This represents the beginning of the end for retail music. Between the pressures of shopping convenience, downloadable music, and the death of the CD, eventually all music not sold by a band at a venue will only be available online.
Tower Records is closing, and as the signs say, everything must go. The whole chain is shutting, not just this thoroughly ravaged store off the Pike in Rockville. A liquidator is peddling the stock left in Tower’s 85 or so remaining stores (five locally), and by Christmas, even Tower’s desiccated carcass will be dust.
All of it is going, of course — not just Tower, but the record store culture that Tower embodied. Anything that can be squeezed down to ones and zeros and moved around at the speed of electrons doesn’t have to be stacked in plastic cases, shoved into bins and splayed over aisles under fluorescent lights anymore. All of it’s going online.
The article does have a point. Just as many lamented the loss of the LP canvas for album art (sure it’s still there, but who really looks at it now?) some will lament the loss of the opportunity of discovery inherent in leafing through a pile of albums looking for the one you wanted and finding something new and unexpected.
Hey, Greg Allen, on behalf of us editors and John, welcome back!
#28 — “poisson”! Tee-hee.
ugh, this story depresses me.
i spent some time where i was REALLY about itunes and downloading my music to save space, but then … then something happened with my itunes account and i couldn’t purchase music and i couldn’t access the music i had purchased and i was PISSED!
it took about 6 months to sort it all out and i was back to buying cds and just importing them to my itunes.
when my account was up and running again, i got all excited about downloading music again, but even then … no one was offering album art anymore, so again, i wasn’t happy.
i want my cds, man. i can rely on them. i get my album art, i get a disk that works and if it doesn’t, i have a store i can take it back to right away and get one that does work.
i love my ipod, i love my podcasts (ohhh, i listen to so many podcasts!), but damn … i love my cds too.
I worked from 1974 to 1980 in a variety of record stores (mostly music plus #5 in Westminster–but also in the legendary Middle Earth records in Downey) and I loved (and continue to love) record stores. Tower has gone away–that’s pretty bad, but if you live in Los Angles there is a much much much better record store and it’s not only doing well, it’s ROCKING!
The name is Amoeba records, and it’s right next to ARCLIGHT cinemas in Hollywood. It’s the largest record store the world has ever seen, with both new and used lp’s, cd’s dvd’s posters, in store dj’s, sometimes even live bands. Sure Tower is gone–the last of the national chains (a series that included Licorice Pizza, Peaches, Wherehouse and more) but that doesn’t mean that all record retailers are gone–every Barnes and Noble store has a record department, and every major city has a Virgin megastore.
Music retailing is alive and well, just Tower bit the dust. It’s a vicious, competitive business. And to be frank–the music just isn’t as important as it once was.
But if you are a music FREAK, and live in LA or SF–go to Amoeba. I actually can’t get out of this store for anything less than about $200. (same with Fry’s) and it’s always a pleasure to shop there.
#27 – – Even with eccentric music stores, finding new music that pushed the boundaries was difficult.
Forgive me, but I lived through that era too… (and refuse to accept the notion that its over just because kids like crappy quality compressed files and the shitastic sound of ear buds and iPods)
But if you think finding that music was hard, well, you must have sucked at writing research papers. I found all the best music despite growing up in a tiny little hick town dominated by country music.
Edirol UA 700 has a phono input, I use Cakewalk to record with but you can use anything, Reaper is free and doesn’t need a Cray mainframe to do it’s thing. Analog to digital means you’ve got to play it all the way through, but if you like it enough to digitize it then that’s not a bad thing.
Procrastination is a family trait and that’s why the two big boxes of LP’s are not yet converted to digital.
#35
> But if you think finding that music was hard…
Never said that finding music was hard. Finding good music on the other hand was difficult. Finding good music from bands that never made it onto the radio was even more difficult.