Alan Giles, HMV's boss announced he was leaving the high street music giant today as the company announces “At HMV’s core music chain, underlying sales in the 10 weeks to January 7 fell 8.9%, but this narrowed to 5.5% fall in the five weeks to Jan 7 after management cut prices.”

This widely predicted news brought the share price down a further 18.5p to 178.5p this morning. This is attributed to the fierce competition from a number of Internet services. E-retailers like Amazon & Play can a provide cheaper product with lower overheads. New technology pushes sales towards download services like Itunes or Napster also the illegal downloading of music from services such as Soulseek and Kazaa has kept a year on year decline in physical sales in place.