Comments on: Mega No More: Virgin Megastores Closing Down, Liquidating This Summer

By: Lakenya Koerwitz

Lakenya Koerwitz — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 03:24:20 +0000

the 3 dislikes were clearly looking for clips from the groundbreaking 90′s movie with will smith…

By: Earle Rudman

Earle Rudman — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 02:22:01 +0000

Dreamin. I love blogging.Focus on your blog it is great.

By: KikoJones

KikoJones — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:21:23 +0000

If I recall correctly, the Union Square Megastore opened in in ’99; at the time, the 4th/B’way Tower was averaging $100K/day in sales. Ten years later, both gone. Damn.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:11:08 +0000

That was my favorite place to buy good music CD's but I'll
visit Virgin Megastore one last time this spring before they close. I'll miss you Virgin Megastore and Thanks for
the memories!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 09:18:44 +0000

So does this put an end to the midnight release day. After Tower there was only Virgin, what will I have to do now wait till the store opens in the morning??? Or even worse…..iTunes?!????! Sigh, yo.

By: pantsonfireliarliar

pantsonfireliarliar — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 08:26:42 +0000

Damn, Tower used to be my home away from home when I was waiting for class at NYU. Now Virgin Times Square is the only thing good about the fact that I work in Times Square, the only refuge in the area left. No more new music Tuesdays I guess.

Oh well, at least Apple & AT&T saw fit to let me download music over 3G. Funny how all those hours of sampling music at Tower and Virgin are now available any time I want all through my tiny phone. Guess that's one reason why Virgin is closing...

And their liquidation prices are a joke. At least Circuit City offered 10% off PS3s. Virgin is doing 5%, not even gonna cover tax.

By: Lucas Jensen

Lucas Jensen — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 08:23:21 +0000

To people from big cities, these (and Tower before it) are a big deal. They never really affected me in any way, so it's hard for me to feign sadness. I always found them overpriced (when were these $10 sales?!) and uncomfortable. The myriad indie stores I love and have loved over the years, in places like Starkville, MS, Auburn, AL, and here in Athens, GA, will be the real losses to me if they go (and many have already gone). Not saying this isn't a big deal...I just have no relation to the story having never lived in a city with a population over 100k!

Sad to see record stores go, though, in any form. I hate to see consumer options and jobs disappear.

By: michaelpop

michaelpop — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 06:25:41 +0000

@30f:

Does anyone remember the Virgin in Burbank? I used to go there every week because they had a great selection of hard-to-find imports at pretty decent prices. And then I guess the roof caved in (literally) during a particularly harsh storm and they closed it down. When they reopened in Hollywood a couple of years later I made the trip once, but it's really inconvenient. Who the hell wants to deal with Hollywood Blvd. and all the tourists and crazies?

So sad, though. Thank god the Rhino Records in Claremont is still alive!

By: doublewhiskycokenoice

doublewhiskycokenoice — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 06:05:10 +0000

vin diesel once walked into a virgin megastore. when he left, it was just a megastore.

By: Cam/ron

Cam/ron — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 06:00:40 +0000

@30f: Ameoba mainly gets by on enormous amounts of used CDs and records, as well as having a reputation for being a go-to spot for music junkies.

By: 30f

30f — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 05:26:43 +0000

Not a surprise that this is happening, and even less of a surprise that Virgin didn't go with the 'smaller store' idea. The only brick and mortar music retailer I can think of that is doing well is Amoeba, and they survive by their very big-ness and sensory overload-osity. That was the Virgin plan as well, but I bet their much more expensive real estate (other than in Times Square) was hurting them. Amoeba stayed focused on music (and movies) without all the clothing and electonics and porn which has made Amoeba a destination for music-heads. I completely forgot about the Virgin store, which is less than a mile from the Hollywood Amoeba, when I posted on this topic a while back. Amoeba and Virgin are both tourist spots - but the ones at Amoeba are fans of music who seek out the store while Virgin is the spot people wander into after they get their photo taken with the guy dressed like Spiderman on Hollywood Boulevard. Amoeba seems likely to last because it speaks to the true-believers while Virgin had transformed into Planet Hollywood without burgers.

By: Cam/ron

Cam/ron — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 04:25:54 +0000

@Lucas Jensen: I'm fortunate enough to live near a dozen indie record shops but it's a little sad for me to see the giants sink. My local, now-defunct Virgin introduced my teenage self to a lot of esoteric music and magazines (anybody remember Mondo 2000 magazine?) back in the 90's. Last night, I visited two Circuit Cities during the last week of their house fire sales and those shops were pretty much barren. I bought my first CD player at a Circuit City 16 years ago.

By: Invisible Circus

Invisible Circus — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 03:47:01 +0000

@dyfl: agreed.

I think it's a cop out.

By: Bong14

Bong14 — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 02:54:52 +0000

@Maura Johnston: 19 of the Zavvi stores have been bought by HMV and will be rebranded as such: [www.zavvi-info.co.uk]

By: Maura Johnston

Maura Johnston — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 02:45:15 +0000

@K-milo: it's a separate business. in the uk the virgin megastore brand was converted to zavvi, which went into administration (the uk term for bankruptcy) and was just bought by an online retailer called the hut group:

[www.ft.com]

By: Maura Johnston

Maura Johnston — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 02:42:08 +0000

@Bong14: i was actually trying to figure out how much the number had declined from the 28,500-in-2002 figure cited in the story i quoted above.

By: Bong14

Bong14 — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 02:32:09 +0000

Sad. Continued decline of music-as-culture to music-as-download. What are we left with now (FYE doesn’t fucking count) – probably a dozen or so truly world-class independents, many of them struggling, and another couple of dozen second-tier shops? In many cities I’ve been to recently it’s actually impossible to buy music outside of the Best Buy/Target construct.

I hate to be all pissy and old and cling to my vinyl but this is less about mp3 vs. CD and more about the staggering insignificance of music in the life of the average teenager or twentysomething – it’s just another media consumable. It used to mean _everything_.

By: K-milo

K-milo — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 02:25:03 +0000

And what about the Virgin megastores worldwide?
I mean: I have very very good memories from the one at Champs Elysees…

By: Maura Johnston

Maura Johnston — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 01:48:09 +0000

@Lucas Jensen: there used to be one on long island!

By: dyfl

dyfl — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 11:28:34 +0000

Sigh. These stores were major formative experiences for me, true "happy place" spaces during my years at NYU. (For example: if there was a fire drill at my dorm, I'd always just walk over to Virgin or Tower instead of standing around outside.) All my favorite imports, all my treasured singles and b-sides, came from Virgin. Walking the aisles with my boyfriend at Christmastime, noting down everything he picked up in my memory. And oh, the $10 album sales.

Just another way in which the world is telling me I'm already a dinosaur in my mid-twenties, I guess.