martha
Blue Crack Supplier
If you shout... said:
Hatred?
For a store?
A store that no one's ever forced you to shop at?
Ok.
Tower Records going out of business
- Thread starter BonoFox1
- Start date
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If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Hatred?
For a store?
A store that no one's ever forced you to shop at?
Ok.
If you shout...
Rock n' Roll Doggie VIP PASS
martha said:
Hatred?
For a store?
A store that no one's ever forced you to shop at?
Ok.
Sweatshops never did anything to me, either, and nobody ever forced me to buy merchandise which was produced in one...but I still hate them. It's a different mode of exploitation at a store like Tower (and it's not like Tower is some pinnacle of evil) than sweatshop jeans in your favorite national retail giant, but both exploitative practices are part of the same apparatus.
Different tentacles on the same octopus, if you will. A cold, manipulative, evil, cruel octopus. Okay, I am stopping. I am sorry for being propagandistic. Be well, kids.
indra
ONE love, blood, life
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2004
- Messages
- 12,689
If you shout... said:
Hatred isn't rational. Disagreeing with the business methods can be rational, but when one moves into hatred, one is out of the realm of what is rational. That's why several people reacted so strongly to your posts.
martha
Blue Crack Supplier
If you shout... said:
Dude. It's a record store.
If you shout...
Rock n' Roll Doggie VIP PASS
martha said:
Not anymore, it's not!
Reggie Thee Dog
Blue Crack Addict
Long Live Tower Records...champion of music for the masses!!!
High prices, corporate consumernism and all!!! I will alway
them for allowing me to discover new music, being accessible, and having what I wanted when I wanted it. For opening up at midnight to sell Zooropa and giving away a freebie, for having friendly and knowledgeable staff, and for being a warm place to shop.
I you Tower Records...sorry to see you go. 
High prices, corporate consumernism and all!!! I will alway
them for allowing me to discover new music, being accessible, and having what I wanted when I wanted it. For opening up at midnight to sell Zooropa and giving away a freebie, for having friendly and knowledgeable staff, and for being a warm place to shop.I
you Tower Records...sorry to see you go. 
Diane L
Rock n' Roll Doggie FOB
I will miss the unusual selection of magazines at Tower Records. It was the only store near me that occasionally had Hot Press; Barnes & Noble and Borders never carry it. Tower also carried a lot of import magazines that will be impossible to find around here.
I feel very badly for the employees who will be losing their jobs. However, many employees of the store near me often acted like the store was their private playground...hanging out with friends and being indifferent to anyone who wasn't part of their clique. I wonder if this could be a contributing factor in their going under...if other stores had employees with the same bad attitudes.
That said, it is never good when a store chain folds. I am sorry Tower won't be around any more.
I feel very badly for the employees who will be losing their jobs. However, many employees of the store near me often acted like the store was their private playground...hanging out with friends and being indifferent to anyone who wasn't part of their clique. I wonder if this could be a contributing factor in their going under...if other stores had employees with the same bad attitudes.
That said, it is never good when a store chain folds. I am sorry Tower won't be around any more.
RedRocksU2
Blue Crack Addict
If you shout... said:
Anyways, I have some great memories of the Tower Records locations in so Cal, most of them from the various sleepovers we had in the late 80's :lo: and 90's to buy U2, Depeche Mode, The Cure, etc concert tickets. Back when you could have about 300 people waiting in line for the doors to open the next day the tix would go for sale. Those "parties" were awesome.
Regg, I agree 100% on everything you said.
Those poor people that lost their jobs.
Pop Artist
Rock n' Roll Doggie VIP PASS
RedrocksU2 said:
Anyways, I have some great memories of the Tower Records locations in so Cal, most of them from the various sleepovers we had in the late 80's :lo: and 90's to buy U2, Depeche Mode, The Cure, etc concert tickets. Back when you could have about 300 people waiting in line for the doors to open the next day the tix would go for sale. Those "parties" were awesome.
Ah yes, fond ticket sales memories in the days before the internet - I remember my first camp out at the NYC Village Tower for tix to the Pretenders at Radio City. And running the four blocks to the Tower at Lincoln Center while out to lunch from work after hearing on my walkman radio that Joshua Tree ticket sales would start in an hour. Those were the days...
mistress
Babyface
First post under this moniker but somewhat long time lurker under another name I'd forgotten my password for.
