record stores
While attending the University of Madison-Wisconsin as a journalism and marketing major from 2003-2006, Rick Stoner fondly remembers roaming the aisles of Strictly Discs — the Monroe Street record store he acquired from longtime owners Ron and Angie Roloff last fall — just as the world was on the cusp of the digital music explosion.
“Strictly Discs is where I bought CDs before I had an iPod,” Stoner says. “That’s another way of saying that I’m 40 years old.”
Buying the beloved local business, which Ron opened in 1988 as a single-level, 800-square-foot shop (he later expanded it by converting the store’s 1,700-square-foot basement level into a retail space) was a full circle moment for Stoner — albeit not one he actively sought out. “I was not looking for a record store,” he says. “I was looking for a business at a certain price point. And the fact that I saw this listing was a very happy coincidence.”
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The relatively quick five-month acquisition process concluded exactly one year ago, on Halloween 2023. And in January, after serving in advisory roles for three months during the handoff, the Roloffs fully exited the business (which was a subject of Billboard‘s “In a Pandemic” series from 2020 to 2021) to officially embark on their retirement, leaving Stoner to pilot the future of a store that has been a part of Madison’s cultural heart for 36 years. It’s a legacy he doesn’t take lightly, and, to foster a sense of continuity, he felt it was important to keep as many of the store’s existing staffers on board as possible.
Record Store Day 2024 at Strictly Discs in Madison, Wis.
Courtesy of Strictly Discs
“Retaining the team has been really my number one priority,” Stoner says. “Maintaining the business, maintaining the customers — to me, all those things are achievable if you’re retaining the brain trust and knowledge and vibe that comes with the team that has been there for a long time.” The store’s entire staff stayed on after the acquisition, including longtime employees Evan Woodward — who now serves as GM and runs the shop on a day-to-day basis — and Mark Chaney, who fills the role of assistant GM. “Everyone’s worked together really well,” Stoner adds. “I think they appreciate maybe a different approach to things, a little more structure, and I certainly appreciate the knowledge of music that they bring.”
Stoner’s 18-year background as a high-level advertising executive focused on management and new business development at companies including Brado, Derse, BBN and Bader Rutter makes him well-equipped to expand into new areas and supercharge what the store was already doing well. One of the first changes under his purview was instituting a new inventory management system that would be capable of handling the shop’s roughly 500,000 used vinyl records in addition to new product (he chose a system that was originally designed for grocery stores).
Another major item on Stoner’s to-do list was already in motion prior to his acquisition of the business: the conversion of 1,000 square feet of the 5,000 square foot Strictly Discs warehouse in neighboring Cambridge, Wis., into a second retail location, which officially opened Oct. 19 on a Wednesday-Sunday schedule (a grand opening is slated for sometime in November after the store’s permanent exterior sign is installed). “We have plenty of customers that aren’t in downtown Madison, and it takes them a while to drive downtown through traffic, find parking,” he says of opening the new storefront. “Now those people will be able to come here. And I also think we’ll be serving a rural customer that maybe just isn’t exposed to the cultural curiosities that come with a record store.”
Stoner is currently looking at creative strategies to build interest and excitement in the new location, including giving customers access to the music lover’s paradise contained in the back 4,000 square feet of the building, which boasts the majority of the business’ used product. Though Stoner has yet to settle on what that would look like, some ideas include quarterly bin-picking days and a “buy a crate and fill the crate” promotion.
Opening day at Strictly Discs’ new retail location in Cambridge, Wis.
Courtesy of Strictly Discs
Strictly Discs’ mountain of used product is one of the business’ key strengths. Beginning in 2010, Ron Roloff focused his energies on acquiring large private music collections in Wisconsin and beyond, leading the store to become known as the home of a treasure trove of hard-to-find records in all different genres. “I think what sets us apart is the volume and quality of more niche genres: jazz, classical,” says Stoner. “We have an extensive soundtrack collection that, before buying the business, I never could have imagined or guessed how well that does for us.”
Those used records are key to another major initiative Stoner has in mind: creating a subscription model that would allow customers to choose a certain number of new or used records per month — which would require integrating the store’s website with the Shopify platform — and either pick up their chosen product in-store or have it delivered to their homes. The idea was partially inspired by similar plans offered by the likes of Vinyl Moon and Vinyl Me, Please — though, as Stoner points out, those companies don’t allow customers the kind of choice Strictly Discs can offer. “If you’re paying $50 or $100 a month, especially if you live in a rural area, the record store is coming to you,” he says. “And I don’t see a lot of shops doing that.”
With a goal of launching some iteration of the subscription model during this year’s holiday shopping season, Stoner and his employees are currently focused on what he calls “the Herculean effort” of cataloging the store’s warehouse inventory. Stoner aims to initially target customers within Wisconsin but outside of Dane County (where Madison is located), drawing interest through targeted ads online and via the store’s email newsletter. “I think my main concern about it is that it doesn’t cannibalize our store,” he says. “So my hope is someone could subscribe to that, pick up things in store, they would get a discount in store for being a member, and it would allow us some growth and customer loyalty.”
Stacks of used vinyl at the Strictly Discs warehouse in Cambridge, Wis.
