man do I miss Tower records and

Record stores do not seem to be the only ones affected. BMG Music Service/Columbia House is not accepting new members as of 12/23/08, and the whole outfit seems to have been sold by Bertelsman. I would personally interpret these actions as at least a major reorganization of mail order for this group, and at worst a move toward total collapse.

I got a coupon in e-mail this morning that even Borders was doing 30% off all cds and dvds. Their section, which used to be pretty good has gotten steadily smaller over the past couple of years. They're probably going to kill it altogether.

me too..I miss those days dearly when I used to live in LA. I remembered wandering around town from Long Beach (Bagatell used record store) to Tower Records in Torrance, to Pennylane both in Venice Beach and Westwood, Rhino Records on Santa Monica avenue, and back to Tower Records in the heart of Westwood looking for old & new LPs...Wondering if Aaron records on Fairfax or Record Surplus on Pico ave still there or not.

Cant' be giving this away, the bean counters must have conjured up this scenario already. I'm Sony/BMG and I want to eliminate all sharing of profits. If I can deliver my product without supporting manufacture of physical product, I don't need to package and transport it. I kill support through print ad and radio marketing relying only on the web. No physical properties such as CD stores are necessary, I've captured all revenues save for what I must pay the artist.

I deliver all content as downloads, give an option of album art download at a slightly higher price, it can be printed on an inkjet, then cook the books showing fewer downloads than were actual to the artist for percentage. It's dark, sterile and magical to corporate.

Remember, you saw it here first.

Tower was killed 99 cents at a time. Downloaded music was the major reason Tower closed up shop and this generation has itself to blame. They really could care less as long as they get their music, but think about this for a moment: When vinyl was the predominent medium people did not have the luxury to skip tracks with a remote control so one would be more likley to listen to the whole song they didn't care for, but then grew to love. Artwork was beautiful. Liner notes were bigger and easier to read therfore educating people about the recording session, who the artists played with, etc. Then the cd came and added the convinience of skipping a track you didn't like before it had a chance to grow on you. Liner notes are smaller which may not be as inviting to read, thereby keeping the user uninformed. Now with ipods people may not get any cover art or notes about the ablum at all.

Conviniece is causing the "dumbing down" of society.

This generation may not know it right now, but 20 or 30 years from now people won't remember the name of their favorite song, they'll just know it as track #3.