Iconic Music Chain Sanity To Close

It’s the end of an era with iconic music retailer Sanity confirming all brick-and-mortar stores across the country will be shutting soon.

As 9news reports, the 50 remaining physical stores will close by the end of April, leaving only its online shop operational.

The first Sanity outlet, a rebranding of Brett Blundy’s Melbourne-based record and cassette store Jetts, opened in 1992 in Doncaster before expanding across the country and eventually being acquired by Ray Itaoui in 2009.

"With our customers shifting to digital for their visual and music content consumption, and with diminishing physical content available to sell to our customer, it has made it impossible to continue with our physical stores," Itaoui said.

READ MORE: So Long, Sanity - A Tribute To Iconic Music Chains

"Our online business - sanity.com.au - will continue to operate, and will service the many loyal customers the brand has continued to be dedicated to over the decades.

"Our priority right now is to ensure each of our team members knows exactly what this means for their career and employment future.”

All existing orders will be honoured, including pre-orders with an estimated release date after April. Those will be handled by the online store after that date.

At its peak, Sanity had more than 200 stores across the country and published its own magazine, Ultimate, which ran until 2013.

When taking over Sanity in 2009, Itaoui told Billboard: “It's fantastic for the industry and obviously we’re excited. The key focus for us is as music and movie specialists.

“We really want to get back to what we do well. We’ll concentrate on music and movies, and that’s where we’ll put our energies.”

A year prior to the sale, Sanity had a very short-lived online music subscription service, LoadIt, a music store built into Microsoft’s Windows Media Player that offered more than 1 million songs.

The $29 subscription allowed punters to download up to 300 songs a month but was ditched only a few months after it went live.