Flipping Through CDs at Tower Records

Tower Records was the music store where people flipped through CD racks for hours, until its last US store closed in 2006. New albums came out on Tuesdays.

current mood: browsingcurrently listening to: ♫ the listening station headphones

Written by Natalie Brooks · October 9, 202656k: ~1 min

In the fall of 1999, a Friday night could mean an hour of flipping through CD racks at Tower Records without buying a thing. Tower was one of the biggest music store chains in the world, and for decades it was where people went to find new albums and hang out. Russ Solomon opened the first Tower in Sacramento in 1960, and the chain grew to stores across the US and beyond. The chain went bankrupt in 2006, and its last US store closed that December, right as Sam Goody and other mall music stores were shrinking or closing. The name lives on in Japan and came back as an online store in 2020.

The record store hangout

Before streaming, buying music meant going somewhere. You could spend an hour at Tower, Sam Goody, Wherehouse or a local shop without buying a thing, and nobody minded. You flipped through CDs one by one, read the backs, studied the album art and looked for the bands you'd heard about from friends. Then you went home, and a few weeks later you caught a Behind the Music marathon about the band whose CD you just bought.

Big Tower stores were packed with music of every kind, and plenty of employees knew a lot about it. Asking someone behind the counter for a recommendation could change what you listened to for the next year. Near the registers, there was nearly always a stack of the newest Now CD.

When did new albums come out?

In the US, new albums came out on Tuesdays. The music industry settled on Tuesday in 1989 so every store would get the same new releases on the same day, and fans lined up for big albums on Tuesday morning, or even Monday at midnight. Release days stayed on Tuesday until July 2015, when the industry switched to a worldwide Friday release day, partly to cut down on leaks.

Midnight release parties for big albums were a whole event. Stores stayed open late, people waited outside, and the second the clock hit midnight, the line moved and the shrink wrap started coming off in the parking lot. Plenty of the bands with midnight lines had been playing side stages at Warped Tour a summer or two earlier.

Listening stations and the free magazine

Many stores had listening stations, where you could put on headphones and hear an album before you bought it. In 2005, Tower added stations where you scanned a CD and heard samples of it. Standing at a listening station in giant headphones, nodding along to track four of an album you hadn't paid for yet, was a very specific kind of happiness.

Pulse! was Tower's own music magazine, picked up in the store. It ran for almost twenty years and gave you something to read on the ride home.

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Longboxes and stickers

In the early days of CDs, they came in tall cardboard boxes called longboxes, about the same height as a vinyl record, so they fit in the old record bins. People hated the wasted cardboard, and longboxes were phased out in 1993.

Then there were the Parental Advisory stickers. Starting in 1985, record labels agreed to put warning labels on albums with explicit lyrics. Some big chains wouldn't sell stickered albums at all, so the version on their shelves was often the "clean" one with the bad words removed. Kids who wanted the real version learned which stores carried it.

Gift cards and the birthday haul

Music store gift cards were one of the most common presents of the era. Grandparents gave them because they didn't know what you liked, which worked out fine, since it meant a trip to the store and an hour of choosing. Spending a gift card was a careful process. You picked up five CDs, put three back, and walked out with the two you couldn't live without.

Sam Goody and the mall store

If Tower was the big destination, Sam Goody was the mall store. It started in New York in 1951 and became part of a chain that grew across shopping malls everywhere. In 2006, its parent company went bankrupt and closed hundreds of stores. Most of the remaining Sam Goody stores turned into FYE.

Mall music stores were their own little world, with posters on the walls, music videos playing on TVs and a wall of new releases right by the door. Plenty of people bought their first CD at one with birthday money, and still remember which one. The walk back through the mall, bag in hand, trying not to rip off the plastic until you got home, was part of the fun.

What happened to Tower Records?

Tower Records went bankrupt in 2006 and closed all of its US stores by the end of that year. Downloads, 99-cent songs on iTunes and big-box stores selling CDs for less all hurt sales, and the company had taken on a lot of debt. After a second bankruptcy filing in August 2006, the company was sold at auction and its stores were liquidated. The last US Tower, on Broadway in New York, closed three days before Christmas.

The Japanese branch had split off years earlier, so it kept going, and its huge store in Shibuya is still one of the biggest music stores in the world. In 2020, Tower Records came back in the US as an online store selling vinyl, CDs and cassettes, and it later opened a physical space in Brooklyn.

Rack manners and midnight lines

Flipping through CDs alphabetically was a quiet sport, and finding one filed in the wrong spot felt like a small win. Then came the impossible security sticker on top of the case, which never peeled off in one piece. If the album you wanted wasn't there, you asked a clerk to order it and waited weeks. Sometimes you bought a CD for one song and ended up loving the whole album.

You read the liner notes and thank-you lists on the ride home, and a used copy for half price made you feel like a genius. Midnight release lines in the parking lot were part of it too, and so was finding out that the big store only carried the clean version.

Holding an album

Holding the case, reading the booklet front to back and then lining it up on a shelf: that was the whole ritual. Half of those CDs ended up in a Discman or a car stereo for months.

If you still have a favorite album from those years, give it a spot on your crib. Make one and set its best song as your profile song.

Vote: Where did you buy most of your CDs?

A big music storeorThe mall

You'll need a free crib to vote.

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