Slideshow of abandoned record stores. Sadly this is an all too common site over the world now.
Some of these look like they have been out of service for decades except for Virgin Megastore where the cover for Lady Gaga's debut album dates the time period to 2009.

http://www.flavorwire.com/326440/a-phot ... cord-shops

Makes you wonder how an obscure format like laserdisc survived as long as it did!

LaserDisc would have done much better if the web had been around in the 80's. Except for major cities where you had Tower or Ken Cranes, most LaserDisc's were purchased via mail order and info was often hard to come by - with dealers on credit hold with Pioneer or Image lying about why they didn't have a new release (dealer shenanagins were quite common in the LD world) They couldn't have gotten by with that kind of nonsense if forums and such had been around.

Pictures tell quite the story....
All those memories, all that great music that passed through those doors.............
Does make you want to cry a bit

Much of the music I bought (and still buy) is American so back in the late 80's/early 90's before
the internet I had to flick through music magazines and either telephone or fax my orders through.
I mainly used faxes as it was too expensive ringing an order through by phone, especially when I wasn't paying the phone bill!!

There were many American mail order companies that had bought up the last consignments of rare metal/rock CDs that
had only ever been issued in Japan and were now deleted. I remember faxing through my orders to various
companies in the US using an Apple Macintosh SE with an teleport modem in 1991 - the worlds first plugin ADB port modem.
I still have it and it still works! I used it quite recently in fact.

I am guessing the majority of people on this forum started collecting LDs while the format was still being produced
so at least had some chance to buy items instore or via mail order if they so desired.
I missed out on all that, although I really don't think it matters. The internet has completely revolutionised how we
locate and purchase items now.

Most of the titles I now own I doubt if I would ever have seen in UK shops anyway because:
a) they are nearly all US or Japanese music titles which is a niche market at best
b) the laserdisc format never really took off in the UK even at its peak in the early 90's
c) many are very old titles which had already been deleted years ago
d) imports were expensive for shops to stock and with no guaranteed sale it was risky