Musicland
Encyclopedia
- For the fictitious country used in sheet music identification numbers, see BooklandBooklandBookland can refer to:*Bookland, a fictitious location corresponding to a 978 prefix that converts a 10 digit ISBN into EAN-13 barcode .*Bookland , a category of land in Anglo-Saxon law*Various bookshops call themselves "Bookland"...
.
The Musicland Group, Inc. was an entertainment company which ran Sam Goody
Sam Goody
Sam Goody was a music and entertainment retailer in the United States and United Kingdom, and was owned and operated by Trans World Entertainment which also runs FYE, Saturday Matinee, and Suncoast Motion Picture Company. It specialized in music, video, and video game sales...
, Suncoast Motion Picture Company
Suncoast Motion Picture Company
Suncoast Motion Picture Company is an American chain of retail stores specializing in recorded videos, particularly movies but also carried television series. The stores have sold them in the VHS, Laser Disk, DVD, HD, and Blu-ray formats. The stores also carry various other items, including...
and the Media Play
Media Play
Media Play was a chain of retail stores founded in 1992 by Musicland that sold movies on video, DVDs, music, Electronics, video games, books, and games in the United States. Each store essentially contained a book store, a movie store, a music store, and a video game store under one roof. At...
Superstore Chain. Musicland filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in January 2006. Trans World Entertainment
Trans World Entertainment
Trans World Entertainment Corporation is a chain of entertainment media retail stores in the United States. It currently operates just over 440 freestanding and shopping mall-based stores under several brand names....
which runs FYE
Fyé
Fyé is a commune in the Sarthe department in the region of Pays-de-la-Loire in north-western France.-References:*...
, and sells CDs, DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
s, and video games, purchased Musicland's remaining stores. Musicland subsequently went through the liquidation process in Federal Bankruptcy Court. Its headquarters were in Minnetonka, Minnesota
Minnetonka, Minnesota
As of the census of 2000, there were 51,301 people, 21,393 households, and 14,097 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,893.0 persons per square mile . There were 22,228 housing units at an average density of 818.9 per square mile...
.
History
The first Musicland store was opened in 1955 in Minneapolis by Grover Cleveland Sayre II, where the company continued to be headquartered for the remainder of its history, by Heilicher Brothers, a Minneapolis-based regional record distributor and owner of the Soma RecordsSoma Records (U.S. label)
Soma Records was an American record company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and owned by wholesale record distributor Amos Heilicher. The Soma name was "Amos" spelled backwards. Heilicher, along with his brother Danny, was also in the jukebox business and owned the Musicland chain of retail...
label. In 1964 Musicland merged with JL Marsh and in 1968 with Pickwick International. In 1977, American Can Company
American Can Company
The American Can Company was a manufacturer of tin cans. It was a member of the Tin Can Trust, that controlled a "large percentage of business in the United States in tin cans, containers, and packages of tin." It was formerly a member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average from 1959–1991, though...
purchased Pickwick International and in 1978 purchased the Sam Goody
Sam Goody
Sam Goody was a music and entertainment retailer in the United States and United Kingdom, and was owned and operated by Trans World Entertainment which also runs FYE, Saturday Matinee, and Suncoast Motion Picture Company. It specialized in music, video, and video game sales...
chain of record stores, which had a long history going back to 1951 in New York. Shortly after, Musicland began converting the majority of its stores to the Sam Goody brand name, although some locations did retain the Musicland name into the late 1990s.
The company expanded rapidly during the mall boom of the 1980s and continued to grow into the nineties, enjoying a long tenure as the United States' largest specialty retailer of entertainment products. Most of its Sam Goody stores were located in shopping malls. The company helped launch the careers of many notable artist, including Michael Jackson. In 1986, the first Suncoast Motion Picture Company
Suncoast Motion Picture Company
Suncoast Motion Picture Company is an American chain of retail stores specializing in recorded videos, particularly movies but also carried television series. The stores have sold them in the VHS, Laser Disk, DVD, HD, and Blu-ray formats. The stores also carry various other items, including...
store was opened as Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
(the name change would come in 1988.) This store concept specialized in movies and movie memorabilia, also located in shopping malls. In 1992, Musicland launched a major initiative with the rollout of its big-box Media Play
Media Play
Media Play was a chain of retail stores founded in 1992 by Musicland that sold movies on video, DVDs, music, Electronics, video games, books, and games in the United States. Each store essentially contained a book store, a movie store, a music store, and a video game store under one roof. At...
concept. Media Play was a chain of retail superstores that sold movies on video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
, DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
s, music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
, electronics
Electronics
Electronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...
