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Tower Records
Type	Online retailer and defunct music store chain
Founded	1960
Headquarters	Sacramento, California, USA
Industry	Retail
Products	DVDs, CDs, videos, video games, posters, books, collectibles, and accessories.
Website	Tower.com

Tower Records was a retail music chain based in Sacramento, California, USA. It currently exists as an international franchise and an online music store.^[1]

Tower was founded in 1960 by Russ Solomon in Sacramento. The store was named after his father's drugstore, which shared a building and name with the Tower Theater,^[2] where Solomon first started selling records. The first Tower Records store is on Broadway & 16th Street in Sacramento, California, next door to the first Tower Books. Starting on October 6, 2006, all Tower Records stores in the United States prior to liquidation held "going out of business" sales before final shutdown on the night of Friday, December 22, 2006. Tower.com was purchased by a separate entity and will not be affected by the retail store closings. Two Tower Records stores still operate in Ireland, as well as five in Mexico and a number in Japan and Malaysia.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Bankruptcy 1.2 Post-Bankruptcy 1.3 Liquidation 2 Tower Records in the United Kingdom 3 Tower Records in Japan 4 Tower Records in Ireland 5 Tower Records in Mexico 6 References 7 External links

Seven years after its founding, Tower Records expanded to San Francisco, opening a store in what was originally a grocery store at Bay and Columbus streets. The chain eventually expanded internationally to include stores in Canada, UK, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Ireland, Israel, UAE, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, and Argentina. The store also established Tower Records stores in Japan, but those stores split off from the main chain and are now independent. Arguably the most famous Tower Records outlet was the one located on the north side of Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, California. In addition to CDs and cassette tapes (few carry vinyl LPs anymore), stores also sell DVDs, PSP movies, video games, accessories, toys and electronic gadgets like mp3 players, while a few Tower Records stores sell books as well, such as the stores in Brea, California and Sacramento. All these product lines and more are also available at Tower.com, which got its start in 1995 as one of the first music retailers to set up shop on the Internet. In New York City, twin Tower Records stores straddle lower Broadway - one an annex that still sells vinyl records, and the other selling modern items (CDs, DVDs, etc.). The store in Greenwich Village was famous in the 1980s for selling albums of European New Wave bands not yet popular in the U.S. and was a noted hangout for teenagers from throughout the metropolitan area.

Tower Records entered bankruptcy for the first time in 2004. Factors cited were the heavy debt incurred during its aggressive expansion in the 1990s, growing competition from mass discounters, and internet piracy. Its policy of selling most Compact Disc recordings at list price also proved detrimental.^{[citation needed]}

In 2005 the company introduced TouchMedia scan and listen stations into its stores. These stations allow the customer to scan the bar code of an item, and listen to audio clips from the album in question. As with similar listening stations in other record stores, track samples do not exist for many albums, especially import titles, but most at least have entries with information from a central database, and the majority of more popular titles do have samples.

In spring of 2006, the company introduced the Tower Records Insider program. This program gives the customer a card they can scan during transactions, which can be used to earn coupons/rewards/benefits/etc.

On June 27, 2006, Tower Records launched its own digital download store^[3].

On August 20, 2006, Tower Records filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy^[4] for the second time in order to facilitate a purchase of the company prior to the holiday shopping season.

On October 6, 2006, Great American Group won an auction of the company's assets and commenced liquidation proceedings the following day, which included going-out-of-business sales at all U.S. Tower Records locations, the last of which closed on December 22, 2006. Currently, liquidation information for the corporate office can be viewed here. The Tower Recordswebsite was sold separately.^[5]

FYE, a mall based music store chain, had acquired the two historic Tower locations in its home base of Sacramento, California but later backed out, stating that the "leases aren't what we thought they were". Rasputin's Music, a new/used music/video store based in the Bay Area, is expanding in the Central Valley by acquiring the leases on the Tower stores in Fresno, California and Stockton, California. Tower Records Stockton, California location at 6623 Pacific Avenue officially closed its doors on December 19, 2006 at 10:PM for good. Rasputin's Music is set to replace it in 2007. Rasputin's is also set to move into Tower's former Mountain View, California location.

