Is Tower Records Discontinued? What Happened?

Tower Records was a chain of music stores that started in 1960 in Sacramento, California. Russ Solomon founded it after running a record section inside his father's drugstore. He opened a standalone store and eventually built it into one of the biggest music retail chains in the world.

The stores were a different experience from most record shops at the time. They carried an enormous selection of music organized by genre, country, and style. You could find imports from Japan, records on small independent labels, and deep catalog titles that mainstream stores did not bother to stock. Staff members wrote handwritten notes on cards next to albums they liked. There were listening stations where you could sample an album before buying it, a setup a lot like the one at Sam Goody down the mall. Tower was also known for its walls of music magazines — a genuinely great selection that went well beyond what most stores bothered to carry — and a general feeling that music was the whole point.

In 1971 Tower opened a store on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. That location became one of the most famous record stores in the world. Artists stopped by to sign albums. Fans lined up at midnight when big new records came out. It was part store, part gathering spot for people who cared about music.

At its peak in the 1990s, Tower Records had stores across the United States and in about 15 countries. The chain competed by going deeper into music than anyone else, carrying titles that big-box stores like Best Buy and Walmart would never touch.

But the same big-box stores began discounting popular CDs at prices Tower could not match. Then Napster arrived in 1999, and suddenly millions of people were downloading music for free. iTunes launched in 2003 and let people buy single songs for 99 cents instead of full albums.

Tower Records had also borrowed a lot of money to fund its expansion, and that debt made it hard to adapt. The company filed for bankruptcy in August 2004 and tried to restructure. It filed again in August 2006 and this time there was no way out. All US stores held going-out-of-business sales and closed by the end of 2006.

Some Tower-branded stores outside the US kept going under separate ownership. The Tower Records name also came back as an online music shop. But the physical store chain that defined music retail for a generation was gone.