What's the point of record stores these days?

Lugging the vinyl is also good for the shoulders and upper body strength :slightly_smiling_face:

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There certainly was (and perhaps still is?) too many socially dysfunctional music snobs in stores - shame on them, but there were enough nice ones as well and those deserve your hard earned.

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Record stores are certainly more photogenic that computer servers - I’ll give them that :slightly_smiling_face:

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Working from home/pandemic has completely changed my listening/buying patterns - it’s digital via NTS/Spotify/Bandcamp all day and then we play records/CDs in the evening. Love the NTS playlist function and I’ll usually bookmark something on Spotify if I hear a track I like. If I like it enough then I’ll buy the digi on bandcamp or if it’s really incredible, then the record/CD. Also TP Forum recommendations. And it’s fun to virtually dig via Discogs, one of the last places on the internet that kind of feels like home…

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Funny you should mention Discogs, it rather paradoxically gave small local record shops a global reach whilst probably diminishing the amount of people in them! It also allowed a lot of people to open virtual stores - a growing trend in all areas, without the crippling rents as there is hardly any money in vinyl…

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I perhaps have a too close a perspective here, as someone who has been running their own dance & electronic music-specialty shop for over a decade and who has worked in dance music-specific record retail (plus print media, radio, video production etc etc) since the mid-90s. Discogs kinda ruined record stores to an extent imo. New record stores are all the same. They look the same, carry all the same product, have zero curation (other than just buying up collections) and are all selling on Discogs. The website in many ways sort of killed record collecting in that it took something that was somewhat niche and dorky (i mean, read any Goldmine) and made it “profitable” for literally anyone to open their own “shop”. So of course when people see dollar signs in their eyes, everything gets more expensive. EVERYTHING has become expensive, including records that were worth sub-$1,00 for years and years and years - it’s all now 10/20/30. The perceived rarity is what drives some of the sales because it’s viewed as this ancient tech by the youngers. How rare is an album that sold in the millions 40 years ago?

(as an aside, two Chinese students came into my shop one day and asked if they could interview me about the vinyl resurgence, and the first question asked was “So…tell us about these old-school machines…”)

As for Discogs, I can’t compete with people who have no overhead whatsoever so I don’t participate. I’ve got my own website and that’s VDSF’s welcome mat to the online world. Quite separate from that, though, is the physical shop is a completely different world to the online shop. Different dynamics, different economics, different pricing etc. I have a whole philosophy with using Discogs as a pricing guide/bellwether but NOT as a bible. Boy is it insane what people think they can get for records. Someone sells a $30 record for $75 once and now it’s a $75 record - It literally takes one rube to fall for the inflated price and it changes how the world looks at the value of that record. I take a much more grounded approach to this and I think it has served me very well.

Nothing makes me smile more than watching someone buy a dope record for $5 in my shop, recommended by myself or my helpers (or even customers), and knowing that there are 200 sellers on the D trying to get fifty cents for that record and failing to do so. Because you can’t show people how dope a record is on Discogs.

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Best chance of finding some nice bargains or undiscovered gems these days is in the discount bins of actual record stores.

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I treat the ones in Spain more as a social than a massive dig. There’s a lovely little shop/bar in BCN called Salvadiscos where people just hang out and where even seasoned calamities like me are sometimes allowed on the decks. I tend to save the big purchases till the record fairs, maybe twice a year.

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I think a lot of stores are now much of a muchness with regards to stock because there just aren’t so many vinyl releases to choose from, it’s hard to have a real niche like so many stores back in the day - correct me if I’m wrong?

I like your philosophy though, sounds like you’re a force for good in San Francisco.

Ultra Local Records, just round the corner from my old local used to have a great social on a Friday, somehow squeezing a live band into that tiny shop. They’d often have tables and food outside on puentes - I don’t know if it is still going?

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i’m curious as to what kind of distribution is available now, especially for US-based stores.

back in MY DAY (so old, soooo old) we had a couple of dozen distributors that we’d order from, each with a slightly different focus or specialty. i’m pretty sure they’re all gone now (with the exception of revolver and maybe groove). are most stores stuck ordering from the same limited number of distros, or are most doing direct deals with international distros or labels?

are all the store’s stock the same because everyone’s going through, i dunno… turntable lab and that’s it?

This takes me back to working in shop in the early to mid 90’s. Buying weekly from distro reps doing the rounds in vans and also spending a few hours with the likes of Ideal getting new releases played on the phone.

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I don’t 100% agree as a store like VDSF or Mount Analog or Soundtracks or T- Bag buck this trend somewhat by actually trying to curate a selection as opposed to buying all the sake titles, but I do see a lot of stores with the same shit as well.

What I do think separates some stores from others are their second hand records and how they use these to build their own cornerstone. For example a place like In Your Ear has a tremendous amount of Caribbean records that make it stand out or Human Head with its who knows what but it’s excellent approach to buying stock,

The joy of record stores is what you don’t expect to find as opposed to what you assume will be in there. Like today, walked into a store in Newburyport, Ma. and was expecting to see your typical rock selection but there in the second hand section was a $15 copy of the Aaliyah - Aaliyah Vinyl Me Please edition with the tip on sleeve and all the extras and Milton Nascimento “milagre dos peixes” with all the inserts abs the giant fold out cover relatively intact for $18. Had the 7” as well. Guy behind the counter said he priced both to move as nobody goes for it but he was still selling copies of Father John Misty’s first record by the truckload apparently. One man’s trash etc.

In Your Ear in Boston?

I miss that place a lot!!! The one on Comm Ave. was my go to shop when I went to BU, and I always used to hear the craziest shit from the guys who ran it. Once I walked in there and the dude was on the phone explaining to someone else how to get away with killing someone, hahahaha! On the background he was playing Jack Bruce’s “Things We Like” which I was looking for for a while. Imagine interrupting that conversation to ask if I could buy the record playing over the speaker… I bought my first real soundsystem there too. Wow, blast from the past. Good to know they are still around. I often think of all the gems I didn’t get there. (they had another even messier location near Harvard I think?)

Sadly they’ve shut both locations in Boston now and decamped to Warren, RI. You can only imagine what their rent must have been and as BU is expanding I’m sure they’d have wanted the building for something. Reed is the guy you interrupted having that conversation I’m sure. I’ve heard some wild stories about how he went about finding those records and they do involve a lot of shenanigans.

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It’s also the place where Jeff who runs Cultures of Soul said he found 80% of the music for his first couple of comps, that and the place put towards Gloucester whose name escapes me…mystery train maybe?

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It wasn’t Reed, it was another dude, chubbier, longer hair, forgot his name. Reed was there though, and probably participated in the conversatio.

In any case, it was a cool spot. I also loved Looney Tunes by Berklee, also closed due to the school’s expansion, which was a pity. Nice folk there too.

Nuggets by Kenmore square had some ok stuff once in a while, and Stereo Jack’s by the red line (somerville, maybe? I forgot) was also a favorite of mine. A few others I can’t remember the names of spring to mind. Mystery Train might be one of them.

Haven’t been back since I graduated (2011) but my musician friends who liked to dig for records tell me most of the good spots in the city have closed up shop. Sad.

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Went looking to see where Stereo Jacks was located and…

It genuinely is sad but with sky high rents and corporations being willing to pay them it’s meant that stores aren’t able to survive. The kinds that have delivered for their local communities are being forced out. Having said that though there are stores still opening and some are surviving despite themselves like Grooves. Cheapo is still around but they’re not the bargain hunters dream destination of yore.