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Out with the old, never mind the new

Posted at 11:50 AM on December 22, 2006 by Hans Eisenbeis (3 Comments)



Tower Records, once the hippest record chain in the country, is closing the doors on the last of its stores today. What killed 'em? Probably it was death by a hundred papercuts, administered by Best Buy, Amazon, MySpace, and iTunes.


Others have died along the way too. Remember Musicland and Sam Goody? (Disclosure: Your humble scribe worked for that company, and has a vivid memory of it.) Coconuts? Wherehouse?

The good news may be this: The chains and mall-based stores can't survive the digital age, but the local mom & pops can. How? By dealing in rarities, collectibles, local disks, and other undownloadable merch and experiences. Exotic "tobacco" pipes!

What do you think? What's killing the record store, and is there any hope? What great local record stores have also gone the way of all flesh?

Photo: (cc) Yanec

Comments (3)

Remember "Hot Licks"? Then that became Northern Lights and moved down the street to where the Pantages is now. What a great store. And next to Hot Licks was Sam's Rock 'N' Roll gear, where you could buy your spikey dog collars and stiletto knives. Was that on the E-block? Seem to recall that's where the old store was.

Posted by Jerry Case | December 22, 2006 12:03 PM

I was always a fan of the Northern Lights/Urban Lights double feature on University. I also miss Landfill.

Posted by Ben Tesch | December 28, 2006 11:52 AM

Hot Licks was indeed on Block E, closer to the 6th street end. Ryan Cameron (of Let it Be) worked there and also famed DJ Kevin Cole, among many others. They had great in-stores. I wonder if anyone knows when they opened - what year? Long ago there was a local chain of record stores called The Wax Museum. I worked for them for 3 years in the mid-80's. Besides regular old music fans like me, the list of ex-employees reads like a who's who of local musicians and music biz types. It was a great place to work - favorite job I ever had in fact!

Posted by Lynn Zecca | February 10, 2007 8:31 AM

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