Anyway I thought I would chime in, for what it's worth.
I worked for Tower for an insane amount of time, off and on, sometimes on-call, mostly full time. I quit last year as it was finally, after well over a decade, time to move on to other things. Things were great back in the day but as time marched on there were changes within the corporate structure that did not sit well with me, the mere barely above min. wage employee.
There are a lot of points to cover. While some of you are annoyed with their high prices and don't give a shit, trust me - I understand where you are coming from. Why buy it for more when you can get it for less? Although I think Tower for all intents and purposes became a greedy corporate machine, as Reggie pointed out on page 1, he's 100% corrent - the store was dominated by Industry standards in order for a tangible retail market to stay afloat. It was give and take really. Tower eventually would charge the labels for spots on endcaps and wallboards and listening stations, and the labels in turn would charge 8.99 or whatever per unit (cd).
Why (I believe) Tower failed on an internal level was their a.) inability to keep up with the changing pace of the music environment and b.) casually blame everything on the internet and piracy and write the internet off as a passing fad d.) over expansion and the inductions of mega stores (as some of you might know, there were some Tower Stores that shared space with the now-gone Good Guys) and d.) ignoring the individual store demographic and taking away the individual store autonomy and lastly e.) gross mismanagement on the corporate level.
The problems Tower faced began in the mid to late 90's with over expansion not only on a national level but international level as well. Finally a couple of years ago, something had to give so the international stores went away. Tower nearly went belly up in 2004 when it filed for bankrupcty and the stores were restructured from within, from the top down to the bottom - they were given a fresh start and they blew it by bringing in these corporate "heads" who drove the company into the ground by constantly biting off more than they could chew all while allowing the banks to have complete control over all assets and aspects.
Not quite an stellar business model.
Eventually the whole thing just toppled. A store could only survive so long on on its "the difference is selection" when the world could get their top 40 at Best Boy or their imports or small label bands on Amazon. That's just the way it goes and the times are changing and will always change. It is sad, but it is not as though people didn't see it coming even a few years ago. But I still have friends who work there - not because they are getting paid fat checks but because the rest of the employees and myself worked there for and that was the love of music. The people that worked there long term, I can honestly say they loved their jobs as I did mine. To be around a wealth of music, being able to shoot the shit about music, being able to open your mind to music you otherwise might not have listened to. Even that one customer who would come up and sing a song they couldn't remember the name of, but were so grateful when you found it for them... That was the beauty of working there.
And while there were, as Diane L pointed out, employees that treated the store as their own playground - yeah, that sucks. There were some stores like that until it was time to clean house and fire a few people. But idiot store employees had nothing to do with Tower's demise. The problems in the corporation had roots far deeper than the clerks on the surface.
All in all there are 89 stores - roughly 3000 people will be out of a job. There are other people who have already lost theirs and they too are unemployed or roving monsterjobs and want ads - the loss prevention personnell, the visual merhandisers, the regional managers. Even the label representatives (not employed by Tower) from Sony, WEA, EMD, etc. are losing accounts with Tower gone. And I wonder how the hit will affect the smaller independent stores who sell used music.
And while it is easy to say "you can get another minimum wage job" the fact remains that it is hard to have a job you love taken away from you. I worked with a guy who has been a permanent fixture in the store since I used to ride my bike to Tower when I was a kid. Over 25 years he worked there. He got paid shit but he was damn good, a damn near guru, at what he did. Never seen anything like it. At over 50 years old, he's taking it hard. It's heartbreaking because he loved his job and his customers and classical music. It is devastating for him to have to find another line of work after that long.
Anyway, I'm about done babbling.
Get your tangibles while you can! Or if you can find anything, my old store is a mess with nothing in its proper place. Even the imports are on sale now. The prices are going to keep going down til every last jewel case is liquidated. I'd say we all have another 8 or 9 weeks depending.
Anyway I thought I would chime in, for what it's worth.
I worked for Tower for an insane amount of time, off and on, sometimes on-call, mostly full time. I quit last year as it was finally, after well over a decade, time to move on to other things. Things were great back in the day but as time marched on there were changes within the corporate structure that did not sit well with me, the mere barely above min. wage employee.
