Another day, another one-time vanguard retailer down the drain. After struggling to climb out of bankruptcy for years, Sacramento-based Tower Records will be closing all its stores and liquidating its stock.
Austin's Tower location in the former Varsity Theatre at Guadalupe and 23rd closed in 2004 after 14 years. Between the overhead of maintaining a deep catalog in a worldwide chain of stores, deep discounts offered by "big box" stores like Best Buy, Internet retailing and downloading, Tower didn't stand a chance in the long run.
There were four record stores within a block of the Drag when I moved here in 1987 - Sound Exchange, Hasting's, Discount Records and Inner Sanctum. Today there are none.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
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1 comment:
Antone's Records is the only one left on Guadalupe. (Strangely, it never occurs to me to go there. Maybe because I don't buy vinyl anymore.) You'd think a college campus would do a booming business in used CDs. I think physical manifestations of music are now the province of people over 30.
Michael
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