This is hidden brain.
Im Shankar Vedantam.
In the 1940s, a teenager named Russell Solomon sold used records out of his fathers drugstore in Sacramento, California.
He had dreams of turning this enterprise into a full fledged business.
In the 1960s, he opened a small record store in the suburbs of Sacramento.
He called it Tower Records.
The business took off.
Russell Solomon opened storefronts in Los Angeles, in New York City, even Japan.
By the seventies, Tower Records had become a musical mecca, with stores frequented by the most famous artists in the world.
Shop Tower records in the heart of Sunset Strip tonight and every night of the year until midnight.
It is a good place.
Tower grew into an international billion dollar empire.
In the late 1990s, Tower took on $110 million in debt to expand the business even further.
Around the same time, music fans were turning to the Internet to get their tunes.
Digital file sharing sites like Napster exploded in popularity.
You only need all music to have music to 1.5 million songs.
Unlimited tower sales began to decline.
More disruptors showed up.
But Russell Solomon refused to see the threat for what it was, an existential risk to the business he had built.
As for the whole concept of beaming something into one's home, that may come along someday, that's for sure.