sh*t, i love the NY stores....no better place to browse cds without hassle. the last great music superstore, now all we have left at retail is the Top100 crap CC and BB pushes. well, there's Virgin, but their prices are even worse.

I almost always found good deals at Tower (the Warner SE's for $9.99 this summer comes to mind). By me, Tower is the place to go for harder to find discs.

Are the Virgin Megastores headed in the same direction? The store by me is going out of business, and I've heard about a bunch of other locations closing.

Yup--at my local Tower in NYC, they're advertising "up to 30% off", but what they don't tell you unless you ask, is that it is only 10% off sticker price for CD's and DVD's. Pretty insulting, but they have more traffic in there today than I've seen in years.

It's a pathetic "liquidation". Even at 30% off, it is merely a decent sale, but nothing special. I can use 30% off coupons at Borders any day of the week if I want 30% off msrp. Oh well, thought this could be a good oportunity, but I guess not.

Give it a week or 2...maybe some stuff will be left for a better % off ;)

I was taken aback by the number of people in Tower today. It was a good 5x the number of customers more then average. For some reason they all populated the used section. I couldn't figure out why until upon leaving. There is a sign that hangs overhead that says "Clearance" and signs explaining used discounts. The lowliest of the low and the dimwittedest of the dimwitted will always show up when they think there is a bargain to be had. Ugh. I hate to see what happens if it gets down to real discounts.

I might wait a week or two and hope to find some decent prices for Criterions.

yeah that's it. they said that on the news. the % off will get bigger as the weeks go by. it's going last like 60 days or something like that.

CompUsa is doing the same thing in some of the stores they're closing. now they're up to like 40% off but you have to read the fine print because it's 40% on selected items while other items, like video games, are only 25% off.

I agree. the one in Torrance CA has a killer magazine section. lots of obscure and small mags.

Shoot. I always go to the Tower near me to get my film scores. I guess I should head over there soon and pick up the stuff I've had my eye on before they are all gone. But then after shopping there for three years I have never seen anyone else browsing the film score section aside from me.

Meh. The Tustin Ranch store started the official liquidation today. Absolutely nothing to write home about: 10% off CDs & DVDs, 20% off books, and 30% off magazines. Maybe in a couple of weeks it may actually be worth it to go in and have a look. What amazes me is you see the store packed with people pushing each other out of the way to get 10% off list price for a CD...when Circuit City and Best Buy are within a stones' throw from this location.

I totally agree. 10% off an already overpriced item sucks. :lol:

Call me when CDs get down to $2.00 a piece. Not going to bother going because by then the masses will have raped the Tower. There was a CD store going out of biz here (Murmur) a couple of months ago and I bought 60 used CDs for $1.25 each. Good stuff, too. With Lala and other cheap used sources online I doubt I'll even bother driving to Tower even if everything is half off.

Live about half a mile from that store. I can't even count the number of hours I've spent there waiting in line for tickets, looking at magazines etc. If you're an old timer like me, do you remember the Wherehouse and Licorice Pizza across the street? I spent my teens in those stores. They even had a couch to sit and listen to music and sniff incense!

I'm glad they are gone. I really never cared for Tower Records, because of their crazy prices. No matter what city I've been in, I've always shopped somewhere else. There are always options. E.G. When visiting Phoenix, I always shopped at (four or five) Zia Records, here in Nor Cali, I always shop at Rasputins (the one in Campbell I prefer over the one in San Fran). Both of these stores have better prices and selection for my tastes than Tower.

I remember the Wherehouse and I remember when it closed a few years ago.

Glad I didn't bother stopping by. I'll probably check it out in another week or so, but a 10% discount just isn't worth it.

Sad news. :( I'd always meant to make it back to the one in Philly, but it's looking unlikely now (unless they're still around come December). I agree- sucky prices, but great for obscure cds.

So after 6 months/weeks they'll finally be competitive with Best Buy.

I was in the Greenwich Village (NY) store this weekend, and even with the discount, I saw nothing there I couldn't get cheaper online or at a place like Newbury Comics. I've been getting most of my music through LaLa recently anyways...

Sure, It's a shame to lose a store chain that huge, but they clearly couldn't keep up with changes in music retailing, and wound up paying for it.

-jason

The Upper West Side (NYC) store has been there for as long as I can remember. I'm going to miss it. They had some decent sales there every so often (I picked up some Doctor Who DVDs for a great price a few months ago), but I've been going there to browse for nearly my whole life. I still love to go there and look through their magazine section & their classical music section. Sad :(

To bad that Tower is going, it was a great way for me to scan through all the cds from A to Z. How am I supposed to that on Amazon? Best Buy and Walmart have only limited collection. Sigh.

I liked getting the imported cds from Japan, UK and France, or a compilation chill-out album that I didn't see any where, or just finding out that a band released a new cd.

I am going to wait till it's around 30%, hopefully since I usually by more obscure bands that Towers will still have them. At least now you can get The Beatles cheaper than ever before!

I don't know why everyone bitches about Tower's prices - most of their new releases are (were) always on sale on release date - sometime even cheaper than Best Buy or Circuit City. If you know what you want and pick it up on release day, Tower was great. Not to mention they'd always have the obscure stuff in stock that BB or CC didn't.

A recent example would be Lady Vengeance. Most BBs anb CC didn't have it the day it came out, the few that did were charging around $24 for it. Tower had it on release day for $19. Same thing with a lot of music too.

Well sometimes their prices were like $7.99 for a new CD, and other times a "sale" price would be $14.99. That is on release date.

$14.99 is completely unacceptable. Even not on sale!

To be fair though, the only beef I have with Tower are their ridiculous prices. They're more than excellent to work with if you were a band/record label and wanted to put CDs on consignment.

You obviously missed out on the old days when Tower was a discounter.

Back in the VINYL days.... Man, it was great! Almost any album you could want (including imports) - they'd have it, and at a good price.

Their 3 for $10 deal on bargain records was a great way to pick up catalog titles.

THAT Tower Records has been gone for a long time, unfortunately - but it was the absolute best while it was run that way!

I bought my first album - Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy on Tower on Sunset Blvd. for $3.66 in 1975. I still remember that day. A glorious time in my youth.