Find All Your Local Record Stores With VinylHub
The VinylHub website catalogs record stores around the world, which is becoming an increasingly useful tool for box diggers as vinyl record sales continue to grow . Launched in 2014 by the music database Discogs , Vinyl has identified over 6,500 record stores, as well as details such as clocks, shop window photos, and select genres. Users can “follow” stores and note which ones they have visited or hoped to visit.
VinylHub is also a decent proxy for finding interesting neighborhoods (useful if you’re traveling or visiting a new city) as music shops thrive in pedestrianized areas with plenty of shops and vibrant street culture. For example, in New York City, record stores are clustered around the East Village, Lower East Side, Greenpoint, and Bushwick.
Since the database includes closed stores, it can also be a sad reminder of the culture we lost when we transitioned to large-box chains and then online sales.
In its blog post, Discogs breaks down VinylHub’s data to show record stores by country, per capita, and in the world’s largest cities (Tokyo comes first with 93 stores). The site is still incomplete – there is probably at least one music store in Algeria – so check to see if your favorite store is on it.
VinylHub | through dangerous minds