The Musicland Group has announced that it is closing all 61 of its Media Play stores by late January.  The Media Play chain, which debuted in 1992, represented an attempt to sell all sorts of entertainment media products including music, movies, video games and books in a big-box format.  There are Media Play stores in 18 states and the chain employs over 2000, but it has lost money for years because of competition from discount stores like Wal-Mart as well as from online retailers and chain bookstores. 

Musicland will continue to operate more than 800 stores in its two remaining chains, Sam Goody and Suncoast.  Suncoast remains an important source of anime sales and Musicland is currently funding a major makeover of many of its Sam Goody stores.  The Florida-based Sun Capital Partners acquired the Musicland Group from Best Buy in 2003 by assuming all of Musicland's liabilities (see 'Musicland Sold').  Two years earlier Best Buy had purchased Musicland for $700 million.