On Thursday, the Virgin Megastore in Manhattan's Times Square, said to be the largest record store in the world, began marking down merchandise in preparation for its eventual closure later this quarter. If the writing wasn't already on the wall for traditional music retailers, it is now.

"This sale will give our loyal shoppers one last chance to browse the world's largest music store," stated Virgin Entertainment Group CEO Simon Wright. "We'll be offering discount prices on items that might be difficult to find in the days to come, and we hope our customers have a lot of fun shopping this final sale."

No matter how cheap those items get, or how hard they might be to find in physical form, they'll still be cheaper and more available via imeem, YouTube, bit torrent and the rest -- which is sort of the point here.

The Times Square location will be survived by five remaining Virgin MegaStores in the United States.