In the small town where I was relocated to my junior year of high school, there was a record store. At first it was a Sam Goody store, but then it became a FYE. Now it may likely become another hole in the wall, like the millions of other strip mall stores that have gone out of business over the past year or so.

Trans World Entertainment said that it will close 125 FYE stores by the end of the holiday season. The one area that it said it would spare is the Albany, New York area.

The company has not released a list of the stores that are scheduled to close.

I will say that if the store in the town I’m talking about closes, it is a pretty sad day for me. That was the store I purchased my first Flickerstick CD in (and while they are no where near the most famous band ever, they are still my favorite, 10 years later. This is also the store I bought my first Maroon5 CD in, before Harder to Breathe was a huge hit on the radio). If that FYE store goes out of business, there are a lot of memories that will go with the store.

565 stores will remain on the Trans World list. However, most of the stores will likely run at bare minimum like most of the stores do these days. It is hard for a record shop to compete with a store like Wal-Mart or, in bigger towns, Best Buy, Hot Topic, etc.

The only reason I think that Hot Topic is a competitor is because of the merchandise that the store carries.

I hope that Trans World can recover its losses and not have to close so many stores. It really sucks to see a lot of record stores closing. Where else can you by albums by bands that don’t exist outside top 40 radio?  A lot of independent record stores have also had to close thier doors over the past few years due to the serious decline in record sales.