Brands over time

HMV
over time

Every year keeps its colour across every chart.│ ChatGPT, 30 Nov 2022

189 of HMV's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2015 to 2026, measured sentence by sentence, 59 of them recovered from the Internet Archive. How the writing has moved over the years, how it compares with 4 other high street retailers, and what it sounds like in its own words.

Pages measured
189
Years covered
2015–26
Archived before ChatGPT
59
Blog · press
185 · 4

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

HMV's homepage from 2003 to 2025, closest to 1 July, from the Internet Archive. Pick a year or press play. Each headline is quoted from its capture and links to the archived copy.

2025hmv.com1 Jul 2025
HMV homepage, 1 Jul 2025

Screenshot of HMV’s homepage (hmv.com) as archived by the Internet Archive on 1 Jul 2025. © HMV or its licensors. Shown for comparison and review; not endorsed by HMV.

Homepage

2025

“(What's the Story) Morning Glory?”

Page title

For The Fans Since 1921 | HMV Store Online | HMV Store

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2007HMV Store Finder
  2. 2011your basket is empty
  3. 2015Neil Young’s 5 Most Opinionated Songs
  4. 2017Calvin Harris, Stone Sour, Baio and more, it's this week's new albums at hmv...
  5. 2020As Ray LaMontagne returns with new album Monovision, we pick five key tracks from his career so far...
  6. 2025(What's the Story) Morning Glory?

20 captures. Screenshots are rendered from the archive and can pull in images archived later than the page itself; dates come from the capture. Years without a capture are greyed out in the strip.

02 · Measures by year

How the writing moved

Every year’s pages, averaged. Pick a measure. Hatched bars rest on fewer than 10 pages: context, not a finding. The page count sits under each year.

Sentence lengthAverage words per sentence.
5
10
15
Shops avg 12.0
10.0
11.1
14.8
13.7
11.2
10.2
14.3
14.5
9.4
12.6
12.0
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
20152 pp
20162 pp
20172 pp
201810 pp
201915 pp
20206 pp
202111 pp
202210 pp
2023no pages
20242 pp
20253 pp
20263 pp
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
201510.02
201611.12
201714.82
201813.710
201911.215
202010.26
202114.311
202214.510
20249.42
202512.63
202612.03

Years with pages: 2015 (2), 2016 (2), 2017 (2), 2018 (10), 2019 (15), 2020 (6), 2021 (11), 2022 (10), 2024 (2), 2025 (3), 2026 (3). Dates come from page metadata, structured data, the URL, or the month a page was first archived (a latest possible date).

03 · Against its sector

HMV among high street retailers

Each dot is one brand’s mean across all its measured pages; the tick is the sector average. Only brands with 10 or more measured pages are shown or counted. Select a dot to open that brand.

  1. Questions

    100% more than its sector

    2.9 against a sector average of 1.5; highest of 5.

  2. Contractions

    66% more than its sector

    19.3 against a sector average of 11.6; highest of 5.

  3. "We"

    26% less than its sector

    35% against a sector average of 48%; 2nd lowest of 5.

Sentence lengthMid-table, 3rd of 5
HMV 11.8
7.515.2
ContractionsHighest of 5
HMV 19.3
6.019.3
"You"2nd highest of 5
HMV 50%
6%77%
"We"2nd lowest of 5
HMV 35%
14%68%
QuestionsHighest of 5
HMV 2.9
0.12.9
Long words2nd lowest of 5
HMV 21%
20%32%
Em dashes2nd lowest of 5
HMV 1.48
0.733.00
AI-associated words2nd highest of 5
HMV 1.23
0.241.34
Exclamations2nd highest of 5
HMV 2.17
0.023.33
Page length2nd lowest of 5
HMV 915
8891,631

Pages measured: Currys 115 · Hobbycraft 120 · The Works 21 · JD Sports 65 · HMV 189. Measures and method: SGR-010; this sector and its brands were added by Brands over time, measured exactly as the studies measured theirs. Sector averages and ranks cover every brand in the sector on this site.

04 · Vocabulary

Words HMV uses more than its peers

The words this brand reaches for more often than the rest of its sector. This is subject matter more than voice.

shop48.4 vs 5.2
music51.4 vs 1.4
record43.3 vs 1.7
vinyl39.9 vs 5.4
album102.2 vs 0.4
love39.4 vs 9.5
sound22.0 vs 1.2
pop20.3 vs 1.5
hear24.8 vs 0.6
fans20.3 vs 1.0
HMVSector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 189 pages. Checked for product names and page furniture.

05 · In its own words

What it sounded like

Openings of real pages, quoted word for word, oldest first. Each links to the page, or to the Internet Archive’s copy when it has gone.