Courtesy of Strictly Discs
The focus on getting the subscription plans off the ground ties in with Stoner’s overarching goal of beefing up Strictly Disc’s e-commerce efforts. On that front, the Roloffs were already ahead of the game, with a sales mix of 70% in-store and 30% online (within that, the mix is 90% vinyl and 10% CDs; while 65% of vinyl sales are new product.) “I’ve learned that that’s pretty atypical,” he says. I think [we have] the highest online [sales percentage], at least of record stores in our coalition [the Coalition of Independent Music Stores].” And in the long term, he’s looking to flip those stats on their head: “I want that 70-30 to look like 20-80 without hampering the growth of the store,” adds Stoner, who’s hoping to triple the store’s business through online sales.
The plans don’t end there. In addition to supersizing the store’s Record Store Day activities — this year, the store closed down part of Monroe Street with the city’s permission and threw a block party for the event — he’s looking to launch pop-up record shops at music festivals and other events outside of Madison to extend the physical store’s geographic reach.
For all of his ambitious plans, the store’s longtime customers probably won’t notice much of a difference. Like Ron, Stoner is currently intent on keeping Strictly Discs a pure music shop, steering clear of merch sales and other non-music items — which would be difficult to institute in any event, he says, given the shop’s relatively small footprint — and keeping intact what people loved about it in the first place.
“[In] our main record shop in Madison … almost nothing has changed, and that’s been intentional,” Stoner says. “It’ll be a staple of the community for the next 36 years, just like it has been the last 36 years.”
More in this series:Twist & Shout in Denver, Colo.Grimey’s in Nashville, Tenn.Home Rule in Washington, D.C.Sweat Records in Miami, Fla.
When Home Rule Records owner Charvis Campbell got a cold call from the Office of the Vice President of the United States on May 3, 2023, he felt the way most people would have when confronted by the same scenario: perplexed.
“It felt like an interview, like a background check,” Campbell tells Billboard. “When we were done, I was like, ‘Wait, this is kind of weird.’”
But the calls continued. Next, VP Kamala Harris’ representative asked if anyone from the Uptown Washington, D.C., record store would be in the shop that day and mentioned that someone from the office might stop by. Then, Campbell got another call from a different representative who strongly suggested he stick around. The next thing he knew, the Secret Service came to inspect the 2,700 sq. ft. independent record store — and then the vice president followed.
With a swarm of press around Vice President Harris, Campbell tried to help her around the store by asking what she might be interested in. “I’m like, ‘Okay, you want to talk about Coltrane?’ and she was like, ‘No, I want Mingus.’ She was looking for the real jazz,” says Campbell. “She had that keen sense to want some real hardcore music.”
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On May 9, Harris posted a video on Instagram that showed her walking away from HR Records — which specializes in used jazz, soul, R&B, funk and more — with three vinyl records: Charles Mingus’ Let My Children Hear Music (“one of the greatest jazz performers ever”); Roy Ayers’ Everybody Loves the Sunshine (one of her “favorite albums of all time”); and Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald’s “beautiful” collaborative 1959 album, Porgy and Bess.
“It was one of those things that wasn’t planned,” says Campbell, adding that Vice President Harris asked about the challenges of running his small business and engaged with several people who happened to be in the shop. “It was very unexpected, but sincere in the sense of her enjoying the music and wanting to learn more about the shop.
“For me,” Campbell adds, “it was, ‘There’s a lot of other places you can be right now, but the fact that you took the time says you’re supportive of small businesses, but also of our shop.’”
After Harris’ visit and her subsequent clinching of the Democratic nomination for president, Campbell says there has been a notable increase in HR’s social media engagement, and out-of-town visitors will stop by to take a photo where Harris once was. It’s been a boon for one of the rare Black-owned record stores in the country (Campbell estimates there are only about 20 to 30 across the nation), not to mention for such a young establishment.
Campbell and his business partner Michael Bernstein opened HR Records in 2018 with no music business experience between them (though Bernstein had worked as an independent musician many years prior). Campbell had been driving up to Baltimore from D.C. on a regular basis to purchase vinyl from the small independent shop East-West Records until its owner, Bill Coates, informed Campbell the store would be closing for good.
“I would tease the owner and say, ‘Hey, if we bring this to D.C., we’ll make some money,’” says Campbell. “Being the wise sage that he was he said, ‘No, you don’t want to get into the record business.’”
Undaunted, Campbell bought Coates’ entire collection and quickly realized he needed to do something with it. Initially, the collection went into the back of an antique shop for about six months, before Campbell and Bernstein landed on a location for HR Records. In 2018, they opened their doors on 702 Kennedy Street NW and began selling exclusively used vinyl.
Kamala Harris shops at Home Rule Records with ownwer Charvis Campbell in Washington, DC, on May 3, 2023.
MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
HR Records does not lack for inventory, with thousands of records packed into bins and decorating the walls. (“Too many to count,” says Campbell.)
