When the biggest high street music shop chain is in trouble, you know there’s a problem. Today 90year old music chain HMV was refused a £300m lifeline to keep its doors open and may be going into liquidation as soon as tomorrow.

It’s been the move of consumers to online rental and streaming services that seems to be the reason for the possible closures. Verdict reports that HMV’s share of the music and video market in retail was 22.2 per cent in 2012. Up to 4,500 jobs are also at risk now with store closures throughout the UK.

There have been subtle hints throughout the year that you may have noticed when you go into HMV. The decrease in Vinyl on sale, the increase in audio equipment stock on display in store and the constant bargain sale’s in music and dvd’s have all been the store’s efforts to change their sales technique and get back some of their losses. Even now if you go to their website they’re having a huge blue cross sale.

It’s worrying for physical music as a whole but this news comes a couple of weeks after the news that UK vinyl sales are up 15.3% since last year. Which was an improvement on the year before.

[UPDATE] HMV called in the administrators over night and did not open for business today. They said they will not be accepting or issuing gift vouchers any longer and the board of the shop had this to say : “The board regrets to announce that it has been unable to reach a position where it feels able to continue to trade outside of insolvency protection and in the circumstances therefore intends to file notice to appoint administrators to the company and certain of its subsidiaries with immediate effect.“