Tower Records Goes the Way of the Buggy Whip

Tower Records, an institution in the music business, is going broke:

NEW YORK - The news that Tower Records is going the way of, well, records struck a dissonant note with customers as the news sunk in this week that the 46-year-old music retailer has been sold to a liquidator that will close all the stores.

"I feel very sad about it," Ladd Fraternale, shopping in the country section at Tower's East Village store in Manhattan, said Wednesday. "I think they have a great selection here and the service is good."

On Oct. 6, a federal bankruptcy judge in Wilmington, Del., approved the sale of Tower to Los Angeles-based liquidator Great American Group for $134.3 million.

While no firm date has been set for the stores to close, "Going Out of Business" signs went up this week at Tower's 89 stores in 20 states and the chain's 3,000 employees have been told they will be laid off.

The company owes creditors about $200 million and filed for Chapter 11 reorganization in August. In its filing, Tower said it has been hurt by an industrywide decline in music sales, downloading of online music and competition from big-box stores such as Wal-Mart.

CDs were 10 percent off this week, still not a bargain. At 10 percent off the list price of $18.99, Beyonce's "B'day" was selling for $17.09, compared with $9.99 on Amazon. Great American President Andy Gumaer said the discount will increase over the six to eight weeks it takes to close the stores.

At the New York store, Larry Kirwan, lead singer of the Irish band Black 47, was scouring the rock bins and mourning Tower's imminent loss.

"It's a bad day for music," Kirwan said. "It's a bad day for independent bands. ... Right from the beginning, even before we were signed with labels they carried us. They've been good to musicians."

Kirwan said taking music off the Internet is not the same as buying a vinyl LP or even a CD.

An LP or CD is "something real that's not virtual," he said. "It's like music itself. I'm not sure music is virtual. It's real and it's powerful, and I don't think you quite get the same thing from downloading."

It's amazing how far the recorded music industry has come in a very short time. I still have a framed copy of the first record I ever made back in 1975. We also put that project on 8-tracks, those clunky plastic boxes that fit the tape players of the day.

I made two more records (33 rpm) in 1983 before we stopped doing vinyl and started putting out only cassettes. By the mid-90's we were making CD's and cassettes, and beginning with our 2001 live recording, we stopped making tapes altogether.

A year or so ago I bought everybody in the house iPods and spent several days uploading every CD I own to the computer. My CD's are all boxed up and in the garage now, and we're more likely to buy new music right off the web now instead of buying a CD. That's bad news for the brick and mortar music stores.

In ten more years they'll probably just beam the new music right to the chip in our head.