TP Music throws in the towel

The shop initially started out in 1977 as a post-order company run from a basement in Frederiksberg

Buying DVDs and CDs for knockoff prices at the legendary music and film shop TP Musik will soon be a thing of the past after the company decided to throw in the towel this week.

The shop, which opened way back in 1977, has been unable to acclimatise to the digital age and competition from digital media solutions on the market like Spotify and Netflix.

“We are shutting down because it’s just not fun anymore,” Ulrik Willumsgaard, the head of TP Musik, told Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

“Customers have many alternatives today and it wouldn’t be financially viable to keep on going.”

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Digital nightmare
The music shop initially started out as a post-order company that was run from a basement in Frederiksberg by founder Tony Pape. In 1988, the company had two shops, and it had 17 shops at the height of its success.

But in 2012, TP Musik was declared bankrupt and eight of the remaining eleven shops were forced to close. And by the end of 2013, only one shop remained – on Gammel Kongevej in Copenhagen – and it will shut down at the end of June.

“We’ve told ourselves that we are not closing down because our customers don’t like us or because we are amateurs, but because it is a sign of the times,” Willumsgaard said.

“I try to convince myself that book shops are in the same sort of situation.”

TP Musik is the latest of a number of classic Danish music shops to close down in recent years.

GUF and Axel Music both called it a day back in 2009.




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