With the real enemy for the high street record stores at the moment still the supermarkets and mail order etailers (ie not the download platforms - that competitor is yet to really have an impact), HMV are launching a new scheme which they hope will compete with Tesco, Amazon et al by not requiring the music fan to visit a shop or even start up their PC.
The new service will be done via your mobile phone. Ads in the national and lifestyle press will give you a special SMS code for different music, film and game releases. You text that code, and get back a text message with a mobile internet link for that product. From that point onwards the experience is basically a mobile version of buying music via a mail order website - you supply your credit card details and the CD gets sent out in the post.
In essence the main aim of this scheme is to simplify the mobile internet experience, which is currently hard to navigate, even if you manage to get past your mobile operator's 'we like to control what you see' portal. By texting customers a mobile web link users can buy their albums in just a handful of clicks.
HMV's internet head Gideon Lask explains: "Given the increasingly dynamic buying patterns of consumers and the mass market penetration of mobile phones in the UK, offering customers the opportunity to buy music albums, movies and games over their mobiles, whenever and wherever they are, is an incredibly attractive proposition".
Given the rapid growth in web enabled phones, and the resulting increase in the number of people who own these things but who don't really know how to use them, it's possibly a cool idea, and one which could be used to garner customer data and loyalty with which to launch an over-the-air mobile download platform in the future. Whether it will be enough to help HMV take on the threat from its many new competitors though, remains to be seen.