Reaction To The Tower Liquidation

There's been quite a buzz surrounding the demise of Tower from around the web. One of the most telling items comes from a response to Lefsetz' take on the subject from Redeye Distribution's John McGlasson:

I wouldn't care at all if they didn't owe our dist. (Redeye) a shitload of money, a screwing that you can be sure will be passed onto us, though Tower bought a bunch of one of our new releases (10/03, John Blakeley/Ron Nagle's Tan Mantis) for cash, something that surprised me, even in bankruptcy, it seems Tower thought if they could make it thru the holidays they could pull out of it. Big retail and the big labels have made it hard on indies forever, and distributors still try to get indies to play the big label game with the stores who charge hundreds or thousands for decent store placement, knowing we can only sell at best a handful of cds per store. So in this transitional period, we have no choice but to play along with the distributor and big retail, though we all know we're just going through the motions, waiting for it's death. Big retail is our biggest liability right now as a label, but we'll win.

Everyone's starting to see what I've been blathering on about for the last year. Big marketing costs from retail making it almost impossible for indies to succeed. What's going to happen is that the indies will change to a digital model, possibly monetize their relationships with artists by taking over booking and merchandising, and leave the CD business to the dinosaurs.

Welcome aboard.