I Miss Tower Records

I love iTunes and I can't stand iTunes.

I buy a lot of music from iTunes. Since I got my first iPod in 2003 (I'm on my third now), I've been steadily building up my iTunes library with CDs from my collection and augmenting same with tons of albums purchased from Apple's online store. Even though I've been working in I.T. for the past 17 years, I'm still amazed at the fact that all of this content is available at the click of a mouse. Something about purchasing goods online is so tempting when you don't have to reach for your wallet and pull out your credit card each time you make a purchase (it's easy to forget that your card is getting dinged with each track you download). And for me, buying music has been an obsession since I could afford my first LP from paper route money (Led Zeppelin's "Song Remains the Same" double-album purchased at Musicland). This obsession continues in the digital age.

Still, I have to say I do miss the experience of shopping in a record store. For my money, nothing beats the experience of walking into a shop and seeing miles of rows of CDs of every genre, right there for the browsing - and it's specifically the browsing that I miss.

I used to make my way through Tower Records first to the "Rock/Pop" CD section. Starting alphabetically I could wander through the offerings...AC/DC (anything I don't already have?)...Black Sabbath (why don't they ever carry "Master of Reality" when you really want it?)...Depeche Mode (meh, walk on by)...etc...

It was the browsing experience that would get me feeling all adventurous and willing to try new things. It was how I discovered the discography of artists that I was just learning to get into. Most of all, I was in control and could easily wander back if something on a "Santana" album cover jogged something in my memory and made me want to wander back to the "L" section for some reason. The visuals of all the available CDs let me scan everything within eyeshot and take notice of what jogged my memory up there in the "S" section...(oh, yeah, I always wondered what this Living Colour album was like).

You just can't do the same in the iTunes store. For the most part, you have to know what you are looking for. You can't just look through everything and then decide. Sure, they will push whatever top-10 garbage is currently on their best-seller charts but if you really want to dig deeper than Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus you really have to search. And searching the iTunes store is a less-than-perfect experience.

Still - for all its faults, I love the iTunes store and will most likely continue to buy most of my music there. Yes, it pisses me off that some of my favorites are still unavailable (the Frank Zappa catalogue was there for a brief time but all too brief for me to really dig in), but for the most part I find it very satisfactory.

I still miss Tower Records, though.