Edition: U.S. / Global

Editorial Observer; Tower Records in the Maelstrom of Consumer Desire

Published: February 15, 2004

Like a lot of Iowans, my family moved to California in the 1960's, to Sacramento in 1966 in our case. In that strange new land there were many strange new sights, but none, to me, was more impressive than a store in a little mall a few miles north of our house. The store was Tower Records, whose parent company, still based in West Sacramento, filed for bankruptcy last week. I don't remember the first time I walked into the place, but that's only because the thousands of times I went to Tower Records as a teenager have blurred into a single visit. Broad windows looked out on the parking lot. Klipsch Heresy speakers hung high in the corners of the store, throwing their treble over everything. And everywhere vinyl albums lay stacked in long rows on the floor. It was a place to learn the meaning of inventory.

The impact of all those albums -- all those multiple copies of multiple titles -- wasn't lost on me. I'd only begun buying records a year or two earlier, when the Beatles came to America and as the Beach Boys were reaching their peak. That had meant almost daily visits to a small-town Iowa variety store to sort through its heartbreaking record bin once again. To me, it felt like we lived at the bitter end of the distribution chain, where every now and then a freight shipper might haul to town a couple of copies of the Beatles' latest single among the swather knives and the tractor parts. And so I regarded the inventory at Tower Records with reverence. There was more than just abundance in it. There was news. It was as immediate as radio. The new releases were newly released. The catalog was deep.

In its own way, Tower Records anticipated the big-box retail stores that came much later. The only real decoration was product. The only real marketing was low prices. And if it were still 1966, there's a good chance Tower Records would still be at the top of its game. But in the years since, music has gone through a dizzying array of formats: eight-track and cassette tapes, CD's and DVD's. There have been Napster and Kazaa and Amazon and the iTunes Music Store. And yet with all those ways to sell (and swipe) music, there has also been a global slump in music sales. The Tower Records chain expanded from the two stores it had in Sacramento in 1966 to 171 stores a few years ago. It is now back down to 93.

What happened to Tower Records resembles what has happened to the recorded music industry itself: a mix of changing times and sobering mistakes. The fact is that Tower Records has long since found itself overmatched in inventory by the resources of the Internet and undercut in price by chains like Wal-Mart. We're all used to the big-box experience, and besides, stacks of CD's look more precarious and not nearly as captivating as stacks of vinyl LP's. Once upon a time Tower Records seemed like the last word in consumer gratification.

But we have reached what to me, back in 1966, was an unimaginable place -- an America where the small-town variety stores have gone out of business because a Wal-Mart opened up out by the highway; an America where with a few keystrokes and a valid credit card you can own virtually any recording you want, the instant it's released. Somehow it sounds more inviting than it actually is.