And While I'm On The Subject of Music. . .

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on December 12

I’m going to miss Tower Records a lot. I was at one of the “going out of business” sales at the Tower on Manhattan’s Upper West Side recently, and the picking over the remains of the inventory was about as depressing as anything I’ve ever done.

Michael Currie Schaeffer over at The New Republic (subscription required, sorry) says he will miss it too:

For years, I’d borrow the family minivan and head out into the cold of December 25, engorged on turkey and ready to flee the parental clutch. I’d have cash presents from various uncles in my wallet, and I knew there was only one place to go: Tower, which stayed open 365 days a year. The bounty from those shopping runs formed the nucleus of what my wife and I came to call “the shrine”—that wall-sized shelf of LPs and CDs and cassettes that, by the time she and I shacked up, had come to take up a significant chunk of my meager real-estate holdings. Unwieldy and unattractive it may have been, but still I made us lug the shrine from tiny apartment to medium apartment to narrow rowhouse, keeping its contents alphabetized, lobbying to ensure their display in a prime location that would show off my eclectic and hip tastes to any and all visitors.

I’ve always had a similar ritual that usually involved buying presents for myself in order to get over the lingering material disappointment that Christmas often brings when its over. A few CDs made for a good late-season pick-me-up.

But with Tower closing, and my neighborhood HMV store — which came completed with an exquisite room dedicated just to jazz — converted in the last few years into a Best Buy (yeah they sell CDs there, but nothing I want to buy) I have really nowhere convenient to go and browse for music.

Here’s something else my spouse noticed yesterday: At the Virgin Megastore, there were huge sections of retail real estate devoted not to CDs, but to music-related memorabilia, clothes, T-shirts, dolls and whatever else you can imagine. Clearly there’s no money to be made on CDs these days, but I can imagine that cheaply-manufactured memorabilia/junk carries a much higher per-unit profit margin.

Maybe if some of the record companies constantly whining (there’s that word again … WHINING) about slumping CD sales should do something about: Buy out the Tower name and create a compelling retail environment that caters to music buying, no matter the format. Make record stores iPod-friendly in some way.

Since its clear that most of the music purchased for use on an iPod will probably come from a CD in the first place — remember iTunes sales average only 22 songs per iPod sold — then the way to get your music on the device of choice is to sell CDs. You just have to update the retail model on some way that you create a great experience for customers. Virgin doesn’t cut it: I won’t set foot in there without blocking out the noisy environment with iPod headphones.

But seriously. I’d like nothing more than to find a great record store again. I loved San Francisco’s Amoeba Records when I was there a few years ago. (It’s where I discovered, purely by chance, the brilliant work of Yusef Lateef). I’d love to find its equivalent in Manhattan. Anyone have any suggestions?

Am I the only one left who still wants to buy CDs?

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