This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. In the 1940s, a teenager named Russell Solomon

sold use records out of his father's 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 70s, 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 a hundred and ten million dollars 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 don't need to own the music, to have music,

to Lafayette, 1.5 million songs.

Tower's sails 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, but it will come

along over a long period of time and we'll be able to deal with it and change our focus and change

the way we do business. As far as your CD collection

our CD collection for that matter

it's going to be around for a long long time believe me

tower records filed for bankruptcy in 2004.

It's easy to hear the story and think,

...