Tower Records is Dead

Well Tower Records went to Banruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del on Thursday. Tower was purchased by Great American Group-which will liquidate Tower.

Sad Day

As a four year Ex-Tower employee I feel very sad. Not suprised a bit but still sad...

I've bought several cds from tower records....wow, sorry to hear that.....

There are almost no more chain record stores anymore in the USA, they are just too expensive when you can go to Best Buy or just order online... certainly hurts the range of selection available in stores, the fun hunt for records is almost a thing of a past generation. You can buy so easy online now, buy anything no matter how obscure, from small indie to major labels...

For Dirt see here Velvet Rope

From the CEO of Tower Joe D'Amico

I am deeply saddened to report to you that after a very significant 29 hour effort, Great American has outbid TWEC at the auction. Obviously, I did not want to or intend to report this kind of news via a cold email. My heart goes out to each of you who have poured your hearts and souls into this great company. But I am afraid this will be picked up on the wires shortly and I owe it to get this news to you first.

Unfortunately, Radius was not present and that was disappointing. And I know you have lots of questions. I will get them answered. This outcome was not expected and I too am disappointed.

I will be working on getting a call together with you as soon as I can. Please remember all of you at the stores and many of you at corporate and Bayside are very much needed. Tower.Com has been sold separately as has 33rd Street Records as well as Sunset and Campbell and other assets.

Physical inventories will be taken beginning Saturday or on Monday. Details to follow. Washington Inventory Systems will be contacting people directly.

Unemployment insurance will be paid as will most all vacation. Medical insurance and cobra will be provided as allowed. I will do what ever I can to be helpful in providing outplacement and other support where we can. I will make sure we provide references as appropriate. We will bring Robert Half in next week for an employment search at the expense of the company. I will let you know when that gets scheduled for next week.

The Judge has now ruled and the decision is final. He did reflect on how difficult this decision is and no one knows better than me.

I will keep you posted and will speak with you all soon. Feel free to email me with thoughts and I will try to make sure all concerns are addressed.

Joe

we mourn the fact that these places put independent stores out of business.. and now we're morning the fact that the internet put these stores out of business?

wtf???

I mean as far as chain stores go we had the wall (lol did you ever rip off with those blue stickers??), tower records, and two english chains (HMV and Virgin). At least out on the east coast. The wall went away, but it's FYE or Music Zone now... HMV and Virgin are still around.. and so's tower for now. I don't see what the tears are about

Luckily I live in a city with lots of independent record shops...

It's a shame that I haven't been to Towers at all.

[magenta]shedmonite61[/magenta] wrote: It's a shame that I haven't been to Towers at all.

yeah, they had a nice collection to browse.

But to be truthful, I haven't bought anything in Towers Records for years so, I probably won't miss it.

decent selection, godawful shit prices. no tears from me.

I bought some of my favorite albums there - NO's Low Life, the Cure's Disintegration on tape, Smashing Pumpkins Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness - and some of their sales were pretty good, but some of the prices were outrageous - $27 for an import of the Cure's Top??? But, after I started frequenting the independent used record stores, I stopped going to Tower - unless it was for a concert video. A friend of mine worked at one for a few summers and I used to go into her store and tell her that at Sound and Video Odessey (a local independent store) up the street, that the used records were $9 cheaper.

Went into the Tower records in Trump Tower a few years back,picked up a CD of Sasha`s first album 'The Qat Collection'-it had been deleted about 6 years at the time! They even had the Getting Away With It & Get The Message maxi-cd singles.

Oyr Price,fucking hell Shug they closed everywhere else about 20 years ago! Youll be telling us youve still got a Littlewoods next...

steveone wrote: Oyr Price,fucking hell Shug they closed everywhere else about 20 years ago! Youll be telling us youve still got a Littlewoods next...

and a brand new C & A

sad - we used to have one in Ann Arbor MI - I loved going there - they had the best imports. ahhh the good ol days.

For me Tower was always a one-stop shop for a bunch of cool stuff whenever I went to Atlanta. Not only did they have music, but a great selection of DVDs and magazines as well. Their music was also priced really well. I prefer to get obscure or hard-to-find stuff online or from indie record stores, but if I just needed to pick up something common like the new Killers album (for a friend) and wanted it NOW, Tower was the way to go.

I'll miss it terribly.

Have been to several and am sorry to hear about it's demise. The mile long racks of hip hop stuff in NYC were amazing. The same can be said for Jazz/Blues/Cajun/Creole in New Orleans.

Before the introduction of cheap internet & supermarket prices in the UK, shopping in the USA for CD's resulted in some real bargains.