Tower is Closing

By the time you read this, Tower Records, once the standard bearer for retail music, will be nothing but smoldering ruins, figuratively. The chain finally made good on its threat to file for bankruptcy, not looking to reorganize, but to get out. The bidding came down to two parties – Trans World, the company behind Musicland, Coconuts, and Sam Goodies, and a liquidator. The liquidator bid about half a million dollars more, and the bankruptcy judge went with the highest bidder, even though Trans World said it was going to keep some Tower stores open, thereby saving jobs.

What does this mean? Should anyone care? Personally, I will really miss Tower. Like many similar chains, as it expanded, the stores lost some of their specialness. When I was working at Sound Warehouse back in the ‘80s, one of my fellow store managers had worked for Tower in Portland, Oregon. He'd talk about how the stores carried a complete stock, with bigger artists meriting separate cards for every release. Tower tried to carry everything.
This wasn't quite the case as the chain moved to so many other markets. In Tower's defense, with the explosion of indies in the CD era, no one could carry everything in a brick-and-mortar store. Nevertheless, Tower was still the best of the chains.

As it struggled to compete in a music market affected by big box stores selling below cost, e-tailers and downloading, prices went up. For a long time, Tower priced a lot of things below list, but that changed about five years ago or so, and that wasn't such a good sign. Still, they had a fair amount of stuff on sale.

That wasn't what made Tower so essential to me. Although Chicago has some good indie shops, those smaller stores have their limitations. Moreover, no one had as good an import section. The one area that Tower seemed to strengthen, while they struggled in others, was having a great stock of imports. Furthermore, they would even put some current titles on sale. In the last few years, I picked up on a lot of great music that either never hit the States, or took a while to get picked up in the U.S. of A. For that reason alone, I will really miss Tower.

The other big thing about Tower was that with their gigantic stock, particularly at their flagship stores, whiling away time going through the bins inevitably led to discoveries. Even if you subscribed to Ice Magazine or trolled Internet sites trying to keep up with new releases and reissues, it could be a bit much. I think a lot of true music freaks would agree with me that part of the fun of record shopping is rifling through the racks and suddenly discovering that Dave Dundas compilation, or a new album from a band that you thought had gone by the wayside. For example, I know that I had picked up all of the Kid Creole & the Coconuts reissues on Wounded Bird at Tower, each time being pleasantly surprised to find them in the racks.

That being said, the Tower era is over. The only remotely comparable store is Virgin, and while it's decent, the Virgin stores I've been to are usually in high volume downtown/tourist areas, and racks are in disarray. Moreover, they don't do quite as well in stocking imports.

This means that I will have to fall more in line with ordering online and downloading. I have nothing against ordering online itself, having ordered from Not Lame and other places over the years. I tend to do it sparingly, as I'd rather buy music from my weekly budget (that's admittedly just a personal quirk). The question is really can I shift my music discovery techniques to the Internet. Of course, I do uncover things on line now, but I don't spend a lot of my time checking out soundclips on My Space or hitting music blogs. I suppose that's going to have to change.

And there will still be cool mom-and-pop shops. I'm just not sure for how long. I have written here before that there is something about a music store that is irreplaceable. It's an atmosphere that lends itself to discovery and some socializing. I don't want to overstate its importance in the music experience, but I do think that it's something that shapes music fans. Realistically, I'll be surprised if there are any music stores by the time I'm 60. We'll have more choices than ever, but lack a central communal place to experience it. Is there such a thing as a sad day for consumers?

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