The five remaining Virgin Megastores in the U.S. will close by summer, according to The Wrap. The stores are located in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Orlando, and New York — the last of which will become a Forever 21 store in April. Virgin Megastore, as well as many other music retail establishments, have been having trouble keeping pace with online businesses such as iTunes and Amazon.com.
Mar 2
2009
09:30 PM ET
Virgin Megastores all closing by summer
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Its a double edge sword. As a consumer, want to convenience of online shopping but its sad to know that people are losing their jobs because of it. We will soon all be over ran by robots!
This is a real shame, I love Virgin Megastores. I’ll especially miss the one in Union Square.
I’m going to miss the Union Square store too — a lot. Online shopping is hardly the same. Am I the only person left who wants the pleasure of having something immediately and in hard copy form? I don’t want to wait three days for something to ship, and I don’t want a bunch of files. I want a CD. I want a DVD. I love going to the Virgin Megastore on lunch break on Tuesday and buying sale-priced new releases. Seriously, this sucks. </3
Downtown Disney is suddenly a lot less fun.
The emergence of online commerce and the recession are combining to form the death of “default retail”. I have no doubt that store shopping will be back after a bit, but a LOT of chains are going to close. What will happen, though, is that retail will fight back with “experience” shops – think Apple Stores as an example of what will emerge.
It just sucks. I preferred Tower, but also liked the Union Square Virgin store. Saturdays at the record store…browsing and finding things I never knew existed. And looking online will never replace that. Another reason the music industry is hurting. I used to spend $$$. Not anymore!
Depressing News:( Virgin is about a 1.5 hour drive and worth every minute I spend in the car. I guess I will get everything on Amazon.com from now on. Walmart refuses to carry any decent music, and now Circuit City is out of business. What is a music lover to do?
goodbye downtown disney..only reason to bother going.
I agree with everyone else, why bother going to downtown disney anymore, maybe the exception will be a concert at house of blues, but with pleasure island closed and now virgin unless its a good concert i cant see myself at downtown disney anymore .what i cant understand is any time i have ever been there over the last eight years it has always always been busy, i refuse to belive the orlando store is not making money, disney should do what they have to to convience virgin to leave orlando open, im sure its not that easy but its how i feel. a sad day for orlando music lovers
Well, hell! I know this is about Florida and whatnot but was just as shocked when going to Ontario Mills out in Cali and found the Virgin store closed! That was the one place everyone agreed upon when at the mall. There was something for everyone. Granted you could go deaf from the music but it was still fun. What pisses me off the most is that there are not any music stores any longer. A piece of Americana is going by the wayside. It sucks. We’re losing our history.
This is disappointing news, but with the ease of downloads, it was inevitable. It would be great to have a stereotypical record store back, the internet just doesn’t cut it for me.
First Disney hit hard by closing of Pleasure Island “Night Clubs area” and now Virgin is closeing… Vary sad sad day for us all.. Now I have no reason to goto Downtown Disney
It’s very sad to see the Virgin Megastore go out of business. True, they were a little over-priced, but it was still a great music atmosphere. I like just being able to go and browse and listen to CDs in the store. Online shopping–not the same experience! Also the location at Downtown Disney was the best when you needed a place to hang out before or after a movie (since the AMC 24 movie theater is next door). Not to mention the $10 sales rocked! Plus, they always had some really cool and hard to find imports. I definitely agree that since Disney closed Pleasure Island and now with the closing of Virgin Megastore, it really doesn’t leave much reason to visit Downtown Disney. All the unique places are leaving/left. The music industry is definitely changing, but sometimes change is not always good. I don’t want to be forced one day to buy all my music at Wal-Mart!!!
Yes, it’s sad that the Virgin Megastore is closing at Downtown Disney, and sad that Pleasure Island closed…but if that was your only reason for going to Downtown Disney, you aren’t the market Disney is after anyways….that’s why they closed Pleasure Island. And Disney has no pull on what Virgin does as a company. Even if the Orlando Megastore was making money, and the NY one, if they weren’t making money as a whole and the trend is sliding, they’re going to close to better their profits. It’s all about the money.
Buying music is still the cheapest form of quality entertainment. CD’s are very cheap, considering what it costs to make them, pay the artists, pay the distributors to sell them to the stores ( or what’s left of them…how sad…) and the consumer has the choice these days just to grab tracks from Itunes, etc…
If you like Classic Rock, if you like Dance, Classical, Hip-Hop….there is a whole new world available to you at your favorite websites and stores that still exist…you have to seek them out, which is a sad thing…..
However, vinyl is baaaaaaack! And, this is a new (old) model, that gets some of the kids back into that format again, it’s alot of fun, and it is something to get the music economy back on its feet…just a little bit….everything counts folks…