, video games, book
Book
A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...
s, toy
Toy
A toy is any object that can be used for play. Toys are associated commonly with children and pets. Playing with toys is often thought to be an enjoyable means of training the young for life in human society. Different materials are used to make toys enjoyable and cuddly to both young and old...
s, and game
Game
A game is structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements...
s in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Each store essentially contained a book store, a movie store, a music store, and a video game store under one roof. At their height, they operated 72 stores in 19 states with 2,000 employees. The first store opened in Rockford, Illinois
Rockford, Illinois
Rockford is a mid-sized city located on both banks of the Rock River in far northern Illinois. Often referred to as "The Forest City", Rockford is the county seat of Winnebago County, Illinois, USA. As reported in the 2010 U.S. census, the city was home to 152,871 people, the third most populated...
, in 1992.
Hundreds of stores were slated to be opened, but only 89 ever were. Mostly freestanding, the stores averaged a massive 45000 square feet (4,180.6 m²) in metropolitan areas.
In 2001, Musicland was purchased by Best Buy
Best Buy
Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American specialty retailer of consumer electronics in the United States, accounting for 19% of the market. It also operates in Mexico, Canada & China. The company's subsidiaries include Geek Squad, CinemaNow, Magnolia Audio Video, Pacific Sales, and, in Canada operates...
inc. as part of its initiative to diversify its retail holdings to reach a larger demographic with its consumer electronics and entertainment products. By then, Musicland numbered over 1300 stores. Their intention was to transform Sam Goody into a destination for young people looking for hip electronics. They launched a major remerchandising campaign and converted Musicland's On Cue concept of rural stores to the Sam Goody brand, reducing its position in books and moving more into video games and DVD.
Downfall
However, despite Best Buy's major efforts, they failed to generate the results they were looking for with Musicland, losing $85 million in 2002. As a result, they put the company up for sale and were likely just weeks away from liquidating the entire chain when they found a buyer in Sun Capital Partners of Boca Raton, Florida. Sun Capital acquired the company in a cash-free transaction in exchange for acquiring Musicland's debt and leases. Sun Capital attempted to get the company back to basics, but ultimately the dual pressure of internet downloading and big box competition proved too much and in December 2005 they announced the closure of all remaining Media Play stores. The Musicland Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2006, and in February announced the closing http://www.musicland.com/mediainfo.asp of 226 Sam Goody and 115 Suncoast Motion Picture CompanySuncoast Motion Picture Company
Suncoast Motion Picture Company is an American chain of retail stores specializing in recorded videos, particularly movies but also carried television series. The stores have sold them in the VHS, Laser Disk, DVD, HD, and Blu-ray formats. The stores also carry various other items, including...
stores, and all Media Play
Media Play
Media Play was a chain of retail stores founded in 1992 by Musicland that sold movies on video, DVDs, music, Electronics, video games, books, and games in the United States. Each store essentially contained a book store, a movie store, a music store, and a video game store under one roof. At...
locations.
In March 2006, Trans World Entertainment
Trans World Entertainment
Trans World Entertainment Corporation is a chain of entertainment media retail stores in the United States. It currently operates just over 440 freestanding and shopping mall-based stores under several brand names....
announced the purchase of Musicland's 400 Sam Goody and Suncoast stores, along with their websites. Trans World kept 345 of those stores open and closed 55. Transworld began converting the remaining Sam Goody mall stores to FYE, their signature retail brand, but chose to keep the Suncoast Motion Picture Co. name on about 170 stores. http://albany.bizjournals.com/albany/stories/2006/02/20/daily6.html