banthafett

Thanks for posting that it will be on tv tonight. Gonna record it.

JeffTheAlpaca

Excellent documentary.

It was funny watching Elton John go to Tower and buying multiple copies of the same album to keep at the multiples houses he owned.

Back in the day in the early 90's they did not store their tapes in protective cases or had the security stickers and people would put them in their pockets and walk out of the store.

It still exists online

http://towerrecords.com/

Alan Smithee

towerrecords.com was the division I worked for- it had been sold separately from the rest of the stores and assets and was intended to keep going after the stores had closed. We reassured customers that we weren't going anywhere and they'd still be able to order from us, but the first buyer backed out of the sale and a few months later a Canadian company ended up buying it out. We talked to the new owner on a conference call where he said they intended to keep it based in Sacramento and everyone would still have their jobs, and two days after that I and a good percentage of the other staff were laid off. About a month later they relocated everything to Montreal and failed miserably. I don't even know who's running the site now, but don't see why anyone would buy from it.

Rex Fenestrarum

Man, I dunno about other Tower stores, but the one at Around Lenox in Atlanta had an awesome classical room! What's more, the guys who worked in the classical room actually knew their shit, which was a pleasant surprise. It was the only music store in town where you could ask for "Johann Jacob Bach" and actually be taken to CDs of his works, and not have the clerk say "Uhh... don't you mean Johann Sebastian Bach?" Or better yet: "Who the hell is Leopold Mozart?"

I did get weirded out one time, though. I picked up a (vinyl) LP by Current 93 or Nurse With Wound or one of those bands, and there was a flyer for a local coven inside. IIRC, it was one of those resealable plastic sleeves, but it was still freaky. TOWER HIRES WITCHES!

DJariya

Just noticed that this documentary is now airing on Showtime as Windom mentioned.

I started watching it last night on the Showtime app. So far, really interesting. I'll try to finish the rest today. Didn't realize how much history there was with Tower Records.

I used to shop there a lot in college back in the early 90's when I was a broke college student who could barely afford CDs. I miss them to this day. It was a fun place to browse and occasionally buy stuff.

kahuna

Tower Records at Pearl Kai Shopping Center use to be my hangout. Especially when I was going through my divorce. Also great prices when they started blowing out their stock of Laser Discs.
Also 100 feet away was Jelly's.

After reading this thread I thought this movie would be free on Prime but I guess it's not.


Tower Records - Midlife Crisis Hawaii
http://midlifecrisishawaii.com/do-yo...-tower-records

Tower Records Closes Hawaii Stores
http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/5...-hawaii-stores

DJariya

Just finished it. Great film. If you have access to Showtime, watch it.

Sad seeing the timeline of how the business crumbled in the late 90's and early 2000's when they couldn't adjust to the changing times. CD's got too expensive and then piracy via Napster hurt them. Also competition from the Targets and Best Buys hurt them badly. The documentary also showed they expanded too fast internationally in many markets that they shouldn't have gone into.

I liked seeing the end of the film when 90 year old Russ Solomon traveled to Tokyo to visit a Tower store, since they're apparently still very successful there and his eyes lighted up. I liked seeing how happy he was that his vision is still living on even though it's independently owned by the Japanese now.

I'm very curious how physical media like CDs and DVDs are still successful in Japan where a store like Tower still exists, yet the industry is struggling right now in the U.S.

JeffTheAlpaca

Maybe the people in Japan are more savvy and know CDs are better than downloads and they are bigger music fans compared to the people in the U.S.

DJariya

I also think the problem lies with a lot of millennials in the U.S. who grew up in the download/Napster era and think they're entitled to "free" entertainment and don't believe in purchasing music and movies.

In college, I was making $4.25/$5 per hour and could barely afford new music and movies, but if there was an artist I liked and wanted to support, I would buy their album.

Aside from Tower's bad business decisions, it's those fuckers who don't have jobs and spend their time in their dorm rooms pirating music that put stores like Tower and Virgin Megastore out of business.

AaronHernandez

The Music industry was just slow to adapt. If it was just a bunch of kids wanting free stuff then you wouldn't have seen a boom in movie sales in the 00's as people starting building film collections something that didn't happen in the VHS era of the 80s and 90s. People got tired of having to buy an entire cd when they didn't necessarily like non album tracks. Basically the casual music fan of a certain youthful age went online and never came back and the casual older listener stopped paying attention to music altogether.And then a lot of people who actually are music connoisseur's just stopped listening to new music. How are new bands gonna ever grow an audience if local rock stations accross the country half their setlist looks like the same as it did in 1998 because a ton of people of a certain age think everything out there being made is basically Taylor Swift-Beyonce and Beiber and the only good music in the world is rock music made btwn the 60s and 90s.

CRM114

I watched this movie this week. It was interesting. I didn't know anything about them. In my day, the last place anyone I knew wanted to shop was a corporate record store chain. Seemed cool in the early days.

CRM114

Of course there was. Like every mom and pop record store that Tower wanted to put out of business.

hdnmickey

Some areas must have been far different than others because during the prime period for Tower the locally owned stores did NOT have better prices. Nor did the other big chain competitors (Musicland, Warehouse, Camelot). They locally owned stores were often at least a dollar or two MORE per title, or at best, the same price.

My friends and I would shop the local stores for local independent music or used stuff that the big chains were not carrying yet. Everything else was usually bought one of the two Tower locations in the area.

