It sucks that Tower records is closing down this month. It was a good place to find Indie music without having to steal it off the Internet. Rose Records doesn’t have the selection and the other stores stock only Pop music. Well when I go to HK for my visa’s I’ll pop into HMV.
Why are they closing?
No Idea everybody I asked said it was a company decision. Maybe they weren’t making any money…
They got bought out by Rose Records.
What I don’t understand is why do they do so poorly in the market?? Are they just not making any $$??
Rose isn’t any better, I think
Poor selection when compared to other countries (even Tower Record in other countries) and too expensive. Won’t miss them …
Does this mean that the Tower Record store in Ximending is going to revert to its former A&W Rootbeer store? 
Poor selection when compared to other countries (even Tower Record in other countries) and too expensive. Won’t miss them …[/quote]The Tower Records in London must be 5 times the size of the ones here, HMV and Vigin even bigger.
Rose just has trashy manufactured taiwanese pop. Tower did at least try to be a little bit more original.
Although I never bought much at Tower (too expensive!), its passing is a shame.
At least Eslite still has its store (basement of the Dunhua branch), which offers many items not found elsewhere in Taiwan.
I was surprised to see that Taipei 101 doesn’t have a large CD store. Perhaps the bookstore – when it finally opens 
– will offer music as well.
The parent company has been in bankruptcy for a while now. Probably trying to get whatever profit they can by selling off what assets they can.
Will they have a closing down sale? I’d be up for that, as they often do have a lot of CDs you can’t find elsewhere, but they’re just too expensive.
Others to checkout:
FNAC
Eslite music in Taida (separate building from bookstore)
Downstairs from Nova by Guting MRT
Brian
[quote=“Bu Lai En”]Others to checkout:
Eslite music in Tai-Da (separate building from bookstore)[/quote]
Did that reopen? It closed a long time ago. I had thought that the CD store I mentioned above was it for the Eslite chain – at least in Taipei.
Tower Record is expensive but have great selections of music that I am into (ie. Techno/Trance/Jungle) and they carried them, nobody else did.
I happened by the sale at the Zhongxiao Tower a week or so ago. Not much left when I went there.
Only the CDs with the green sticker (I think) were on sale. I took a few up with red stickers and was told that I would have to pay full price. That didn’t happen.
Generally, it was pretty picked over–and that was some time back.
forget about the sale…only really obscure stuff left…i always thought the dinghao branch was shabbily run…they carried too much inventory of stuff nobody would buy which meant for a bit of a can’t see the wood for the trees type scenario…anyway the new cd shop in eslite is pretty fab and everything very well presented
Taiwan needs an HMV or a Virgin, although there aren’t many of those here 
. Rose records could not order me a copy of “Elephant” by the White Stripes but one of their competitors could.
Oh my god! I had totally forgotten that. Yes! Bring back A&W!!!
The Eslite in Tainan has for some reason a large section of obscure CDs that one would be hard-pressed to find even in the U.S. or U.K. Apparently someone who works or used to work there was a prog-rock fanatic, and instilled an entire section of the racks devoted to it. Amon Duul bootlegs aren’t exactly my cuppa psychedelic tea, but for someone who is it would be worth the visit to Tainan just to buy records.
thanks for telling about the eslite shop, i will check that out. the gongguan one was ok but small.
miaka, for techno etc. mail order is the only way to go! i can occasionally find a good cd at the jiajia place on chonghua across from the foreign police station.
Hey, thanks for the tip, I will have to check it out. Meantime, I will just have to download it from the websites… 