[atlantaprog] Re: Tower Records piece from the Village Voice

Great article indeed. No, I will NOT miss those extortionately high prices and 
terminally clueless sales staff. And like yourself, they did however have some 
good music dvd's on occasion. But all told, I'm shedding no tears, Tower ceased 
to be relavant to me years ago.

AWG <agmedia@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: So... anyone out there going to miss the 
place? The only thing I've 
found interesting there lately is a reasonable selection of music 
DVDs....

Good Riddance, Tower Records

What's going to happen to the gang of lovable misfits?

Someone somewhere probably has a nice memory of Tower Records. I'm 
pretty sure I bought the issue of Grand Royal with the article about 
Kid Rock from the Philly Tower, and that was a pretty good article. And 
now that I think about it, I bought the Dance Hall Crashers' Lockjaw 
from the bargain bin of the Tower on 4th and Broadway when I was in 
10th grade and my family was visiting New York for the weekend. I 
really like that album. So Tower has been responsible for a couple of 
good things coming into my life, and I probably shouldn't gloat too 
much. But I don't really have any sentimental attachment to the store; 
I grew up in Baltimore, where it was nowhere to be found. And I wasn't 
especially sad yesterday when I learned that the store was just now 
finally going out of business. The announcement wasn't much of a shock; 
the store's parent company has declared bankruptcy twice over the last 
couple of years. And the way the store operates just isn't going to 
work anymore. Tower sells its goods at unrealistically high prices, and 
it shouldn't really come as a surprise that not too many people are 
going to be willing to drop $18.99 on a CD. Tower's big selling point, 
I suppose, has been its deep selection, but that deep selection doesn't 
much matter when iTunes can offer a basically limitless selection of 
music without inflating its prices. There's been a lot of talk recently 
about the insane decline in record sales this year and the effect it'll 
have on record companies, but there hasn't been as much noise about the 
plight of CD retailers, most of which don't seem to be making much of 
an effort to compete with iTunes or Best Buy. If you've been into any 
of those stores recently, you probably haven't had a lot of fun there. 
The stores are big and impersonal, and they're organized into confusing 
genre-based sections and staffed by bored, underpaid teenagers. They 
play in-store music too loud and bombard you with video-screen images. 
And they sell their CDs and DVDs and video games and books at prices 
that couldn't exactly be described as competitive; Best Buy doesn't 
exactly make for a pleasant environment either, but that place has the 
good sense to keep its prices reasonable. 3000 people are going to lose 
their jobs when Tower goes out of business, and that's a shame. But 
other than that, it's hard to be sad about the demise of a company 
that's been so persistently clueless about what its customers might 
want.

The whole thing reminds me a lot of Blockbuster's current desperation 
to attract customers now that Netflix does its job better than it ever 
has. Blockbuster rose to dominate its industry by offering typically 
huge selections and by buying up all its competition, but it fostered a 
whole lot of resentment by staffing its stores with clueless and 
underpaid kids and charging exorbitant rental fees and late fees and 
making it impossible to get a membership without like five forms of ID. 
Now that there's a better alternative, Blockbuster keeps trying to 
right all its wrongs and still can't seem to bring people back in. Same 
thing with the big record stores; there's nothing they can do to 
compete with iTunes. Tower might've managed to survive if it had spent 
a few extra bucks to make its stores pleasant places to be. They 
could've paid employees a little more and hired better people, and they 
could've thrown some carpet down and eased up on the harsh fluorescent 
lighting and maybe put in a couple of comfortable chairs. It's not like 
that's a particularly far-fetched strategy; it's how Borders and Barnes 
& Noble can compete with Amazon even though Amazon has a bigger 
selection and better prices. And it's the reason that the better 
independent record stores won't go out of business even as the bigger 
ones fall.

I went down to the Tower at 4th and Broadway today, and it was the 
busiest I've ever seen it, probably because people are figuring that 
the store will finally be dropping its prices now that it has to 
liquidate its assets. But other than the posters screaming about 
everything-must-go sales and the complete lack of Tuesday new releases, 
not a whole lot had changed. As of right now, the big 
going-out-of-business sale amounts to 10% off most of the merchandise 
and not a whole lot else. But an $18.99 CD with 10% off is $17.10, and 
that's still too much to be paying for a CD. I asked one of the people 
working there when the last day was, and he had no idea: "We're just as 
much in the dark as the customers." He didn't seem especially happy to 
be there. Even when this place is in its death throes, there's no real 
reason to visit.

So I guess the real question here is this: What's going to happen to 
all the no-name rappers who stand outside the store and badger everyone 
to buy their shitty CDs? Are they all going to go stand outside the 
Virgin Megastore now? Because you already have to elbow your way 
through like six of those guys to get inside.



Hoo Hoooo  Hoo Hoooooo

Phil

http://www.geocities.com/theowlwatches

 

 



                
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