The venerable national music chain has been sold to a liquidation company, and will promptly begin its going-out-of-biz sales.

Both of Tower’s Seattle stores, on east Queen Anne and in the University District, moved to new buildings in recent years; the separate Queen Anne Tower Books outlet shut several years ago. But through these changes, and the onslought of music downloads (paid-for and other), Tower remained the most “indie” of the big chains. While Musicland/Sam Goody (now also disappeared from Seattle) would hype the latest already-overhyped N’Sync or Jessica Simpson product, Tower would give big display space to the likes of Beck and the Donnas. Its staff over the years probably included more future rock stars and future rock critics than any other U.S. company. I had a once-comfy gig feeding local music-scene briefs to its venerable in-store magazine Pulse!.

Now, the leading music retailers in Seattle (besides Amazon, of course) are the locally-owned Easy Street and Sonic Boom, the locally-founded, now Portland-owned Cellophane Square, and the CD shelves at Borders and Barnes & Noble. B&N’s about to start building a new book palace at Northgate; just why book sales attract more corporate investment than music sales is a topic for another time.