201529 Apr · BlogArchived copy
“With his debut album Chaos and The Calm freshly on the shelves, fans of James Bay poured into our store in Manchester's Arndale Centre to watch the singer-songwriter perform a live acoustic set before meeting them all and signing copies of his new LP.”
Watch: James Bay performs live @ hmv Manchester
201721 Jul · BlogArchived copy
“For some of 2010 and almost all of 2011, it was difficult to get away from Foster The People. They arrived with 'Pumped Up Kicks', a slick summery earworm that went on to tell over seven and a half million copies across the world and dominated radio for many months, powering the band's debut album Torches to big, big sales.”
As the album comes to shelves, we spoke to frontman Mark Foster about making the album, embracing the sounds of the 1960's and why there's an awful lot of love on this LP...
201820 Apr · BlogArchived copy
“Things have gone pretty swimmingly for country-pop duo The Shires over the last couple of years.”
Things have gone pretty swimmingly for country-pop duo The Shires over the last couple of years. Both of their albums have gone Gold in the UK and they’ve moved from tiny rooms and into venues with capacities in the thousands, but the novelty of simply being a British country act has gone. Today Crissie Rhodes and Ben Earle return with their third album Accidentally On Purpose. Recorded out in country hotbed Nashville with Kelsea Ballerini/Thomas Rhett producer Lindsay Rimes, the album sees the band embracing good time pop and even snagging a track from Ed Sheeran. We spoke to the pair about the making of the new album and their enduring love for Nashville...
202324 Aug · Blog
“Tyler, the Creator has been a leading voice in modern hip-hop for over a decade, consistently pushing boundaries, challenging expectations and venturing into other genres. CMIYGL cannot solely be considered a rap album - in fact, it draws from jazz, neo-soul, reggae and even a touch of bossa nova.”
Two years after the release of his sixth studio album, Tyler, the Creator returns with an extended edition of Call Me If You Get Lost. The 3LP vinyl issue of The Estate Sale features a triple gatefold jacket with stunning embossed artwork and foil detailing. Inside, you can find the original Call Me If You Get Lost album plus 8 additional tracks, all pressed on Geneva Blue wax and a 28-page booklet, making it the perfect addition to any collector’s library.

06 · Every page

All 192 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 189 count towards the measures; the rest were not measured (3 mostly short lines (lists, tables, link pages) rather than prose). Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

20263 pages
20253 pages
20242 pages
202210 pages
202111 pages
20206 pages
201915 pages
201810 pages
20172 pages
20162 pages
20152 pages
In the overall numbers, no year123 pages
Not measured3 pages

07 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

HMV's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, fetched from the live site in 2026 and from the Internet Archive for 2015 to November 2022. Homepages are shown as captures; product and help pages are not measured.

The measures

Code counts from ScriptGrain’s writing instruments: sentence length and rhythm, contractions, pronouns, punctuation, long words, and three published lists of AI-associated words. No AI model reads or judges any page.

What it cannot say

These measures describe style. They cannot tell who or what wrote a page, and nothing here says or implies that any brand used AI to write.

Sample sizes

Every number carries its page count. Years under 10 pages, and before-and-after comparisons with under 10 pages on a side, are shown as context only.

Sentence length
Average words per sentence.
Sentence rhythm
How much sentence length varies (standard deviation over mean). Higher reads less even.
Contractions
Contractions (we're, you'll, it's) per 1,000 words. A rough gauge of how conversational the writing is.
"You"
Share of I/we/you pronouns that are "you": how much the writing addresses the reader.
"We"
Share of I/we/you pronouns that are "we": how much the writing talks about the organisation.
Questions
Question marks per 1,000 words.
Exclamations
Exclamation marks per 1,000 words.
Long words
Share of words with seven or more letters.
Em dashes
Em dashes per 1,000 words.
AI-associated words
Words from SGR-007's three AI-associated lists, per 1,000 words. These are style markers that people used long before ChatGPT; a higher rate says nothing about who or what wrote the page.
AI-era marketing words
Marketing words that became more common in AI-era copy (seamless, elevate, unlock...), per 1,000 words. A style measure only.
Quieter LLM-favoured words
Everyday words language models are known to over-use, per 1,000 words. A style measure only.
AI-associated sentence shapes
Sentence patterns such as "not just X, but Y", found by ScriptGrain's cliche checker, per 1,000 words. A style measure only.
Page length
Average words per page.

Studies: SGR-009: Do brands in the same sector sound the same? · SGR-010: How UK brands write · SGR-011: Did brand writing change after ChatGPT?.