Best Buy to Discontinue Physical Media

[buckguy]

The main thing is that physical media has become a small niche item and no large national retailer is going to sell a lot of it. There always will be people who want to own rather than rent and collectors who like the "hunt" but they are not going to build volume for a Walmart or Target. Given that the selections were never very deep, most of these mass merchadisers didn't appeal to hard core music collectors and the same was true of the mall music chains. Tower had a limited number of flagships and other chains like Sam Goody and HMV had a very few here and there which appealed to serious collectors. The closure of the big Tower stores in the early 2000s was probably the signal that large scale music sales were on their way out.

Even then, I do hope that an ample (not massive as years prior) stock of new releases, all-time best-sellers, and collectors' items remains. That would realistically work.

Since you mentioned that Tower Records' downfall was the beginning of the end for physical music, what were factors already causing that sector to decline then? Tower went under in 2006, less than a decade removed from the introduction of Napster, iTunes and the iPod, and before streaming (Spotify, Apple Music) was introduced to the masses.

There is a good documentary about the rise and fall of Tower Records called All Things Must Pass. The documentary talked about a lot of common reasons for records stores to fail at the time - Napster, digital music, competition from chain music stores and mass merchandisers. Another thing specific to Tower that was discussed was Tower's aggressive expansion in the 90s. It was argued that Tower over-expanded ending up in areas that did not have long term support for a music retailer like Tower.

I was a regular shopper at the Congressional Plaza and Tysons Corner Tower locations until they closed. At the time I was in semi-mourning because I thought where else am I going to buy CDs, DVDs and books that I could reliably get at Tower. However, over time, with the rise of digital media and streaming I have purchased a lot less physical media. What I do buy (mostly DVDs) I can get from Amazon or Walmart in a reasonable amount of time. I could see short term displays of blockbuster movies like Oppenheimer or a mega stars like Taylor Swift at new release time. Beyond, that outside of "cool", "nostalgia" and collectables, physical media space can be reused for other items that are more productive and don't pose as much of a theft issue.

My own guess is that chain record stores didn't have much impact on Tower. Places like Camelot, NRM, and Sam Goody had been around for a long time and were in decline well before Tower's demise. Border's and maybe BestBuy did emerge as competitors, but they never had the breadth of even the second string Tower stores like the one at Congressional Plaza. I grew-up with truly great independent record stores (and local small chains) in an a area where no chain other than Peaches ever had a foothold, so even Congressional seemed inadequate to me. They may have over expanded, but I recall them doing well in places as different as NYC, Bangkok, DC, Nashville, and LA during the 90s. Still, they seemed less successful with books and video than they did with music and I wonder if adding non-music lines was part of their problem.

The impact of Napster, Amazon, direct sale through websites and other new channels, etc. seemed to hit around 2000 or so. The Tower flagship near GWU was beginning to decline around 2000--they were beginning to reduce the backlist in areas like jazz and classical. They started closing their international operations around the same time--they had had flagships and second string stores in places like Bangkok and Singapore. They relocated their not quite flagship in Atlanta to a smaller store at this time, but it only lasted a couple years.