Signs posted on the windows at Plan 9 Music on Thursday afternoon revealed what store employees have known was coming: "STORE CLOSING SALE!"

Inside, the business was empty of customers. The bins were largely empty, too.

Early Thursday, Plan 9 sent a message to its mailing list subscribers, announcing that the store was closing. The shop will close March 29. All merchandise is discounted 20 percent, and in the store's final week, everything will be 30 percent off.

Plan 9 had been open for more than a year at 1314 Grandin Road, after moving there from Towers Shopping Center.

At the larger Grandin Village shop, there was more room for inventory and space to host live music acts. None of it translated to sufficient sales for the Richmond-based company, which is in the midst of several recent store closings.

Plan 9 owner Jim Bland said Thursday that the Roanoke store struggled to build a steady and sustainable customer base. Competition from Internet downloads of free music and the poor economy didn't give the company hope for the store's future in Roanoke.

"We haven't had enough customer base to continue to do business," Bland said by phone from Richmond. "We just didn't see that we could ride it out that long."

Plan 9 came to Roanoke in 2006, when it bought five previously shuttered Record Exchange stores, including the Roanoke shop at Towers Shopping Center. It remained at the Towers location until November 2007.

The company also will close its Harrisonburg store at the end of this month. Last year, it closed one of its two Charlottesville shops. In January, it closed its Lynchburg location.

After the Roanoke and Harrisonburg closings, Plan 9 stores will remain in four cities -- Richmond, Charlottesville, Williamsburg and Winston-Salem, N.C. The retailer does not expect to close those stores, Bland said.

"We're trying to keep the rest of the chain alive," he said.

As for Roanoke, this was the last remaining small retailer selling used and new CDs, DVDs and vinyl records, along with used video games. Plan 9 employee Sam Lunsford had also worked at Record Exchange and Safe As Milk Records. Lunsford said it was clear after a slower-than-expected holiday season that the store was doomed.

"Buying new CDs is pretty much gone" at the small retail level, Lunsford, 24, said. "It's been plummeting for a while, while vinyl sales are rising."

He wasn't sure whether there is a viable market for an all-vinyl store, but said he believed there are many people in the area who still didn't know of the store's existence.

Only a few customers had come into the store by midafternoon Thursday, Lunsford said. As he spoke, Nicole Hirschmann, 26, of Roanoke walked in to see if her order had arrived. Hirschmann, who works across the street at the Roanoke Natural Foods Co-Op, said she was "really mad" about the store's impending shutdown.

"It's one of the only all-ages places to hear live music," said Hirschmann, whose band, Eternal Summers, has played there. "People working at the store actually know about music."