The rumors finally confirmed, Tower Records is officially no more.
Hollywood Reporter reports that the liquidation firm Great American Group entered a winning bid of $134.3 million for Tower's assets (besting Trans World by a half million bucks), after a 29-hour auction on Friday. The liquidation process has already begun, leaving Virgin Megastores as the "most prominent remaining deep-catalog retailer."
And we're kind of sad about this. The entire ritual of obtaining and enjoying music has changed; that's nothing new. But we feel badly for the kids out there, 'cause there was something exciting about lining up outside Tower Records at midnight to buy Use Your Illusion (or, ya know, whatever). Going record shopping connected you with your "musical community" in a physical way; yeah, the internet provides that connection on the regular, but browsing CD stacks with friends made for some hilarious conversation.
They're not all gone yet, but there's a trend. With their overhead and current market-and-inventory practices, deep-catalog record retail just aint' profitable. Will you miss 'em when they're gone? Or are those store-front banners best placed in a museum, for posterity?
Meanwhile, our kids our gonna laugh their asses off when we tell 'em we had to leave our apartments and wait in line before we could have our music. Actually, that cave-man shit is pretty funny already.
