Record Shops

June 14, 2026

The nearest record shop to where we live is a good forty-minute drive away. As a result, I buy most of my music online these days, which, as an ageing vinylista, feels a bit wrong. After writing this, I’ll go outside and give myself a sound talking to.

The truth is that I love record shops and I always have done.

Whenever I happen across one, whether it’s in a city we’re visiting or tucked away on a side street somewhere we visit regularly, I’ll almost certainly wander in there. There is something about record shops that has always appealed to me. And it’s not just the records themselves, but the whole experience of being there. I love digging through crate after crate of vinyl. I love spotting something I’ve never heard of before and wondering whether to take a chance on it. I love finding a record I’ve been searching for and feeling ridiculously pleased with myself. I kind of love the whole digging crates for hours, finding that one record, and getting it home only to realise I bought it seven years ago and I didn’t really get on with it – it’s an age thing!

Most of all, I love what happens after buying a record. You get the record home. You realise this is one you haven’t already got a copy of. You carefully remove it from its sleeve. You put it on the turntable. You sit down with a cuppa, or something stronger depending on the time of day (it’s 11 in the morning somewhere), and you spend forty minutes giving your full attention to a piece of music. You read the sleeve notes. You look at the photographs. If you’re lucky, there’s a lyric sheet tucked inside. The whole thing feels like a proper ritual that buying online just doesn’t have with the same magnitude. Yes, they arrive safely enough (mostly), and there’s a frisson of excitement, but there’s a whole extra ritual that’s missing. The record shop itself!

I’ve often thought that people who don’t understand vinyl and its appeal focus too much on the sound quality aspect of it. Of course, sound matters, particularly to readers of HiFi PiG, but if sound quality were the only reason people bought records, then the format would never have survived. Vinyl offers something else that’s really important to my mind. It offers that ritual I keep going on about. It makes you slow down a bit and engage with music in a way that modern life and streaming don’t always encourage. I’ve gone on about this before, I’m sure!

The record shop is the beginning of that ritual experience. (Side note – Ritual Experience was the name of a Sunday club I launched many years ago, only for it to be closed down by the boys in blue before it actually opened.)

When I was growing up in Barnsley, my local record shop was Casa Disco. Looking back, it probably had a bigger influence on me than I realised at the time. It wasn’t a huge shop. In fact, memory tells me it was fairly tiny, although perhaps it only seems smaller now because I was a bit shorter then. What I do remember is that it was packed. Vinyl, cassettes, and posters seemed to occupy every available inch of space, floor to ceiling. School friends would meet there, and we’d spend ages browsing through records even though most of us couldn’t really afford very much. If there was enough pocket money available, a purchase might be made. More often than not, there wasn’t. It didn’t matter. The point was being there with friends.

During the summer months, the place was hot and sweaty. During winter, it felt like a sanctuary from the cold of Northern England. It was somewhere to spend time, somewhere to discover music, and somewhere to meet people who shared the same interests. Remember, this was in my early teens and pre-pub days. Nobody talked about building communities back then. Nobody described it as a social hub. It was just a record shop. But the truth is, that’s exactly what it was: A community, a meeting place, a space where people gathered because they shared a common interest.

Years later, Linette and I ended up owning a record shop ourselves. Like many good ideas, it probably seemed much more sensible when we first discussed it than it did when we were actually doing it. Mr Music Man 2 was based in the North East of England and, for a while at least, it was brilliant fun. We had a pair of Technics 1200 turntables and the remnants of the BiG PiG Sound System. Happy Hardcore and Techno blasted out for much of the day (and occasionally after clubs had closed), and the place became far more than somewhere people came to buy records. People came to talk. They came to find out what was happening over the weekend. They came to discuss music, clubs, DJs and life in general. Some, I’m sure, came in to meet up for nefarious reasons.

Some people would spend ages in the shop and leave having bought nothing. That was fine. Looking back, I think what I enjoyed most wasn’t actually selling records; it was watching the shop become a small part of the local scene. It became a bit of a gathering place. The only downside was that I was also DJing at the time and finishing work at three in the morning and then opening a record shop at half past nine is not a lifestyle choice I would particularly recommend. It eventually became obvious that something had to give and, in the end, we sold the business. I’ve never regretted it, but I do miss it.

Perhaps that’s why I feel genuinely sad when I see another record shop disappear. I don’t know how many have vanished since we sold ours, but the number is significant, I reckon. Of course, record shops aren’t alone. We’ve lost pubs. We’ve lost independent retailers. We’ve lost clubs. We’ve lost live music venues. We’ve lost all sorts of places that once acted as focal points for communities. Walk through many town centres in the UK today, and it’s impossible not to notice the difference. Now, before anyone accuses me of becoming one of those people who think everything was better in the old “when I were a lad” days, let me be clear. It wasn’t. Plenty of town centres were run down. Plenty of shops weren’t very good. But I do think we’ve lost something important.

Human beings need places to gather. Like the robots in the iRobot film, I guess.

We need places that aren’t home and aren’t work. Places where people can meet without needing an invitation, an app, or a booking system. Places where conversations happen by accident. And for music lovers, record shops have always been one of those places.

Perhaps that is why I have a soft spot for Record Store Day, despite some of the criticisms that get levelled at it. I understand why some people dislike it, and I understand the arguments about expensive limited editions and manufactured hype. But at least somebody is making an effort. At least somebody is reminding people that record shops exist. At least somebody is encouraging music lovers to walk through the door…or at least queue up for hours before getting inside.

Record shops really do matter. They matter because they support music. They matter because they preserve culture. They matter because they create opportunities for discovery. And they matter because they bring people together. Perhaps pubs should have record shops inside them – two ailing birds coming together to fly! And a post office. I don’t know.

Streaming services are fab. I use Qobuz every single day. They’re convenient, affordable and provide access to more music than any of us could listen to in a lifetime. But the streaming algorithm has never looked over a counter and said, “If you like that album, try this one”, though ROON tries. A record shop owner has. A record shop regular has. A random stranger flicking through the same crate has. Those moments of human interaction really do matter to folk like me.

Perhaps that is why I still make a beeline for record shops whenever I find one. We’ll be visiting a city, admiring the architecture, enjoying a perfectly pleasant day out, and then I’ll notice a record shop halfway down a side street. An hour later, I’ll emerge carrying a couple of LPs I didn’t need, looking immensely pleased with myself. Lin tends to do a bit of digging herself and hand me a pile of stuff for consideration.

Whilst record shops sell records, that’s never really been their most important function. What they really sell is discovery, conversation, ritual and community. And it’s perhaps that last bit, that community bit, that’s really important right now as we seem to be becoming increasingly fractured and polarised.

So yes, I hope our next house has a record shop nearby. Ideally, I’d like one with a coffee shop attached. A bar wouldn’t hurt either. Somewhere you can browse records, drink coffee, talk nonsense with strangers and lose an entire afternoon without noticing, all whilst having a background soundtrack of something I might love or hate.

That sounds pretty close to perfect to me.