Tower Records is getting liquidated

[Miulang]

Re: Tower Records is getting liquidated

Anyway this will be a good thread for people to follow and compare the closeout prices that occur in different cities such as Honolulu and Seattle. Any other Tower's in your offshore neighborhood? Are they having big sales before anyone else?

Tower Records' presence in Seattle has dimished rather dramatically over the past few years. I'll have to go by that store tomorrow to see if they're having their clearance sale. We've got another big CD store called Silver Platters which has way more of a selection of popular music; the thing I used to like about Tower was its rather eclectic selection of music (they had a whole half of a store dedicated just to classical music).

Tower Records in the heart of London was a really cool landmark where you could meet your friends because it was so recognizable.

Miulang

[tvguy]

Re: Tower Records is getting liquidated

Anyone remember when the Ala Moana location was "Odyssey Records" and was painted blue before Tower moved in? I basically grew up with Tower though, from when they first opened and brand new albums or cassettes were $5.99. Being in Intermediate school, i'd scrounge up the with-tax price of $6.23 with cash and coins to buy something.

[GeckoGeek]

Re: Tower Records is getting liquidated

some of the disadvantages of digital only are the following:

1. DRM.
2. Requirement to back up all your songs to other media
3. Possible obsolesence of digital file format
4. No physical media, slick CD booklet and professinal packaging
5. DRM

That's why I'm with eMusic for now. No DRM. Selection is quite limited, but I'm hoping it will improve. Until then, I'm having fun poking around and seeing what I like.

But you missed the biggest disadvantage to the CD:

You get all the songs. Usually on a 4 to 1 suck to desirable ratio. With digital download, you can skip all musical bondo used to boost the track count.

[GeckoGeek]

Re: Tower Records is getting liquidated

I basically grew up with Tower though, from when they first opened and brand new albums or cassettes were $5.99. Being in Intermediate school, i'd scrounge up the with-tax price of $6.23 with cash and coins to buy something.

What I miss were the 99¢ 45s. (No, I'm not talking about guns or beer.) It was a sorry day when that bin disappeared. I think it was about then that I finally bought a CD player. But the CDs singles were way too $$$ and most CDs just had too much junk. I still don't buy music as much as I used to.

[achow]

Re: Tower Records is getting liquidated

I can't believe that Tower Records is getting liquidated. I used to shop at the Keeaumoku Tower Records a lot back when I was in high school. I used to buy the single CD's which were cheap back then. I'll miss Tower Records because it was also used as place directional marker.

[dick]

Re: Tower Records is getting liquidated

I still very rarely, if at all, buy music online. I don't like not having a hard copy of a record, plus I like having the liner notes and art that come with CDs.

I buy 15-20 CDs a month. All hard copy. But I look for the deals. I avoid paying more than $10 or $12 bucks. Most new CDs are way cheap when first released. That's the time to buy.

[mel]

Re: Tower Records is getting liquidated

That's why I'm with eMusic for now. No DRM. Selection is quite limited, but I'm hoping it will improve. Until then, I'm having fun poking around and seeing what I like.

But you missed the biggest disadvantage to the CD:

You get all the songs. Usually on a 4 to 1 suck to desirable ratio. With digital download, you can skip all musical bondo used to boost the track count.

Yep, you got me on that one. And I agree, in many cases most CDs have 1 or 2 great tracks and a lot of filler. That is for many regular albums.

That is where in the old days, 45s used to come in. As mentioned earlier, these were cheap and you got the featured song and something else on the "B" side (I miss B sides), for 99¢ or even less. Places like Kress Store and Woolworth in the 1970s used to have big bins of 45s that they used to sell 3 for $1. Most all older titles, but attractive enough to buy at such bargain prices. The current 45s were 88¢ at the Hilo Woolworths' when I was growing up, most were 99¢ back in the day. Like anything else, prices for 45s slowly crept up to $1.29, $1.79, $1.99 and I think up to $2.99 before cassette singles had their short burst of popularity and then CD singles.

Today's 45 is definitely the 99¢ digital download. And for the reason that I may like only a single song by an artist, then I will buy digital. I usually buy the green $15 iTunes card from a local retailer, redeem it a the iTunes store and use my credits to only buy "singles"... the 99¢ tracks.

If I think I will like the entire CD, then I will opt to buy the album on CD.

And as Dick mentioned, most of the new release CDs are on sale for less than $10 for the first week of release at some of the big boxes, like Best Buy. For example, I went to Best Buy yesterday afternoon and bought the new albums by Beck and The Killers for $9.99 each.. to me great bargains considering you get the complete hard copy with all of the liner notes, photos, booklet and jewel case. The same digital $9.99 album you buy from iTunes gets you some of that.... and for the booklets if you want a hard copy, add the extra cost of using up your own paper and inkjet printer ink, not to mention the cost of making your own CD for it if you want it in that form.

This is something Tower Records hardly ever did. Most of the time their sale CDs were going for $13.99 or $14.99 each. I'd go to the store that was offering the $9.99 CD of the same title.

I buy a lot of compilation and reissue CDs and some boxed sets by certain artists or even genres. In these cases, you get either all great tracks or mostly good tracks. So in this regard the regular CD is definitely a good buy, especially if you can pick one up for less than normal retail.