There are a lot of points to cover. While some of you are annoyed with their high prices and don't give a shit, trust me - I understand where you are coming from. Why buy it for more when you can get it for less? Although I think Tower for all intents and purposes became a greedy corporate machine, as Reggie pointed out on page 1, he's 100% corrent - the store was dominated by Industry standards in order for a tangible retail market to stay afloat. It was give and take really. Tower eventually would charge the labels for spots on endcaps and wallboards and listening stations, and the labels in turn would charge 8.99 or whatever per unit (cd).
Why (I believe) Tower failed on an internal level was their a.) inability to keep up with the changing pace of the music environment and b.) casually blame everything on the internet and piracy and write the internet off as a passing fad d.) over expansion and the inductions of mega stores (as some of you might know, there were some Tower Stores that shared space with the now-gone Good Guys) and d.) ignoring the individual store demographic and taking away the individual store autonomy and lastly e.) gross mismanagement on the corporate level.
The problems Tower faced began in the mid to late 90's with over expansion not only on a national level but international level as well. Finally a couple of years ago, something had to give so the international stores went away. Tower nearly went belly up in 2004 when it filed for bankrupcty and the stores were restructured from within, from the top down to the bottom - they were given a fresh start and they blew it by bringing in these corporate "heads" who drove the company into the ground by constantly biting off more than they could chew all while allowing the banks to have complete control over all assets and aspects.
Not quite an stellar business model.
Eventually the whole thing just toppled. A store could only survive so long on on its "the difference is selection" when the world could get their top 40 at Best Boy or their imports or small label bands on Amazon. That's just the way it goes and the times are changing and will always change. It is sad, but it is not as though people didn't see it coming even a few years ago. But I still have friends who work there - not because they are getting paid fat checks but because the rest of the employees and myself worked there for and that was the love of music. The people that worked there long term, I can honestly say they loved their jobs as I did mine. To be around a wealth of music, being able to shoot the shit about music, being able to open your mind to music you otherwise might not have listened to. Even that one customer who would come up and sing a song they couldn't remember the name of, but were so grateful when you found it for them... That was the beauty of working there.
And while there were, as Diane L pointed out, employees that treated the store as their own playground - yeah, that sucks. There were some stores like that until it was time to clean house and fire a few people. But idiot store employees had nothing to do with Tower's demise. The problems in the corporation had roots far deeper than the clerks on the surface.
All in all there are 89 stores - roughly 3000 people will be out of a job. There are other people who have already lost theirs and they too are unemployed or roving monsterjobs and want ads - the loss prevention personnell, the visual merhandisers, the regional managers. Even the label representatives (not employed by Tower) from Sony, WEA, EMD, etc. are losing accounts with Tower gone. And I wonder how the hit will affect the smaller independent stores who sell used music.
And while it is easy to say "you can get another minimum wage job" the fact remains that it is hard to have a job you love taken away from you. I worked with a guy who has been a permanent fixture in the store since I used to ride my bike to Tower when I was a kid. Over 25 years he worked there. He got paid shit but he was damn good, a damn near guru, at what he did. Never seen anything like it. At over 50 years old, he's taking it hard. It's heartbreaking because he loved his job and his customers and classical music. It is devastating for him to have to find another line of work after that long.
Anyway, I'm about done babbling.
Get your tangibles while you can! Or if you can find anything, my old store is a mess with nothing in its proper place. Even the imports are on sale now. The prices are going to keep going down til every last jewel case is liquidated. I'd say we all have another 8 or 9 weeks depending.
Dorian Gray
Refugee
If you shout... said:
Until you factor in shipping costs...
If you shout...
Rock n' Roll Doggie VIP PASS
Dorian Gray said:
I've never payed any more than $4.00 or $5.00 USD on Amazon. You factor in shipping (for my orders, anyway), and you're paying like $6.00 total for every album. I haven't been to a Tower Records in some time, so I guess that my opinions are about two years out of date, but I know that the last time I was there, they were selling Sleater-Kinney's The Hot Rock for the not-so-low, -low price of $19.99.
I got it for $4.50 including shipping from a seller on Amazon, and it hadn't ever even been played. I'm just sayin', is all.
If you shout...
Rock n' Roll Doggie VIP PASS
mistress said:
I'm not gonna quote everything because I don't want to leave another gigantic posting, but I've gotta say that I think yours was one hell of a great post. Rather than being vague and whining about how Target is great because you have memories there, you actually sad something...and you even made concessions, which is essential in proving yourself right.
