October 06, 2006, 6:00 PM ET
Tower Records To Be Liquidated

By Ed Christman, N.Y.

Tower Records, the music industry's most famous retail brand, will be liquidated beginning tomorrow (Oct. 7).

After a 30-hour auction, the process was won by the lead-bidder, Great American, who put together a consortium of other suitors who were bidding on different components of the retailer. The winning bid was $134.3 million.

“It's a sad day for the music business and I feel badly for all Tower employees," says Jim Urie, president of Universal Music Group Distribution. "Tower was probably the greatest brand that will ever exist in music retail.”

In court Michael Bloom, a partner with Philadelphia law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, the law firm that represents the secured trace creditors committee, questioned if the winning bid was the best one. Bloom pointed out that one of Trans World's partners, Hilco Merchant Resources, LLC., upped its bid by $500,000—after the auction closed—thus matching Great American's bid. Bloom claimed the Trans World bid was more beneficial for the 2700 Tower employees and all the trade creditors.

But U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Brendan L. Shannon ruled in favor of the Great American bid, noting it was important to vindicate the Chapter 11 auction process.

There is a chance Tower Records brand could live on via Tower.com. Norton LLC, part of the Great American consortium, put up $3.8 million to acquire Tower.com and Pulse Magazine.

Out-of-business sales at Tower's stores will begin tomorrow.

This news sucks. Sure, Tower was expensive but it could also be counted on to have stuff no one else carried.

where did this come from? when was it announced that tower was going under?

Even though I purchase most of my music online I do find this sad. There is a large Tower here and I'll miss it if it ever goes away.

I lived (and about to go back to) a town with an Amoeba records, so this is no great loss to me. Their prices were awful.

A shame.

A nice place to go if you needed a fix for something a bit more obscure and could not wait to get it online. Some decent deals on the new release stuff and a good sale once in awhile.

Will probably check out the store this weekend to see what kind of closing sales are going on.

Man, I loved Tower Records. I spent half my high school years hanging out in it when it first came to my town. That store was so awesome with its billion listening stations and huge selection. I'm sad. Man. Really no need for me to buy me music anywhere other than online now. Boo.

Will they have closing sales? Is this going to be immediate?

If I could add up all of the purchases I've made at Tower since I started shopping there at the tender age of 13, I think it would rival the budget of small nation. Living in Orange County, the selection of decent music stores will drop to almost nothing. Looks Amoeba will be getting a lot more of my business now.

Amoeba has the music market in So. Cal cornered at this point. Aaron's and Rhino Records are both gone.

We have two here in NYC (that I know of). Would love to know what the sales are going to be like.

Damn. I always liked that store. Now I feel kinda guilty about the Narnia 2-disc deal we got from them...

I'll miss Tower.

Wow, sad days indeed. Tower was my music store of choice through much of the early 90's, when I was living in Phoenix (no Tower stores in my hometown of the last ten years), so a lot of nostalgia for the place. And I still buy from Tower.com on occasion these days because of their usually great selection of obscure stuff (as others mentioned).

This really marks the end of an era. Tower was the last great music chain in the United States. I don't really buy music in stores anymore; the selections can never compare to what is available online. However, I still go to Tower Video for movies.

Sad. Pretty soon, you won't be able to even buy a physical CD. It's all about the iTunes now. Eventually, the same thing will happen with DVDs.

...sad

Tower--because it started in Sacramento, CA--always had a very strong presence with large stores on Watt Avenue and El Camino Avenue in northeast Sacramento and Broadway and 16th Street in downtown. It's going to be so spooky to walk around the areas where the stores once stood.

Mind you, the handwriting was on the wall because Tower couldn't compete against Barnes & Noble and Borders Books in terms of book selection, Best Buy and Wal-Mart when it came to CD/DVD pricing and Internet stores like Amazon.com, Buy.com, and several others.

Tower. We'll never forget the influence you had on the music business.

Who actually buys from this store with their rediculously overpriced releases!?!

So any word on the liquidation sale? How much are things being marked down? This better not be another one of their "$16.99" for a CD "sales".

You already posted this in the Store Forum. Should have used the time you took to cross-post better, like learning how to spell ridiculous, for example.


I do buy stuff from Tower.

Looks like I spoke too soon. Just called Tower. 10% off sale today. That means I can buy a $18.99 CD for $17.01.

They can't even price liquidation sales correctly!

i always go to tower for tickmaster purchases. :/

c'mon think about it. first week is 10%, second week 20%, third week 30%... and so on... or maybe replace month with week depending on how long they have left on their lease.

I hope that's the case. I'd still have to wait for the 3rd or 4th week for their prices to mean anything though.

Shopping will never be the same for me.

Never bought a whole lot of music from them, but I got a massive pile-up of books,mags,and DVDs of Tower Records purchases. I'm sad to see the store go.

For me Tower Records was the highlight of my week back in the early 80's.

Every weekend my dad would take me to Tower and I'd spend an hour or two going through all the records in the Rock section. Their prices back then were discounted, and you could get albums as cheap as $3.99! They had a 3 for $10 deal on their bargain albums, and I took advantage of that as often as I could.

Their selection was fantastic, and the store was just really cool.

In the 90's they stopped discounting, and relied on big sales each month instead - it wasn't the same. But I'll never forget how much fun I had going through the racks of albums back in the early 80's.

I've missed the real Tower for a long time, but this is still kind of sad.