This site is now permanently mothballed – but we will leave the content, writing and old photos up here for archive purposes and to keep some of the links alive. Please note this site hasn’t been actively updated for some time, so if you want to visit a record shop it will become an increasingly unreliable source so please check the usual online and social media channels for the latest info on opening times, current location and all that important stuff.
Our adventures continue. In a fantastic turn of events, one of us decided to open shops instead of writing about them and now co-owns not one, but two fantastic branches of Dig Vinyl over on Merseyside. We are still writing and releasing music and occasionally DJ-ing as NIGHTDUBBING. You can also find a collection of my music writing and gig reviews over here.
These are the fun things taking up our time nowadays but we’re leaving the record shopping world in much better health than we found it when we launched this site back in 2009….
The story of RECORD SHOP CITY
The spark for the site was to counter the tired and over simplistic argument trotted out by certain gatekeepers of ‘classic rock’ bemoaning the fact that there were “no record shops any more” and endlessly talking down the music retail sector – which was, quite clearly, struggling against the tide of “changing consumer habits” but was quietly resilient, especially in Manchester and the North West.
Why would anyone buy a record?
Back in 2009 the music industry was still trying to recover lost ground from the post Napster/Limewire downloading free-for-all and market forces and self appointed ‘pirates’ demanding music be free regardless of who might lose their livelihood. This was before streaming had really taken off, paid downloads were seen as the future but instead people were filling hard drives and iPods full of as many knocked off mp3s as they could cram on to them. This left record shops with an existential crisis – how to get people to pay for something they could hear for free. Even in an era where people are now happy to pay for streaming for the convenience of not having to scour dodgy torrent sites and maintain music libraries across multiple devices, this is still a challenge. All you can eat for £10-15 or one piece of music for (increasingly) more than that?.
Of course, we all know music is about more than just something coming out of a speaker or a pair of earbuds. The music retail world has realigned itself around physical product, particularly (but not exclusively) vinyl, and all the magic that surrounds it which I don’t need to detail here – you all know the reasons why.
Love it or hate it, Record Store Day did a huge amount to turn this around. However, back in 2009 Record Store Day was in its infancy and wouldn’t arrive in the UK for two years – and in fact within weeks of opening our site, for all our cheerleading, the dance, funk and soul emporium Fat City closed its doors, a huge loss to the local scene.
Last night a DJ saved my life
Ironically, it was the DJs, the dance scene, the Indie labels and DIY outfits and their enduring love for 12″ vinyl that kept the manufacturing infrastructure for pressing vinyl records going during the hard times – they supported the bare bones of an industry which suddenly found itself unable to keep up with the demand as vinyl sales soared again in the 2010s – but at least they weren’t starting from scratch thanks to the Vinyl die-hards.
So we wanted to celebrate the record shops and show just how many there were across a relatively small area – we argued you could easily make a day or a weekend of record shopping (there was even a short-lived plan to offer ‘guided tours’ – not by me I hasten to add). We also wanted to give a boost and direct people to the lesser known or more ramshackle shops, some of which had little or no web presence and if nothing else we hopefully sent a few more customers their way.
Where are we now…where are we now…
Things have changed massively since then both in terms of the music retail world which has had a bumpy but successful revival, and also in terms of how the internet works. For the former this is remarkable in spite of being massively undermined by the actions of a dishonourable and rampant billionaire tech sector, it seems that record shops have become one of the mainstays of the high street – “destination retail” as market experts call it. For one thing, against incredible odds there is still a large chain of HMV Shops (something we blogged about quite a lot) but more importantly, once again it is possible to find at least one independent record shop in hundreds of towns and cities across the UK and beyond. You can get on a bus or a train and find somewhere to go rooting around for unknown treasure once again.
As for the internet and good old fashioned websites, well there are now endless directories, rival sites such as the BSRA or Discogs and mostly it’s now far easier for music retailers to promote themselves online through social media, google maps or whatever and – quite frankly I’d rather go record shopping than keep their details up to date on this little site.
So this site is going to boxed away in the online loft with a zillion others, but a massive thank you to all the shop owners, music collectors and fans who got in touch and connected with us about their love of buying and selling black wax and shiny discs. It is 2025 and record shops look here to stay but – but don’t be complacent – SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL RECORD SHOPS!
Tim & Carl – RecordShopCity – December 2025
Anthony.H.Wilson icon & quote used with the kind permission of Oliver Wilson – unlike the billions of websites that nicked it….
