Tower Records, the famous music retailer that closed its doors back in 2006 when it filed for bankruptcy and liquidation, announced on Friday that it has returned as an online service. The new Tower Records online store includes the return of its Tower Pulse! rag and a merch shop as well as a ton of music for sale in vinyl, CD, and cassette formats.
As Yahoo! Entertainment points out, “Tower Records has been teasing its comeback for quite some time — joining social media in 2018 — and originally planned to unveil its new look in March during SXSW but decided to delay when the festival was canceled due to the coronavirus.” The March 6th cancellation of SXSW marked the first domino to fall in a month that would see the live event industry grind to an indefinite halt.
While the live side of the music industry remains muzzled by the pandemic, physical album sales—vinyl, in particular—are rising. According to a report in September by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), vinyl record sales overtook CD sales in the U.S. for the first time since the 1980s, increasing by 3.6% between the first half of 2019 to the first half of 2020.
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“[The news] has been met with tremendous success, feedback,” said Tower Records CEO Danny Zeijdel in a statement. “A lot of people are so happy taking pictures of when they receive an order from Tower Records, posting it on Instagram.”
Tower Records founder Russ Solomon, who died 2018 at the age of 92, grew the company from the back of a Sacramento drugstore to, at its peak, a billion-dollar CD empire with over 200 brick-and-mortar stores around the world. The store chain was known for its exhaustive selection, in-the-know staff, and famous clientele like Prince and Elton John. Colin Hanks in 2015 paid tribute to the chain’s legacy with the documentary, All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records.
Explore the new Tower Records online store here.