Tower Records, R.I.P.

I knew of this a few days ago, but I wanted to wait until I went down to the store to see for myself. Sure enough, the Tower Records on Clark Street had its "Going Out of Business" signs in the windows, and everything in the store is marked down. At this point, CDs and DVDs are selling for 10 percent off, with books going for 20 percent off (one sign said that there were 30 percent reductions somewhere in the store, but I never saw them). I suppose prices will drop as the sale goes on.

Tower had filed for bankruptcy in August, but a court-supervised auction sold off the business itself on Friday. After 29 hours, Great American Group, a liquidator, emerged triumphant with a bid if $134.3 million dollars. They immediately went to work doing what they do--liquidating--and started the Going Out of Business sales the next day. Tower has 89 stores in the U.S. that will close, with about 3,000 employees losing their jobs.

Most, if not all, of those stores provided music information and gathering centers in their communities. A Hollywood Reporter story that went out over the wires suggested that the closing will have a ripple effect through the music business. Only Virgin Records, with 20 U.S. stores, is left to provide a "deep-catalog" outlet for music buyers. Some indie or niche labels, according to an industry observer, may have seen 40 or 50 percent of their sales come through Tower. Other music companies could take major hits when Tower warehouse inventory is returned.

The biggest change that this will cause, it seems to me, is a huge move over to Internet sales for obscure titles and artists. There are fewer and fewer places to go to browse anything other than the Top 20 new releases. I like to go into a CD store, look around, and soak up the new material that's available. Sometimes I'll see something that I've heard of but know nothing about. Other times I'll just look for whatever seems interesting and take a chance. I'll miss the tactile experience of poring through the bins in search of what's new and interesting. We still have a Virgin Megastore in town, so that opportunity isn't gone entirely, but we had four Towers in the area, and different stores would have different merchandise, so the stores would provide four different experiences.

I've also noticed that a number of used CD stores I've frequented are disappearing, as well. I blame the Internet. The availability of pretty much everything online makes it harder to sustain a CD resale business in bricks and mortar. That's a shame, too, because when I go to browse in a used CD store, I never know what I'll walk out with. I may hope to find something in particular, but if I find something I've been looking for at a reasonable price, I'll pick it up. You lose that opportunity when buying online. When I buy online, I'm looking for something particular, and when I find it, I buy it, and I go offline. No impulse buys. No walking away with an armload of CDs. (Not to mention how passionless it is to buy online. When I buy music, I want to take it home and listen to it immediately. I don't want to wait for a few days until it arrives in the mail.)

It's sad that Tower Records is going away, and it's sad that CD retailing is hitting such hard times. But I'll just have to get comfortable with a new way of discovering and buying music.

By the way, the bidding for Tower came down to Great American and Trans World Entertainment Corp., a company based in Albany, New York, that operates the Coconuts, Suncoast, and FYE chains. They planned to keep some of the Tower stores open. For a vaguely inside look at the auction from their point of view, check out the coverage in the Albany Times Union.