I can't really take issue with anything you said. I'm still overjoyed at the store's collapse, but the intangible element ("I really loved that job, man...I can't replace it...") isn't something I'd ever considered at any length. Thanks for a damned solid post with some damned fine points. Kudos. Post here more often, damn it.
martha
Blue Crack Supplier
If you shout... said:
Your true colors are showing.
If you shout...
Rock n' Roll Doggie VIP PASS
martha said:
Your true colors are showing.
Should I/we not be encouraging a considered discourse, 'round these parts...? Seriously, that was an insightful, affective, and rational post all at once, back there. We gotta give credit where credit's due, especially when even the high-minded among us tend all too often to get bogged down in bold, foolish, laughable proclamations of/like, "Fuck Target because it fucking sucks, motherfuckers!" or idiotic, childish smiley faces passed off as argumentation.
...I found it to be a good posting, anyway. I suppose I could be missing the boat, but I've spent enough time with Aristotle to feel comfortable endorsing them shits. One more time, mistress--if you've ever anything to say, post here more often!
Also: Were people really only able to find copies of Hot Press and the like at Tower? I can't speak universally, but I've seen at least that particular magazine in the Barnes and Noble store near my place, back in the states.
MsMofoGone
Blue Crack Addict
I can honestly say YES when it came to buying 'Q' or 'Uncut' ...
(no one else carried these magazines, not even B&N or Borders)
And I see that Jewel/Osco now actually carries 'Spin' ... I used to get that magazine only from Tower too.
The sad part was since I always had a difficult time finding 'Q' or 'Uncut'... I would order those magzines on-line through their websites and pay alot more for the magazine since our American dollar was converted into the British currency. I was rather relieved when I found out Tower did in fact carry these magazines. Needless to say, I stopped ordering them on-line and didn't have to look elsewhere.
Now with Tower closing ... I'm back to square one.
I'll mourn the loss of Tower Records. The countless random hours that I've wandered the aisles in search of nothing and everything. Discovering new artists.
Waiting in line for U2 and Springsteen tickets and countless others.
Waiting in line and buying Achtung Baby at midnight...and then driving home and staying up past 3am listening to it again and again for the first time
--------
I know that I helped to kill Tower Records but the bad news is that in the end the more retail shops that go out of business the more we're all going to end up paying online. Less competition means higher prices.
Waiting in line for U2 and Springsteen tickets and countless others.
Waiting in line and buying Achtung Baby at midnight...and then driving home and staying up past 3am listening to it again and again for the first time
--------
I know that I helped to kill Tower Records but the bad news is that in the end the more retail shops that go out of business the more we're all going to end up paying online. Less competition means higher prices.
mistress
Babyface
Thanks so much for the nice words and vote of confidence, If you shout!
I definitely plan on posting more often, I like the minds and personalities here... and I get caught up lurking on FYM which is the blue crack for me - such an addiction, it just soaks up all my time!
I definitely plan on posting more often, I like the minds and personalities here... and I get caught up lurking on FYM which is the blue crack for me - such an addiction, it just soaks up all my time!
OP
OP
BonoFox1
Blue Crack Supplier
If you shout... said:
Well it might have sucked for yu but I got very good deals on new releases and I too shop Amazon..but I got my international magazines at Tower....It sucks to lose them..
OP
OP
BonoFox1
Blue Crack Supplier
Reggie Thee Dog said:Long Live Tower Records...champion of music for the masses!!!
High prices, corporate consumernism and all!!! I will alway
I
I went to the Midnight sale at the Holloywood-Sunset TR for HTDAAB....It was really fun!!!!
OP
OP
BonoFox1
Blue Crack Supplier
martha said:I rarely paid full price at Tower, but their sale prices couldn't be beat, and they had so many discs, and so many listening stations. I found the Mag Seven, the Bell-Rays, and Pelican there, just to name a few.
Oh Totally agree!! I got the new releases and at times they beat the Best Buy prices!!!
Got my U2 in Chicago dvd cheaper in TR than they had it at Best Buy...
just a note that I had no idea that TR was closing or that other stores had closed...Im in So.CA and I have 4 TR in my driving distance ........(had)
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