Hudson Valley, NY | Checking in with local record shops to see how things went in 2024 and what 2025 may bring: Since the reemergence of vinyl nearly two decades ago as a popular form of physical media, brick-and-mortar record shops and sellers using less traditional avenues have rolled with economic punches like global pandemics and streaming and found a way to survive and thrive. How was 2024 for local record shops? And what’s ahead for 2025? Doug Wygal owns Rocket Number Nine Records on North Front Street in Kingston. Its name is a tribute to cosmic jazz pioneer Sun Ra’s “Rocket Number Nine Take Off for the Planet Venus,” recorded in 1960 when vinyl was holding strong as the nation’s preeminent means of self-curated in-home music delivery. Rocket Number Nine Records doesn’t stretch that far back, though it hit a key milestone in 2024, celebrating a decade in operation. “I don’t see any evidence that current interest in vinyl is waning,” Wygal said. “As a store, we have experienced growth year after year.”
Crystal Lake, IL | McHenry record shop owner is known for helping others. Now he’s the one in need. Tim Wille, owner of Vinyl Frontier Records, hospitalized with pneumonia. Tim Wille quietly uses a Facebook group he created and the record store he owns to help the McHenry community, those who know him said. “Everybody knowns of his reputation and his generosity to others,” said Sue Low Meyer, McHenry’s former mayor. Through the McHenry, The way we like it. Facebook group and his store, Vinyl Frontier Records, Wille reaches out to its members when a resident needed help. “Tim has used that page and the record store as a central location for a number of community outreach projects that he has done and gotten others involved in,” said resident John Gasek. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Wille posted about a family who was facing eviction, unable to pay their rent, Gasek said. With the help of others on the page, the rent was paid and the residents were able to stay in their home. “He has a good following because he has a good heart…”
Chicago, IL | Dr. Wax and a Bygone Harper Court: …Each Dr. Wax location was said to have a unique character based on its neighborhood. The Hyde Park location in particular was known as a hub for carrying local artists — think Rita J, JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound, Miz Tiyabe and Tanya Reed. It also hosted a wide variety of alternative and underground music. A third of the inventory was vinyl, which was primarily bought used from one-stop shops and which was dominated by hip-hop and soul lps, according to a 2000 Billboard article. Over the years, the store got a number of visits from artists such as Henry Rollins, Q-Tip, Destiny’s Child, Tony Tough and Bimpadelic. (A farewell video for the store said that Jarrard Anthony shot a music video there.) But it was the shop’s employees that kept people coming back, most notably Charles Williams and Duane Powell, a DJ and music connoisseur who worked at the shop for 12 years.
Washington, DC | Bob Bartlett’s ‘Love and Vinyl’ to play at DC’s Byrdland Records: Site-specific work about browsing for records and romance in the digital age opens in time for Valentine’s Day. …The Helen Hayes Award-winning Bartlett says the idea to create site-specific theater, which he believes has the potential to engage audiences in more immediate ways than theater staged in traditional spaces, came while he was living in a downtown walk-up on Maryland Avenue in Annapolis over a decade ago. “I’ve always been drawn to theater produced in unique locations,” he notes. “And more than simply Shakespeare in the park.” Always on the lookout for compelling locations where acts of theater and storytelling can happen, Bartlett often writes with specific spaces in mind. “I’d long dreamed of inviting audiences to walk into a record store to see a play.”
In September of 1945 Joe Liggins and His Honeydrippers scored a smash hit on the R&B charts with “The Honeydripper, Parts 1 & 2,” hitting #1 in September and staying there into the following year (18 weeks in total). Heard today and considered in the context of its time, the song’s modernity still shines: WWII is over, and with it comes a sense of optimism only encouraged by a record industry, unshackled by the ban on pressing 78rpm discs, that was cranking out musical advancements recently honed on bandstands, and as the war raged on, mostly heard via airchecks.
Austin, TX | Austin’s Waterloo Records changes ownership, relocates: One of Austin’s staple record stores will change ownership and relocate to a larger location this spring, current owner John Kunz announced Jan. 2. Waterloo Records served as a home for Austin’s music scene for 42 years, including 35 years at its current location along West 6th Street and North Lamar Boulevard. The new owners, Caren Kelleher, the CEO of Gold Rush Vinyl, and Trey Watson, CEO of Armadillo Records, will move the store five blocks away to 1105 N. Lamar Blvd. “I would love this company to live on long after me, and I think we are on the runway to be able to do exactly that,” Kunz said. Kunz said he began searching for a new location in 2019 when his landlord sold the building to Endeavor Real Estate Group. He said he was not interested in signing a five-to-ten-year lease for a new building since he wants to retire soon, and if the ownership did not change, Waterloo would have to 
Victoria, BC | Come for the Records, Stay for the Dad Jokes: Hang out with owner Gary Anderson at Victoria, B.C.’s The Turntable. Spend a little time with Gary Anderson and you’re apt to conclude that the guy has all the attributes of a natural-born entertainer: big smile, massive moustache, big personality, booming voice, gifted storyteller—and a huge laugh. In fact, early in his adult life Anderson spent a fair bit of time on stage—playing drums and providing backing vocals while touring with aspiring Canadian rock bands Hellhound, Fable, and Task Force. For the past four decades, he’s brought music to his customers’ ears as the owner/operator of The Turntable, a record store in the Canadian city of Victoria, B.C. And more recently, he’s added another schtick to his repertoire as the handwritten message on a piece of paper taped to the front window of his store explains: 
Remember that ’60s TV show Branded starring Chuck Connors, who played a soldier in the Wild West? Who, wrongly convicted of some crime, had his shoulder epaulettes ripped off and his sword broken in half during the opening credits, which ended with him standing stoically outside the closed fort gates, facing the grim prospects of surviving in the savage wilderness the best he could? Well that’s what happened with these albums. They were branded, given the bum’s rush, and left shivering in the rock wilderness, while Beefheart fans tried their level best to forget them.
Stroud, UK | Record shop of the year says vinyl ‘here to stay.’ A Gloucestershire-based record store has won Record Store of the Year 2024. Sound Records, in Stroud, won the accolade despite being up against well-established independent shops such as Rough Trade and Piccadilly Records in Manchester. Owner Tom Berry said he thinks the success of his store lies in selling cheaper records. He said: “The key is having good records—new released and second-hand stock—and making sure we price our records fairly.” Sound Records have been trading for about six years in Stroud and now has three stores. Mr Berry told BBC Radio Gloucestershire he sees people of every age coming into the shop. “We get the 50-something man that comes in and he’s buying the records from his youth,” he said. “But we do actually get 
Salt Lake City, UT | How 2 record stores are fostering Salt Lake City’s all-ages music scene: They’re part of an effort to establish “third spaces” for people under 21 to hang out and create community. A crowd of young adults nod their heads in time to a jazz trio as it weaves through its set on the stage at Fountain Records. The dimly lit underground venue at 202 E. 500 South in Salt Lake City buzzes with energy. The place is small enough to create an intimacy that seems to unite the room. While timeless music and old brick walls elicit the past, the space allows young adults to connect, live and in person. …Terry, the store’s owner and founder of the creative label FOUNTAINavm, said bringing musicians and audiences back together has been crucial to redeveloping a community around music after the pandemic pulled many people into solitude and dependence on technology. “I hope these third places 
