Tower Records is an international retail franchise and online music store that was formerly based in Sacramento, California, United States. From 1960 until 2006, Tower operated retail stores in the United States, which closed when Tower Records filed for bankruptcy and liquidation. Tower Records was purchased by a separate entity and was not affected by the retail store closings.
On November 13, 2020, Tower Records announced that it had returned as an online retailer with plans to open future physical locations.
History
Inception, expansion, and description In 1960, Russell Solomon opened the first Tower Records store on Broadway, in Sacramento, California. He named it after his father's drugstore, which shared a building and name with the Tower Theatre, where Solomon first started selling records. The first stand-alone Tower Records store was located at 2514 Watt Ave in the Arden Arcade area of Sacramento. By 1976, Solomon had opened Tower Books, Posters, and Plants at 1600 Broadway, next door to another Sacramento Tower Records location. In 1995, Tower.com opened, making the enterprise one of the first retailers to move online.
Seven years after its founding, Tower Records expanded to San Francisco, opening a store in what was originally a grocery store at Bay Street and Columbus Avenue. 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 and internationally, opened. The chain eventually expanded internationally to include stores in the United Kingdom, Canada, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Ireland, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, and Argentina. The Tower Records stores in Japan split off from the main chain and are now independent.
Arguably the most famous Tower Records outlet was the purpose-built building that company staff general-contracted, with many personally contributing their labor, which opened in 1971 on the northwest corner of Sunset Boulevard and Horn Avenue in West Hollywood.
In New York City, Tower Records operated a suite of stores on and near lower Broadway in Greenwich Village. The main store was located at the southeast corner of East 4th Street and Broadway. The Tower Records Annex was in the same building, located at the southwest corner of East 4th and Lafayette Street. The third store, Tower Video, was located on the southeast corner of East 4th and Lafayette Street, and specialized in video and the second floor of this location also sold books. Their location on the Upper West Side, near Lincoln Center on 66th Street and Broadway, was a magnet for those working in the field of musical theatre. There was also a location in the basement of Trump Tower, and a small clearance annex on 86th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
The Nashville location on West End Avenue (across from Vanderbilt University) was in a former Packard dealership. The old showroom floor in front was devoted to CDs, cassettes and vinyl. The area in the back housed videocassette sales and rentals, PC and console games and music paraphernalia. The strip mall next door contained a separate Tower Books. The location was famous for their late-night Monday events that culminated at midnight on Tuesday when staff started ringing up sales of new releases. Because of the store's proximity to Music Row, country music stars could occasionally be seen performing or shopping there. As part of a 2002 settlement with 41 states over CD price fixing Tower Records, along with retailers Musicland and Trans World Entertainment, agreed to pay a $3 million (~$ in ) fine. It is estimated that between 1995 and 2000 customers were overcharged by nearly $500 million and up to $5 per album.
In 2005, the company began using "scan and listen" stations in its stores. These stations allowed customers to listen to audio samples from CDs and to search for particular songs, albums and artists. In the years that followed, this model of listening station was still used at the Arizona-based chain Zia Records.
In 2006, the company introduced the Tower Insider program. The program was free of charge and allowed a customer to receive a membership card that could be scanned with each purchase, allowing the customer to receive coupons and notification of special deals via e-mail.
In addition to compact discs and cassette tapes, the stores sold DVDs, electronic gadgets like mp3 players, video games, accessories, and toys, and a few Tower Records locations sold books as well, such as those in Fremont, Brea, Mountain View, and Sacramento, California, as well as stores in Austin, Boston, Massachusetts, Nashville, New York City, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle and Bellevue, Washington.
Pulse! magazine
In 1983, the company began publishing a music magazine, Pulse!, which contained record reviews, interviews, and advertising. Initially, it was given away free in their stores to promote their record sales. After nine years, in 1992, the magazine began national distribution with a cover price of $2.95, (~$ in ) but it was canceled when the company discontinued U.S. operations. From 1983 until December 2002 Tower Records published it monthly, 222 issues in all.
Bankruptcy Tower Records entered Chapter 11 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. Mismanagement and crippling restrictions from the first bankruptcy deal also contributed to Tower's demise.
Some observers took a pragmatic view. As Robert Moog, inventor of the Moog synthesizer, has stated: "I'm sorry if Tower Records' and Blockbuster's sales plummet. On the other hand, it wasn't that long ago that those megastore chains drove a lot of neighborhood record stores out of business."
In February 2004, the debt was estimated to be between $80 million and $100 million, and assets totaled just over $100 million.
On August 20, 2006, Tower Records filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the second time, in order to facilitate a purchase of the company prior to the holiday shopping season.
