Tower Records

Russ Solomon opened the first Tower Records in 1960, not as a dedicated music store but as a section inside a Sacramento drugstore near the Tower Theatre (whose vertical sign gave the store its name). The concept of a large-format, high-inventory music retailer was novel; most record stores were small, specialized shops with niche audiences. Solomon's vision was different: stock thousands of titles, sell at low margins to attract volume, and stay open late—Tower became an all-ages destination where people could spend hours exploring music they'd never heard. By the 1970s and 1980s, Tower Records had established itself as the standard-bearer of music retail, with distinctive yellow-and-red signage, listening stations where you could preview CDs or vinyl before buying, and knowledgeable (if sometimes pretentious) staff who could guide recommendations.

The 1990s were Tower Records' golden era. CDs had fully replaced vinyl as the dominant format, and the compact disc's visual design and packaging made the physical album a collectible experience. Tower's flagship stores in major cities—especially the massive New York City location on Broadway at 66th Street, with its endless aisles and basement levels—became pilgrimage sites for music fans. Musicians and filmmakers frequently shouted out Tower Records in interviews and liner notes. The chain reached its peak valuation in 1999, when revenues hit approximately $1 billion annually and there were over 200 Tower Records locations worldwide. For a music obsessive, Tower Records was *the* place to discover, buy, and discuss music—a physical embodiment of the pre-algorithmic curation era.

The company's collapse was swift and devastating. Napster launched in 1999, and file-sharing exploded in the early 2000s, decimating CD sales industry-wide. Simultaneously, big-box retailers like Best Buy and Walmart began undercutting Tower's prices on major releases, capturing the casual listener while Tower remained positioned as a specialty retailer. By 2004, Tower was struggling; in 2006, it filed for bankruptcy and liquidated all U.S. stores. Tower Records Japan had already been spun off as an independent company in 2002 and continued to thrive on its own as a large chain (where physical media retained more resilience), but the American empire was gone. The closure of Tower Records became emblematic of the shift from physical to digital distribution and the death of the record-store era—a cultural moment that artists, filmmakers, and music fans still mourn. High Fidelity, the 2000 film, had immortalized the record-store lifestyle just years before it would become obsolete.