5 ms·

This article also reminds me of where I used to pick up CD's back when they first came out - Tower Records in Mountain View, CA. CD's - still around; Tower Reco

by gbeeson 14y ago

This article also reminds me of where I used to pick up CD's back when they first came out - Tower Records in Mountain View, CA. CD's - still around; Tower Records - not so much. Interesting how it all worked out.

stan_rogers 14y ago
The reason we loved Tower is the reason it died: just about every one of its stores was a record museum. You could find almost anything you were looking for, which meant that they had to stock just about everything anyone would ever be looking for. If I'd damaged (or inadvertently "lent" permanently) an album that was a somewhat obscure gem in a less-than-popular genre when I'd bought it ten years previous, I could always walk into Tower and get a new copy. Great for the customer, but I can't see it being a great business model overall.
- Turing_Machine 14y ago
  It seems to work for Amazon. Of course they don't need to stock copies in zillions of locations.
waterlesscloud 14y ago
So I dropped out of college for a few years, and during that period I worked at the Tower Records in Atlanta for about 2 years. This was First Gulf War time, so it must have been 90-91. Fun job, still friends with more people from that job than any other I've had. It was no one's first record store job, so everyone there was pretty knowledgeable about at least a couple musical genres. Company was not exactly a model of good management techniques, but whatever, as a sales clerk it was great fun. Anyway, I remember one night stuck on the cash register and bored, so I did some literal back of the envelope calculations. I took the CD storage capacity and the trend in increasing data rates for modems and figured out you'd be able to download albums in a practical amount of time in about the year 2000. I then told all my co-workers to not make a career of the record store business because we were all doomed by digital downloads in about 10 years. Funny how much I got wrong but still got the end result right.

by gbeeson 14y ago

stan_rogers 14y ago

The reason we loved Tower is the reason it died: just about every one of its stores was a record museum. You could find almost anything you were looking for, which meant that they had to stock just about everything anyone would ever be looking for. If I'd damaged (or inadvertently "lent" permanently) an album that was a somewhat obscure gem in a less-than-popular genre when I'd bought it ten years previous, I could always walk into Tower and get a new copy. Great for the customer, but I can't see it being a great business model overall.

Turing_Machine 14y ago
It seems to work for Amazon. Of course they don't need to stock copies in zillions of locations.

waterlesscloud 14y ago

So I dropped out of college for a few years, and during that period I worked at the Tower Records in Atlanta for about 2 years. This was First Gulf War time, so it must have been 90-91. Fun job, still friends with more people from that job than any other I've had. It was no one's first record store job, so everyone there was pretty knowledgeable about at least a couple musical genres. Company was not exactly a model of good management techniques, but whatever, as a sales clerk it was great fun. Anyway, I remember one night stuck on the cash register and bored, so I did some literal back of the envelope calculations. I took the CD storage capacity and the trend in increasing data rates for modems and figured out you'd be able to download albums in a practical amount of time in about the year 2000. I then told all my co-workers to not make a career of the record store business because we were all doomed by digital downloads in about 10 years. Funny how much I got wrong but still got the end result right.