A bankruptcy judge in Delaware has given the go ahead for the acquisition of the Tower Records website, Tower.com.
The website of the once flagship US record store chain was one of the assets that was put up for sale when the company went into liquidation last year. A company called Norton LLC, who own that controversial Wolfgang's Vault rock memorabilia website, originally bid for the former retail chain's online operation, but they failed to finalise the purchase. The web brand will now go to Miami based music and books retailer Caiman.
Caiman already have their own online operation and resell products from Amazon, and it is not clear if the Tower.com brand will be used in tandem with those services, or whether their existing online operations will be rebranded under the name.
Although music retail is a struggling sector at the moment, some in the investment community say online sellers of physical CDs are more immune to the instability, for the time being at least, and therefore having such a legendary music brand in the online space could prove to be a good investment for Caiman, who will pay $4.2 million to acquire the web-based property and trademark.
You know, we reported on the collapse of Tower Records in quite some detail last year, but it's just occurred to me we never asked Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo what he thought about it all. Which is a major oversight. But never fear, because he's been speaking to Aussie website Undercover about that very thing. Phew. I should add, Cuomo worked at a Tower Records store for eighteen months before forming his own band, which is why he has a right to an opinion on these things. He thinks it's a real shame Tower Records is no more, adding: "Working there was my crash course in music. That's where I first heard Nirvana, The Pixies, Sonic Youth. Without having worked at Tower, I don't know how I would have moved beyond just listening to heavy metal, and Weezer definitely would have never existed, at least not in the form it exists". So, there you go, that's that covered.