Bankruptcy Court Euthanizes Former Record-Retail Powerhouse

Tower Records, a Sacramento-based chain of record stores, was given a death sentence on Friday. It is expected to pass away within eight to 10 weeks.

The 46-year-old chain, which had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Aug. 20, was sold to the liquidation company Great American on Friday. Great American began going-out-of-business sales immediately after it won Tower in a bankruptcy auction; sale prices, however, were still not low enough to convince people that they shouldn’t buy FutureSex/LoveSounds at Best Buy instead.

Tower Records started as a stall in the back of Sacramento’s Tower Theater in the mid-1940s, and it opened its first free-standing store in Sacramento in 1960. Through the years, it gained notoriety for frequent in-store performances and late hours. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for the first time in 2004.

The cause of Tower’s illness is being debated by industry experts. Some argue that Tower was hamstrung by the one-two punch of online retail and big-box stores using music as “loss leaders,” while others believe that the chain’s insistence on pricing every new title above $15 drove consumers to less expensive ways of acquiring new albums.

Memorial services will be held at every site on the Internet devoted to the discussion of music, despite the fact that those sites’ proprietors have not bought a physical CD since 2001.

For Tower, the song is over [Sacramento Bee] Tower fans sing the blues about shutdown [Sacramento Bee]