The Landmark Plaza location in Alexandria, VA was closed on December 18, 2006 and the Pike 7 Plaza (Tysons Corner) location in Vienna, VA was closed on December 21, 2006. The famous 24 year-old Washington, DC location closed a day later, as did the one in Atlanta at the famous Piedmont and Peachtree Road location. On Friday, December 22, 2006 its last New York City outlet located on 1961 Broadway, just a block north of the famous Lincoln Center on Manhattan's west side, closed its doors along with the remaining outlets around the United States.

Russ Solomon will open a record store in the old Tower building on Broadway at 16th Street in Sacramento, said Andy Gianulias, a member of the family that owns the property. The building was a Tower store for 40 years, closing when the legendary chain went out of business in late December, and sits across the street from the site where Solomon began selling records in 1941. In October, Solomon dubbed his new venture Resurrection Records. Andy Gianulias said Solomon may choose a different name. "No way do I have the grandiose idea I can open 100 stores," Solomon said. "That would be foolish. But one or two stores? That's do-able."

Originally Tower Records was just a London-based concern, with the store at 1 Piccadilly Circus being joined by a couple of smaller outlets ( Kensington High Street followed by Whiteleys of Bayswater and Kingston). However by the start of the 1990s the chain had grown to encompass a number of other stores, with large entertainment stores also selling movies, books, magazines and games in Birmingham and Glasgow, as well as a number of smaller stores that had been purchased from rival American retailer Sam Goody when it had left the UK marketplace (for example of this express format - Weston-super-Mare).

However with tough trading conditions in the UK market, as well as the company's trouble in the States, the firm followed Sam Goody in retreating from the UK market. The London stores in Piccadilly and Kensington were sold to Virgin Group, who for a while traded under the Tower brand at the former site until the store could be fully refurbished, while the other stores were closed.

In 1979, Tower Records in Japan started its business as the Japan Branch of MTS Incorporated. The following year, Sapporo Store, the first in Japan opened. In 1981, Japanese subsidiary Tower Records Japan Inc. (TRJ) was established.

In October, 2002, TRJ went independent from the international chain by MBO. The bankruptcy of Tower Records in the U.S. in 2006 did not affect TRJ as it had been completely independent. As of January, 2007, TRJ maintains 81 directly operated store locations throughout Japan, including the Tower Cafes and the Shibuya Store in Tokyo (moved to the current location in March, 1995) which is said to be one of the biggest music retail outlet in the world occupying selling space of 5,000sqm (9 floors). TRJ also publishes free magazines "Tower", "bounce", and "intoxicate" directly and through its subsidiary NMNL.

The Irish operations of Tower were bought out in 2003, and consist of two stores - the flagship on Wicklow Street, (which was opened by East 17, whose fans nearly wrecked the store when they played.) and a second branch which operates as the music section of the main branch of Eason on O'Connell Street. The Wicklow Street branch is noted as a live music venue as well as music and video retailer.

Five Tower Records stores in Mexico^[6] are owned and operated by Grupo Sanborns,^[7] a subsidiary of the conglomerate Grupo Carso.^[8] Grupo Carso is controlled Mexican businessman Carlos Slim.^[9]

1. ^ http://www.banderasnews.com/0612/ent-towerfades.htm
2. ^ Tower Theatre Homepage. Retrieved on 2006-08-26.
3. ^ Reuters. "Tower stacking up downloads", News.com, 2006-06-26. Retrieved on 2006-08-22.
4. ^ Dow Jones Newswires. "Tower Records files for bankruptcy", Chicago Tribune, 2006-08-22. Retrieved on 2006-08-22.
5. ^ Tower Records to be liquidated
6. ^ http://www.banderasnews.com/0612/ent-towerfades.htm
7. ^ http://wrightreports.ecnext.com/coms2/reportdesc_COMPANY_C484CB160
8. ^ http://www.gcarso.com.mx/GCarso/Esp/Nuestras+empresas/Comercial/Grupo+Sanborns/Grupo_Sanborns.htm
9. ^ http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/20070119-0826-markets-mexico-.html

• Tower.com
• Tower Records Japan
• Tower Records Ireland
• Tower Records Mexico
• Images of DC area Tower Records locations