Liquidation
On October 6, 2006, Great American Group won an auction of the company's assets and commenced liquidation proceedings the following day. This included going-out-of-business sales at all U.S. Tower Records locations, the last of which closed on December 22, 2006. The Tower Records website was sold separately to Caiman Inc.
The managers of f.y.e., a music store chain based in shopping malls, had negotiated a deal to acquire the two historic Tower locations in the latter's home base of Sacramento. f.y.e. later backed out, stating that the "leases aren't what we thought they were". f.y.e. did acquire the lease of the West End Avenue store in Nashville, which eventually closed in 2011. f.y.e. also took over Tower Records in Torrance, which continued to operate until early 2016.
Rasputin Music, a new and used music and video store based in the San Francisco Bay Area, expanded in the Central Valley of California by acquiring the leases for the former Tower Records stores in Fresno and Stockton.
Other stores
The Landmark Plaza Tower Records Store in Alexandria, Virginia was permanently closed on December 18, 2006, and the Tysons Corner, Virginia, store permanently closed on December 21, 2006. The noted 24-year-old store in Washington, D.C. (Foggy Bottom) closed down the next day, as did the store in Atlanta, Georgia.
On Friday, December 22, 2006 – 40 years after Solomon had opened the first Tower Records store in Sacramento – the last Tower Records store in New York City, located at 1961 Broadway, one block north of Lincoln Center, on Manhattan's West Side, closed permanently along with all of the other remaining Tower Records stores in the United States. The final Tower Records store (in the Pacific Time Zone) to be closed was the one in Mountain View, which closed at 5:00 p.m.
One building in Sacramento had been a Tower Records store for 40 years, and the lot across the street had been the location where Solomon began selling records in 1941.
R5 Records closed on June 4, 2010, and was sold to rival Dimple Records, which reopened the store in mid-July 2010.Bob Shallit: Russ Solomon's presence will be felt at new Dimple site in Sacramento The Sacramento Bee, June 5, 2010 Dimple Records closed all of its locations in 2019.
The Tower Records building in Boston, located at the intersection of Newbury Street and Massachusetts Avenue, was instrumental in the conversion of the former street's commercial value. The eight-story building, renovated by Frank Gehry in the late 80s, is prominently visible from the eastbound Massachusetts Turnpike. The store (which occupied the first five stories) featured gold stars of Boston artists (including Gang Starr, New Kids on the Block, and Yo-Yo Ma) embedded in the front landing. Virgin Megastore took over the store from 2002 to 2007. The space was later a Best Buy store and, after being vacant for some time, in 2016 was opened as a T.J. Maxx store.Goodison, Donna, "T.J. Maxx coming to long-vacant Newbury Street spot in Back Bay", Boston Herald, Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Online return Online merchant Caiman, Inc., reopened the website from Montreal, Quebec, on June 1, 2007. This company also announced plans to reopen the stores themselves—opening stores in Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco within the next nine months, however this never came to fruition. They hired former Tower buyer Kevin Hawkins to assist with the re-opening (Hawkins, along with former Tower employee George Scarlett, then left Caiman). In 2009, Richard Flynn was hired as president. The website remained based in Montreal, but the relaunch of the brand never moved forward.
As of November 2020, Tower Records re-opened their online store with a new website, once again selling vinyl records among other merchandise, which also features an online version of Pulse that is updated regularly.
Tower Labs In October 2022, Tower Labs was opened in Brooklyn, New York, marking the first physical iteration of the brand since 2006. "The intention of Tower Labs is for artists and bands to host personal gatherings with their community, similar to a backstage experience," says Tower Records' new president, Danny Zeijdel. "In an increasingly digital world, it is imperative for artists to have a physical space where they can connect and create." Tower Labs is a creative space, as the brand continues to explore the potential reopening of a flagship retail location.
International stores Argentina Tower Records operated nine stores in Argentina in Buenos Aires, Pilar, San Isidro, Puerto Madryn, Córdoba, and La Plata. It opened its first store in 1997 and closed its last in 2006.
Canada Tower Records operated in Canada in the mid-1990s with a flagship store at the Toronto Eaton Centre at the corner of Queen and Yonge which opened in December 1995 and closed in 2001. Tower Records opened a second location in Toronto in the late nineties at Empress Walk in North York, also on Yonge Street, but it was closed just prior to the flagship store closing.
Hong Kong Tower Records opened stores in Hong Kong in the 1990s. There were two stores, one located on the seventh floor of Times Square at Causeway Bay, the other at Diamond Hill.
Ireland Tower Records is operated in Ireland by Record & Discs Ltd. (owned by Eclective) under a licensed franchise of MTS Incorporated (USA). , two stores still operate in Ireland both located in Dublin, one on Dawson Street and the other on O'Connell Street upstairs in Easons.
Israel