Category: News Author : JR Posted: March 16, 2009
Tags : economy, Music, Music Industry, virgin, virgin megastores, virgin megastores closing, virgin megastores out of business, virgin megastores shutting down
Virgin Megastores will close all of its U.S. locations this summer. The music chain will remain in business in other parts of the world as well as online.
Virgin Megastores Closing
There are currently six Virgin Megastores locations still open across America, including the store in New York City’s Times Square. That store, according to published reports, was set to make $56 million last year — but when the nationwide economic trouble began, the trends suddenly dropped and the store did not meet its projection. Overall, the stores are said to ring in $170 million a year, compared to $230 million a year back in 2002 (at which point Virgin had 23 U.S. locations).
The 52,000-square-foot Times Square Virgin store will close first, with a final day scheduled for April. The other five stores will shut down in June. About a thousand jobs will be lost in all.
Virgin Megastores first opened in 1992 with a store on Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard. The U.S. branch of the company was bought by Related and Vornado Realty Trust in 2007.
About 150 Virgin Megastores will remain open in parts of Asia, the Middle East, and France. Those locations, unlike the closing U.S. ones, are all still owned by the Virgin Group.
Mar 16, 2009
This is sad.
I'm somewhat of a traditionalist music-wise, and prefer to buy music in a tangible form rather than via an online download. In addition, while online ordering of CDs is nice, sometimes it's good to just drive to a store and get a CD right then and pop it into the car on the drive home.
I liked to shop at Tower Records (both in Portland, Oregon and in the eastern suburbs of Los Angeles) until they closed down, and I liked to shop at the Virgin Megastore until our local outlet in Ontario, California closed down recently. It's sad, because in most cases, the selection at regular chains is fairly paltry.
Luckily, there are some indie stores here and there that still have a decent selection. I'm lucky to live close to Rhino Records (no longer associated with the record label) in Claremont, California, which not only has a good selection of new and used music (even vinyl, for those who remember that), but various other items (how about a Keith Richards action figure, for example?).
Perhaps these will fade away too and we'll buy all of our music in intangible form, but I hope that day is delayed for a while.