So... HMV is having a bit of difficulty?

I stumbled across this article about HMV.

I may be of this newer generation that supposedly likes to download music more so than buying a CD in store. I don't necessarily like to download anything. I find that the quality on a CD is better than an mp3 that I download. Also, I like the idea of having something that already acts as a back up. I find that a digital copy, it's hard to make sure that you have a back up of it. Yes, you can save it to another hard drive (external), but if that one fails, then you may not be guaranteed that it works.

However... What bugs me is that HMV makes stupid business decisions like the following: Making their customers pay to be part of their customer loyalty program.

Since when would customers pay to be loyal to a company? Do they actually have that much money to flaunt around? If I hold a loyalty card for the company, I am more prone to buying the item(s) at that particular company. HMV tends to be on the steep side in terms of pricing. But in my opinion, it's the stupid decisions like making people pay to be in their loyalty program that really drives people away. But that's just me.