The Tower Crumbles
From cmj.com
Tower Records Files For Bankruptcy
2006-08-23 12:09:24.457,
Story by: Eric Davidson
According
to the Associated Press, national record store chain Tower Records has
filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. While threatening such an action for
years now (debt restructuring began back in 2003), this time it’s for
real. After a 2001 peak of one billion in revenue and more than 200
U.S. stores, Tower has since been downsizing and is around 80 million
dollars in debt. While placing blame on the usual subjects
(downloading, big box retailers, etc.), the company nonetheless claims
it merely needs some financial help, will reorganize, and are looking
to sell the chain. According to Tower CEO E. Allen Rodriguez, "Our
issues are financial, not operational … and we expect the prepackaged
reorganization to be concluded quickly." Though Los Angeles investment
banker Lloyd Greif, who has been hired to sell Tower, has said that
selling the company has proved more difficult than he expected.
In a blindingly obvious ironic twist, the bankruptcy filing actually occurred awhile back, the day after the Grammy Awards.
*******
Isn’t that SO sad? Being an audiophile, I love CDs and it totally depresses me that wonderful places like Tower Records and Virgin Megastore may close because people are too bloody ‘barat’ to pay for quality music that they settle for substandard free stuff at others’ expense. Yes, I admit that I do have Limewire, but I only use it to get rare or live versions of songs or on occassions when I want just 1 song and not the rest of the album. Otherwise, I actually go out and buy the CD, most especially when I really like the artist.
But don’t get me wrong. I don’t buy CDs for noble reasons like to feed starving artists (I’m certain they’re far from starving) or to "save the music": I buy CDs for selfish reasons. There’s just something different about having a physical audio library. Having 3,000 songs on your iPod simply can’t compare to having 200 CDs on your self. I enjoy arranging them (in alphabetical order then chronologically, of course), flipping through the inlays, studying the album art - all that. Sure, MP3s are great in that they allow you to take your entire music collection with you wherever you go (I can still remember the nightmare of lugging a walkman and 10 casettes on a 16 hour flight and still wishing I had brought the other 15 casettes that were sitting at home), but more often than not, the quality is pretty bad- especially if it came from a file sharing program. Ripping songs from original CDs will get you MP3s with better quality, but still not as crisp as listening to songs straight from the album. Okay, CDs have achilles heels too, they get scratched & start skipping, but if you take care of them really well, that may never happen. I also like having CDs as a backup in case something (god forbid) happens to my iTunes and I lose all my MP3s. Having the CD means I can just rerip them and all will be well. Nothing lost but the time spent reripping. I dare not think of what I would do if I lost all my music and didn’t have a way to get them all back.
I just hope that just like there are 30 year olds who insist on clinging on to vinyl, there are others like myself who’ll keep CDs alive - on life support, perhaps, but alive nonetheless.
