Wenatchee, WA | ‘There’s no bad genres.’ Cashmere Records to open at The Side Street Cashmere. Cashmere Records opened its doors at 111 Railroad Ave., Cashmere, in April for all of the music enthusiasts. “It was something that the Thomases were wanting to have at Side Street and had been talking about trying to get someone to come in,” store owner John Mainord said, referring to Side Street owners Andy and Lana Thomas. “It was suggested that I would be a good person to do it for quite a long time. Eventually, I just kind of came around to the idea, but it started with Side Street already having the idea for getting a record store in this building on the project. I’m at home with my records anyways, you know?” Mainord said the store will offer a wide array of vinyl records, cassette tapes and CDs. He also plans to sell record players so customers can leave the store with everything they could need.
San Francisco, CA | San Francisco rallies around 78-year-old record store owner: Dick Vivian of Rooky Ricardo’s announced his Stage 3 pancreatic cancer diagnosis via a GoFundMe. A mile and a half down the road from Amoeba Music, San Francisco’s Record Row of Groove Merchant, Vinyl Dreams, I Hate Records and Rooky Ricardo’s Records serves as a quadruple threat to record collectors’ bank accounts. But in what could be considered the city’s epicenter of music shops, anchor tenant Rooky Ricardo’s has fallen on hard times, with a GoFundMe asking for donations to pay for treatment for Stage 3 pancreatic cancer. Dick Vivian, 78 years old, has run Rooky Ricardo’s Records since 1987. He’s about as classic a fit for the Record Store Guy archetype as you can imagine, quick with a sarcastic greeting and even quicker with a recommendation.
San Francisco, CA | New Haight-Ashbury record store aims to revive San Francisco punk scene: In Haight-Ashbury, where counterculture echoes through the streets, a new record store is turning up the volume on punk. More than just a shop for vinyl, tapes and CDs, I Hate Records is carving out a space for the city’s punk community. Run by artists Cody Azumi and Pretty Sims, the store stays as unapologetically raw and DIY as the music on its shelves. “One of my favorite things about punk rock is the ability and freedom to question authority,” Azumi said. The co-founders of I Hate Records say the store is more than a business, it’s about building a space for real, face-to-face connection. “You know, you can order anything you want on the internet,” Sims said. “But I think that actually having that face-to-face, real conversation about it, and learning what people in think punk is, is really important.”
New York, NY | Business of the Month: Academy Records, 415 East 12th Street. Think back of the time when computers were just starting to become the norm at every office. Now imagine deciding at that point that you’d like to open a typewriter shop, figuring that you’re good enough at selling them and enough people enjoy their tactility and their clackity-clack that you’ll succeed, even though everyone is phasing them out. And now imagine being proven right and ending up, decades later, with one of the premier typewriter shops in town. That, in essence, is the story of our August 2025 Business of the Month, Academy Records (415 East 12th Street, between 1st Avenue and Avenue A), a store that for over twenty years has provided music lovers of all ages and tastes with the many pleasures that record stores once made widely available.
Glasgow, UK | Here’s why huge queues formed outside Glasgow record shop: Huge queues have formed outside a record shop in Glasgow this evening (8/1). Dozens of people were spotted waiting outside Assai Records on Sauchiehall Street ahead of The Royston Club’s instore performance and signing. The band played at 5pm today and will play again at 7pm. Both performances are sold out. The shows follow the release of the band’s brand-new album, Songs for the Spine, which is set to come out on August 8. It comes after the band performed at TRNSMT 2025 last month. The Welsh rock band are best known for their hits like Mrs Narcissistic, 52 and Blisters.
Santa Clarita, CA | Faces of the SCV: Record store owner spins story of nostalgia and family. For Canyon Country resident Victor Torres Jr., vinyl records take him back to an affectionate past. It’s the smell of the vinyl and of the cardboard cover, and the cracking and popping sounds of the needle on the record — even the record skips here and there—that do it for him. Torres Jr.’s obsession with vinyl records goes back to his dad. “This is my childhood,” he said, referring to all the records surrounding him at the Grayskull Vinyl record store in Canyon Country. “I grew up using records. For me, it has a nostalgic feeling to listen to it. It’s hearing it, it’s the visual aspect of the record, how big it is, the details. And then, being in the music industry, once you learn how the music was recorded, you have more appreciation toward the making of a record.”
Phoenixville, PA | Local Podcast Connects Listeners to Chester County Nonprofits, Businesses Like ‘Forever Changes.’ …Recent guests include Daniel Embree of Kennett Collaborative, Anthony Vietri of Va La Vineyards, and Shawn Cephas of Phoenixville’s Forever Changes record store. Cephas commanded the episode with his wide range of knowledge of bands, artists, venues, and more. Most people claim they will listen to anything, and that is the truth for Cephas. What he listens to is mostly what he carries in store. While he prides himself on being a huge jazz fan, evident of his well-curated jazz section, he carries other genres such as classic rock, punk, modern pop, soul, hip-hop, and anything else you can get your hands on. Cephas often gets asked ‘what made you open a record to store?’ and to that he said, “it’s literally the only thing I know.”
AU | Music Australia to co-invest with Australian record labels across two funding opportunities announced today at AIR’s Indie-Con, in Adelaide: Music Australia is proud to announce renewed support for Australian record labels, with the return of the Record Label Development Scheme and the launch of the inaugural Marketing and Manufacturing Grants. …Unveiled at the sold-out AIR Indie-Con conference in Adelaide today, these matched funding initiatives are designed to support a broad range of Australian labels, from local independents through to major label Australian subsidiaries. First introduced in 2024, the Record Label Development Scheme (RLDS) is a groundbreaking initiative that, in its first round, invested over $1.7 million in 23 record labels, to support the creation of new professional recordings, digital content and artwork, marketing and promotional campaigns, production, manufacturing and freight, and artist development.
This future AirPods feature could make them the headphones of choice for vinyl lovers: A new Apple patent emerges… Apple is no stranger to innovation in the wireless headphone space. First, it invented a new ‘super premium’ category in the form of the AirPods Max. Then it launched the AirPods 4 with ANC, the first earbuds to offer active noise cancellation (ANC) without using ear tips. But this feature could be its most innovative yet. A new patent has emerged (via Patently Apple) showing a pair of AirPods with a touchscreen case that can connect to a record player. The idea is that the case plugs into the turntable and then beams the audio to the pair of wireless earbuds. The five-star Bowers & Wilkins Pi8 performed a similar trick, so there’s no reason this couldn’t come to AirPods at some point.
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