CRM114

It's still like that today around here. Best Buy will sell a CD for $14.99 that a local record shop is selling for 12.99. Locally owned record stores never charged anywhere near list price. I never paid $18.99 for a single CD in my life.

Obi-Wanma

I hung out at Tower a lot when I was in college from 1995-1999, but outside of the one in Ann Arbor, I don't know if there were many/any others in the Metro Detroit area. I had actually never seen one in person before I went to college. And then it was gone from there not long after I graduated.

I loved going there at midnight to get new CD's, which is probably an alien idea to the youth of today.

auto

That's funny. Those are the exact years I was at UofM. I spent countless hours in that store, rarely spending money. I'm sure we crossed paths at some point walking the aisles.

Hiro11

The Tower Records at Newbury Street / Mass Ave. in Boston was really good back in the day. I used to go to all of the indie stores in Boston as a kid, but the selection at Tower was hard to beat. Good prices, too. I started going daily for a while circa 1997-ish when I worked in the John Hancock tower and was waiting for my wife to get off of work elsewhere in Copley Square. The first floor had video and memorabilia, the second floor was essentially all CDs. Vinyl and tapes were not sold for a few years there.

The three biggest scores I ever found there:
- A UK import promo version of Swervedriver's "Ejector Seat Reservation", which at the time was essentially impossible to find. The record was never officially released widely due to Creation Records going out of business and related label shenanigans at the time. It was never released at all in the US. I think it's Swervedriver's best album. It remains really hard to find today but most of the tracks are available elsewhere. I paid $24 for this back then, the price tag is still on it.
- The limited edition metal box CD version of PiL's "Metal Box", which in addition to being cool packaging is a stone classic of an album. The untreated steel box has rusted in the years since, making it even cooler. You can get a copy for ~$35 these days but I would have challenged anyone to find a copy in 1997. I remember paying about $50 back then. This was silly as "Second Edition" is exactly the same album and could have been had for $9 at any Best Buy at the time. I had to have that box.
- A Japanese version of the Flying Burrito Brothers' "Guilded Palace of Sin", which in addition to being one of the best albums ever recorded (IMO) was basically impossible to find in the US in the nineties. I paid a lot for it, I don't remember how much. This was a holy grail album for me back then, it's back in print now and available everywhere. Get it, if you haven't heard it.

I miss shopping for physical music, even if I don't miss the expense and inconvenience.

kahuna

When CDs first came out in 1982, I was paying those $18.99 prices. I would wait for sales & those prices were usually $2-$3 cheaper. I think I ended up with about 2000 CDs.

I went from Vinyl, to 8-track, to Cassettes, & CDs.

DJariya

IIRC, Tower and The Warehouse's standard CD prices in the early 90's was around $13-14 and sale prices was $10-12.

Then mid-90's standard CD prices ballooned to $17-19 with sale prices being around $13-14 and that's when the shit hit the fan and music CD sales started a rapid decline.

For that time period, that was insanely expensive for music, especially trying to cater to college kids barely making minimum wage.


Going back to the film.....again watch it if you haven't seen it yet.

I'm glad that the film said Tower still has around 85 stores in Japan and is still successful. Russ Solomon can go to his grave knowing that his baby is still alive, except 6,000 miles away across the Pacific.

Chrisedge

^^ I don't remember CD pricing ever really going up that much. I always found sales and most of the CD's I bought (2000+) were all around $11-$13 bucks. I don't remember Non-Catalog Normal releases at $10...and when it did happen, it was simply a low priced first week kinda thing.

DJariya

I don't know where you live, but in Southern California (where I live), where the cost of living is significantly higher, those were the prices that it jumped up to back then. When I was a Senior in College (around 1996), Tower's CD prices were around $13-14 on sale.

I traveled to New York City around 2004 when Virgin Megastore was still around and went into their NYC shop and CD prices back then were around $18.99 regular price.

Like the film said, Targets and Best Buys sold CDs at cost and that took a hit on much of Tower's clientele.

Why So Blu?

Just finished watching the documentary. It was pretty damn good but I agree with others that say that their pricing model sucked ass towards the end and they really didn't adapt to the advances in technology.

I used to shop there a lot for either hard to find out of print materials or laserdiscs. Music, too, and they had a ticketmaster kiosk in there, as well. Since it was a huge store (mine was the one in Pasadena that was right above The Good Guys electronic store) if I didn't have money I would just browse stuff for hours and think to myself that $18.98 - $22.98 for a new release is fucking absurd. Hell, depending on the title and how many they had in stock you'd pay a high price, as if the CD/VHS, etc., was out of print or something.

When Russ sold his interest to the Japanese - they fucking flourished and have more than 80 locations there. The Japanese adapted.

Ringmaster

I remember going to that Pasadena location a few times! My home store was in West Covina. A lot of good times and money well spent at that location. I remember after they closed it down, the building was home to a Halloween store for a couple of years until it was completely torn down and became a parking lot extension for the mall .

Why So Blu?

My first laserdisc player was bought at The Good Guys there, walked it to the trunk of the car, and came back and bought my first laserdisc, which was Strange Days. I only ever made a couple of LD purchases there, because we also had the only laserdisc rental shop (The Laser Library) in the area and they would always cut us deals. Great shop that was maybe 1 mile from Tower.

davidh777

I would always hit the one by Ala Moana when I was on vacation.

When I lived in the Bay Area then moved to Seattle, I always spent time at Tower. When I studied abroad in London... also Tower. I liked it better than HMV and other places.