Why Record Stores Are Making A Comeback In The Streaming Era: …It’s not streaming versus vinyl. It never really was. ERA said it best: record stores give music lovers a genuine space to listen, collect, and connect with their favourite artists, tapping into real superfandom that exists comfortably alongside digital streaming. A playlist gets you the song instantly. It can’t give you the crate dig, the surprise reissue on the shelf, the line outside the door on a Saturday morning full of people who showed up for exactly the same reason you did. That feeling is what independent record stores have spent the last decade quietly building back, one Saturday at a time.
London, UK | Deep cuts: how one Londoner’s fake vinyl empire sheds light on ‘industrial scale’ fraud: Thousands of knock-off records worth a fortune are being seized in the UK by anti-counterfeit police stings. From 2017 onwards, Rehan Ahmed styled himself as a savvy business owner. But behind the facade of a successful entrepreneur lurked one stark fact: his empire was built on fakery. On Friday, the man behind the biggest-ever UK case of producing fraudulent vinyl, who sold counterfeit copies of records by some of the world’s biggest artists including Taylor Swift, Coldplay and Kendrick Lamar, was jailed. Ahmed, a 40-year-old father of three from Southall, west London, pleaded guilty to two charges of breach of artists’ copyright, and acquiring and using criminal property.
Toronto, CA | Sam Sniderman, ‘Sam the Record Man’ founder, dead at 92: A major promoter of Canadian music, Sniderman was a Member of the Order of Canada, an inductee of the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame and the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame. Sam Sniderman, the founder of the legendary Sam the Record Man music store, has died. He was 92. A release issued today (9/20) says Sniderman passed away peacefully in his sleep Sunday, surrounded by loved ones, in Toronto. Sniderman opened his flagship store on Toronto’s Yonge Street in 1959. The iconic store with its huge flashing red neon record signs closed in 2007, seven years after he retired.
Queens, NY | Queens artist gives obsolete media new life in ‘The Accidental Archive.’ A Queens-based artist is giving obsolete media a new life and, in one case, making a CD-ROM playable on a turntable. Artist sTo Len used a record cutter to carve grooves into a blank CD-ROM, creating a disc that can be played like a vinyl record. “This is to me very fun. Taking an obsolete technology and making it new but then making it sound really old at the same time,” said sTo Len, who has been an artist-in-residence at Materials for the Arts, or MFTA. The nearly 50-year-old city Department of Cultural Affairs program collects donated materials from across the five boroughs and makes them available for free to arts nonprofits, public schools and city agencies.
London, UK | Philip Jeck and Lol Sargent’s ‘Vinyl Requiem’ returns to Union Chapel: Union Chapel in London stages “Vinyl Requiem 33.3” on 4 November 2026, a one-off return of Philip Jeck and Lol Sargent’s “Vinyl Requiem” to the venue where it premiered in 1993. Doors open at 18:30 and the programme starts at 19:30. Tickets are £18 plus booking fee through gigantic.com and are on sale now. The evening also marks the launch of a limited-edition double-vinyl reissue of “Vinyl Requiem” on Touch, the label Jeck was signed to from 1995 until his death in 2022. The programme centres on a full-scale projection of the 55-minute edited film of the 1993 performance, followed by a Q&A with people connected to the work and to Jeck’s creative life…
London, UK | Fritz Hansen Sound Club invites visitors to enjoy music in Bauhaus-inspired listening spaces: Danish design brand Fritz Hansen has teamed up with audio specialist Technics to transform its Farringdon showroom into a series of domestic listening scenes for London Design Festival. As part of the Fritz Hansen Sound Club, the showroom has been organised into four domestic scenes where guests are invited to listen to a curated selection of vinyl records. The installation combines Fritz Hansen’s furniture and lighting products with turntables, headphones and speakers from Japanese firm Technics. A 90th anniversary limited edition of the Kaiser Idell Luxus table lamp and Technics’ SL 40CBT turntable form the centrepiece of the various settings, both reimagined in a matching burgundy hue.
Grand Junction, CO | Paint your own vinyl record at Triple Play Records: Get creative with Triple Play Records during the Downtown Art Fest! We’re hosting a FREE, all-ages Paint Your Own Vinyl Record event on October 3rd from 11 AM–4 PM in the 500 block of Main Street. Create your own one-of-a-kind vinyl artwork, bring your imagination, and make something you can take home and display. All ages welcome. Free to participate. We’re looking for local businesses interested in sponsoring this community art event. If you’d like to get involved and support local creativity and Downtown Grand Junction, contact Matthew.
Toronto, CA | Toronto’s CrateryCon not your typical music festival and record fair: Duo organize party and talk that features rare and obscure music on vintage vinyl. A niche vinyl collecting festival in Toronto featuring rare and obscure music is not your typical record fair. Likeminded diggers and DJs from near and far are set to converge at venues across the city for the annual CrateryCon, which celebrates the culture of collecting various styles of music and sounds. The event kicks off Thursday and runs through to Sunday.This fest is not merely about the vinyl revival. It is actually rooted in people who collect rare soul, funk, disco, jazz, rock, reggae, rap, and latin music on vintage wax.
$50K turntable puts magnets to work on quieter, smoother spin: Turntables are supposed to hiss and hum a little. It’s part of the deal. Esoteric’s new T-01 breaks that deal by swapping its belt for a magnetic field, leaving the platter to spin in near-total mechanical silence. …The Japanese audio maker calls the system MagneDrive, and the T-01 is its second act. The idea first showed up four years ago on the Grandioso T1, a flagship model priced around US$86,000, which was less a turntable than a proof of concept with a hefty price tag attached. The T-01 simplifies that original design and its installation and comes with a tonearm included at $50,000 in the US or €48,000 in Europe, still comfortably in exotic hi-fi territory. Buyers who already own a tonearm they love can opt for the bare T-01AL instead, at $46,000.
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