In the case of reissues or back catalog CDs, this is one area where Tower sometimes had very good sales.... A lot of Columbia and WB catalog titles would sell for $8.99 or $7.99. I bought plenty of these CDs as I slowly upgraded my older albums from vinyl to the newer format.

Some CDs I am patient enough to wait over the years before I finally decide to buy them, usually when I see em used at Jelly's or in the eventual bargain bin for $8.99 or less.

[pzarquon]

Re: Tower Records is getting liquidated

While it's true that most online music sources are DRM'd, I think it's unfair to say that physical CDs lack DRM outright. Lots of CDs you buy in stores do have DRM, and sometimes that fact isn't disclosed to you -- you have to get home and pop it into your CD-ROM drive to realize what you're prevented from playing the disc on... and in the infamous case of some Sony releases, you end up with some horrific hacks installed on your (Windows) machine just for trying.

I hate DRM and think you should be allowed to do whatever you want with your music once you've paid for it. But as DRM schemes go, Apple's FairPlay setup is among the least intrusive, and certainly not as insidious as the kinds of things CD manufacturers have been putting on physical discs lately.

[mel]

Re: Tower Records is getting liquidated

While it's true that most online music sources are DRM'd, I think it's unfair to say that physical CDs lack DRM outright. Lots of CDs you buy in stores do have DRM, and sometimes that fact isn't disclosed to you -- you have to get home and pop it into your CD-ROM drive to realize what you're prevented from playing the disc on... and in the infamous case of some Sony releases, you end up with some horrific hacks installed on your (Windows) machine just for trying.

As far as I know I don't think I have a single DRM CD disc in my very large collection. Even most of my newest CDs as far as I know are DRM-less. I can rip the tracks to iTunes to MP3 without any problem. I can copy the tracks to all of my iPods and make MP3 CDs and regular CD compilations using various tracks ripped from my CDs in a number of ways.

While Apple's Fairplay DRM is probably the most "liberal" (I hate that term) of the lot, it still nevertheless is DRM. You can make only what... 5 CD copies of the tracks before you have to mix them up in another combination to make another CD. And forget about converting an AAC track from Apple to MP3 without loss of fidelity or some kind of hit.... thanks to DRM.

The most infamous case of DRM on CDs is the Sony Rootkit fiasco which placed spyware or something on PCs. I don't know if these discs impacted Macs in any way, but once I heard about them, I kept away from those titles identified as such. And still do if there are any.

[mel]

Re: Tower Records is getting liquidated

Anyone remember when the Ala Moana location was "Odyssey Records" and was painted blue before Tower moved in?

Yep, I certainly remember Odyssey Records in the late 1970s. I think they were in the building the Tower Video is now at before they moved to the bigger building where the Tower Records store is now. That chain went broke, and that is when Tower moved in.

My question is what was in those buildings before Odyssey Records?

[tutusue]

Re: Tower Records is getting liquidated

If you're willing to wait a couple of weeks for a used CD, Half.com has some pretty good deals even considering media mail shipping costs. I rarely purchase CDs but do buy DVDs and books at that site.

[808shows.com]

Re: Tower Records is getting liquidated

When the big breaks happen, that would be a perfect time to help me help others and pick up this fine album!!!

www.hwnexp.com/RRR.html


If not, they will likely get returned and money that has already been set aside for the Kokua Hawaii Foundation has to be returned to the distributor that paid in advance for those Tower sales...

also, Kona's own PEPPER has a brand new album out now!!

aloha

[Pomai]

Re: Tower Records is getting liquidated

the biggest disadvantage to the CD: You get all the songs. Usually on a 4 to 1 suck to desirable ratio. With digital download, you can skip all musical bondo used to boost the track count.

Too funny! We'll give that the acronym S-D-R. I've done my share of wasting money on new release LPs and CDs (mostly from the Keeaumoku Towers) due to being suckered by cool looking cover art masking S-D-R content. Of course, that's an issue with the band/producer, not the retailer.

Remember when Oahu's Tower Record stores had those artistic airbrushed musical genre signs throughout the store? It was done with foam-core in an almost 3-dimensional style by a local artist. Really neat! Hopefully someone's got some photos of it.

[Leo Lakio]

Re: Tower Records is getting liquidated

Tower Records' presence in Seattle ... I'll have to go by that store tomorrow to see if they're having their clearance sale.

Tower Records in the heart of London was a really cool landmark where you could meet your friends because it was so recognizable.

Did you go? I went by yesterday; that's how I saw what the breakdown of discounts was. They also had very few items that had been released in the past month-plus, since the latest bankruptcy announcement.

The Tower in Shibuya (Tokyo) was astounding - seven stories of selections. (That may have been my favorite "shrine" on our trip.)

[scrivener]

Re: Tower Records is getting liquidated

While it's true that most online music sources are DRM'd, I think it's unfair to say that physical CDs lack DRM outright.
...
I hate DRM and think you should be allowed to do whatever you want with your music once you've paid for it.

I've been subscribing to eMusic.com since the beginning of summer, and it says you can do anything you want with the MP3s you download there, including share them with others.