograph and a number of recordings of Mark's voice. Francis noted the peculiar interest that the dog took in the recorded voice of his late master emanating from the trumpet, and conceived the idea of committing the scene to canvas.

In early 1899, Francis Barraud applied for copyright of the original painting using the descriptive working title Dog looking at and listening to a Phonograph. He was unable to sell the work to any cylinder phonograph company, but The Gramophone Company purchased it later that year, under the condition that Barraud modify it to show one of their disc machines. The image was first used on the company's publicity material in 1900, and additional copies were subsequently commissioned from the artist for various corporate purposes.

Later, at the request of the gramophone's inventor Emile Berliner, the American rights to the picture became owned by the Victor Talking Machine Company. Victor used the image more aggressively than its U.K. partner, and from 1902 on all Victor records had a simplified drawing of the dog and gramophone from Barraud's painting on their label. Magazine advertisements urged record buyers to "Look for the dog".

The Gramophone Company becomes \"His Master's Voice\"

A 1920s HMV record label

In Commonwealth countries, the Gramophone Company did not use this design on its record labels until 1909. The following year the Gramophone Company replaced the Recording Angel trademark in the upper half of the record labels by the famous picture painted by Frances Barraud, commonly referred to as Nipper or The Dog. The company was never formally called "HMV" or His Master's Voice, but was identified by that term because of its use of the trademark. Records issued by the Company before February 1908 were generally referred to as "G&Ts", while those after that date are usually called "HMV" records.

This image continued to be used as a trademark by Victor in the USA, Canada and Latin America, and then by Victor's successor RCA. In Commonwealth countries (except Canada) it was used by subsidiaries of the Gramophone Company, which ultimately became part of EMI. The trademark's ownership is divided between different companies in different countries, reducing its value in the globalised music market. The name HMV is used by a chain of music shops, mainly in the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and Japan.

HMV, Oxford Street

In 1921 the Gramophone Company opened the first HMV shop in London. In 1929 RCA bought Victor, and with it a major shareholding in the Gramophone Company which Victor had owned since 1920. In 1931 RCA was instrumental in the creation of EMI, which continued to own the "His Master's Voice" name and image in the UK. In 1935 RCA sold its stake in EMI but continued to own Victor and the American rights to His Master's Voice. World War II fragmented the ownership of the name still further, as RCA Victor's Japanese subsidiary The Victor Company of Japan (JVC) became independent, and today they still use the "Victor" brand and Nipper in Japan only. (HMV shops in Canada and Japan are still not allowed to use Nipper for these reasons; nor did the shops HMV operated in the United States in the late 1990s and early 2000s.) Nipper continued to appear on RCA Victor records in America while EMI owned the His Master's Voice label in the UK until the 1980s, and the HMV shops until 1998.

The globalised market for CDs pushed EMI into abandoning the HMV label in favour of "EMI Classics", a name they could use worldwide; however, it was revived in the 1990s for Morrissey recordings. Meanwhile, RCA went into a financial decline; the dog and gramophone image, along with the RCA name, is now licensed by RCA Records and RCA Victor owner Sony BMG Music Entertainment from Thomson SA, owner of the trademarks in the Americas, which operates RCA's consumer electronics business (still promoted by Nipper the dog) that it bought from General Electric in 1986, after GE bought RCA. (Thomson bought the RCA trademarks, including Nipper in the Americas, from GE in 2003.)

The HMV Group (retail)

The name HMV is still used by the chain of record shops founded by Gramophone Company in the UK, which continued to expand internationally through the 1990s. In 1998 HMV Media was created as a separate company leaving EMI with a 43% stake. The firm bought the Waterstone's chain of bookshops and merged them with Dillons. In 2002 it floated on the London Stock Exchange as HMV Group plc, leaving EMI with only a token holding. HMV shops in the Australia, Ireland and the UK also use Nipper.

The image of "His Master's Voice" now exists in the United States as a trademark only on radios and radios combined with phonographs, a trademark owned by RCA Trademark Management SA in France. With that exception, the "His Master's Voice" dog and gramophone image is in the public domain in the USA, its United States trademark registrations having expired in 1989 (Sound recordings and phonograph cabinets), 1992 (television sets, televion-radio combination sets), and 1994 (sound recording and reproducing machines, needles, and records).

HMV had a handful of stores in the Eastern United States, which was overseen by HMV's Canadian operations. However, the dominance of the internet plus other retailers such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy made HMV leave the US market. The reverse of this was seen on home turf. At some point in the mid-1990s, following a nationwide expansion, HMV's stores over took rival chain Our Price in popularity, after a number of years of close and fierce compertition with them since the late 1980s, a blow they never recovered from. Our Price did continue trading until the end of the decade and even merged with Richard Branson's Virgin stores for a number of years, during which time (both outlets combined) over took HMV, but this was too little to late and Our Price eventualy closed some years later.

HMV has numerous stores in Canada.

Mergers and attempted take-overs: 2005 & 2006

For most of 2005 The HMV Group circled book chain Ottakars in order to take the smaller firm over and then, like Dillons before it, merge it into the larger Waterstone's operation. Even though for a company like HMV this would prove a good fit, as many of the Ottakars branches were in smaller towns and outposts, a large proportion of the book trade (writer, independent publishing companies as well as readers/fans) were against this move as they believed it would create a giant that would push out independent and interesting literature in favour of high volume turnover and price-led offers.

However, the Christmas period of 2005 was disastrous for the HMV group, with many product areas falling in sales. As a result, HMV itself became susceptible to a takeover, this time from a private equity firm called Permira. On Tuesday, 7th February, The HMV Group received a £762million takeover bid (based on 190p a share) from Permira, however HMV rejected it as being an insufficient valuation of the company.

If Permira does win control of the company, and if Tim Waterstone does not launch a counter offer for the book retail operation that he formed in the 1980s, then Permira might merge the two chains into a major entertainment retail chain that follows the blueprint of stores from The Borders Group or decrease the floorspace away from music retailing in HMV in favour of expanding the book and DVD areas in-store.

Even with a revived bid that increased the value of the company, HMV felt that their firm was being undervalued and so rejected that offer of takeover as well. By the beginning of March 2006, HMV released the statement that Permira offered too little for the company's buy-out.

Ottakar's Takeover

The Competition Commission provisionally cleared HMV Group, through Waterstones, for takeover of the Ottakar's group on March 30, 2006. The Commission stated that the takeover would "not result in a substantial lessening of competition", and was "not likely to affect book prices, range of titles offered or quality of service." Through extensive research they also found that "contrary to widespread perception, Waterstone's, like Ottakar's, operates a book-buying system which mixes central and local input on stock selection." [3]

Waterstones then announced that it had successfully negotiated a takeover of Ottakar's on May 31, 2006. HMV chief executive Alan Giles said in a statement: "A combined Waterstone's and Ottakar's business will create an exciting, quality bookseller, able to respond better to the increasingly competitive pressures of the retail market." Ottakar's chairman Philip Dunne said: "Over the last year the book market has undergone a significant change with new levels of competition from the supermarkets and online retailers impacting all specialist booksellers and in particular those with insufficient scale to compete on equal terms."

HMV Australia

After 75 years of music retailing history and with 32 stores in Australia, the HMV Group decided in September 2005 to focus on the UK, Irish, Canadian and Asian markets and sell its HMV Australia subsidiary to Brazin Limited (known briefly in the UK for Sanity Music) for AUS$4.0m (£1.7m).

External links

Notes

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HMV