Monday, February 09, 2004
Tower Records has declared bankruptcy as a strategy for survival. I'm glad stores will keep running as normal, but this can't be good long-term. It buys them more time, but do they expect the market to get better? It seems to me that they must make their online sale of downloads more successful and that they have to play to their strength (at least compared to the discount outlets like Walmart that are cutting in on their business): stocking a wide diversity of hard-to-find music. The discount businesses are bound to win at the mass-marketed hits (the book stores face a very similar situation). But if the store can appeal to the small percentage of music fans who buy voraciously but whose taste is specialized or obscure, perhaps, I hope, they can survive.