In addition to vinyl, the store carries CDs and merch that each account for roughly 10% of its inventory. The other 80% is a curated collection of rare and used jazz, soul, reggae and African music records. While the store has participated in Record Store Day, Campbell found it overwhelming for such a small and niche shop. “I would prefer to have that ‘68 Blue Note on the wall as opposed to the reissue of it,” he says. “The reissue sounds great, but I’ll go for the original any day.”
To fill the crates with rare vinyl, Campbell has had to develop relationships with a lot of private collectors, which he considers the hardest and best part of his job. “Once we sell that amazing Sun Ra or Coltrane or Eric Dolphy record, it’s gone,” Campbell says. “That’s what I think [Coates] was getting at. It’s going to take time and effort to build up a place where people feel comfortable giving you their records so that records are coming in the door.”
It has taken years for Campbell to acquire many collections, but he says the effort has been worthwhile. Developing those private collector relationships has led to even greater opportunities, like creating The HR Music and Film Foundation, which was born from COVID-relief work the store did for musicians by hosting gigs at the small stage in the back of the shop, filming them and promoting the videos and artists on their social media. After roughly 15 shows, the HR team realized they could get more support if they formed a not-for-profit organization.
Today, the HR Music and Film Foundation produces live musical performances, concerts, film screenings and festivals. It also educates youth in the community through workshops, classes and hands-on experience, allowing them to develop confidence and skills in music production, audio production, filmmaking, photography and graphic design. The foundation’s first project was a documentary on Black Fire Records, a Black-owned independent jazz label that started in D.C. in the 1970s. In support of the film, the foundation launched a local outdoor festival with live music and an evening screening of the documentary in 2022. The third annual Home Rule Music Festival took place in June and the documentary aired on PBS in 2023.
“When I think of the work we’ve done now with our foundation and the documentaries,” says Campbell, “It’s about using the medium of film combined with music which is so powerful in terms of being able to tell stories and educate people and educate our community.”
More in this series: Grimey’s in Nashville, Tenn.; Twist & Shout in Denver, Colo.
Like a lot of independent record shops, Nashville-based Grimey’s New & Preloved Music and Books sometimes offers giveaways for customers, with prizes such as tickets to local shows and vinyl pressings. But given its location in the creative hub of East Nashville, Grimey’s co-owner Doyle Davis says those giveaways have led to some unusual moments.
“We’ll take a picture of the winner and tag them on social media when they pick up their prize,” Davis tells Billboard. “One time, we posted a photo of a guy showing off his prize — and [rock icon and former Led Zeppelin lead singer] Robert Plant was walking up the aisle right behind him. When we posted that [photo], all the comments were like, ‘Robert Plant photo-bombed your guy.’”
Grimey’s has been a hotspot and refuge for music lovers — celebrity or not — for 25 years. The East Nashville store is Grimey’s third location: it was launched in 1999 in Nashville’s Berry Hill area, before moving to 8th Ave. S. and finally to its current location at 1060 East Trinity Lane in 2018.
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“John Prine used to shop here regularly, especially at our old location. We were right down the street from [meat-and-three restaurant] Arnold’s, where he would get his meatloaf every week,” Davis recalls, also noting artists such as Kacey Musgraves and Emmylou Harris stopping by Grimey’s over the years.
Grimey’s is housed in a former Pentecostal church that offers a homey vibe, with stained glass windows; arched, wooden ceilings; a performance stage (Davis remodeled the area into a space for more intimate musical performances); and two floors filled with vinyl, CDs, books and more. The 4,000-square-foot space continues to be an essential component of Nashville’s music community, with Davis estimating that roughly 70% of the store’s sales come from vinyl, with the other 30% coming from books, CDs, DVDs, etc.
Based in the heart of East Nashville’s creative community, the store counts Americana as its best-selling music genre, with the store’s best-selling artists being Jason Isbell, Musgraves and Sturgill Simpson.
“We recently did a signing with Kacey and her [2024] Deeper Well album and it was the only signing she was doing for the whole album release cycle,” Davis says. “We had over a thousand people and she signed for four hours. That was the most records of a single new title that I’ve sold in one week. Jason Isbell was my previous record at 850.”
Grimey’s
Courtesy Photo
Davis co-owns Grimey’s with the store’s namesake and founder Mike Grimes, who launched the store in a small Berry Hill-area home. In 2002, Davis, who had been an executive at another Nashville record shop, The Great Escape, joined Grimes as a co-owner. At the time, Davis suggested that they focus on selling new vinyl.
“Nashville had great record stores. The Great Escape was a great record store, but it was all used [records],” Davis says. “If people wanted new records, they either mail ordered them or you bought them at Tower Records. Tower had a pretty lame selection, in my opinion, at the time, and it took them forever to restock something if they sold out of it. Being a real record store guy my whole life, I just thought, ‘There’s a niche we can fill here. We’ll carry all the cool indie music the chain stores don’t carry.’ We really centered on new vinyl, and this was when Steve Jobs had just opened the iTunes store, Napster was on the wane, and they were finding new ways of legally selling digital music — everything was gravitating to no physical media.”
In 2004, Grimey’s relocated to the 8th Ave. S. location, where it quickly became an indie music hub. The live music venue The Basement (founded by Grimes) was located downstairs, while the building at the time also served as office space for Thirty Tigers and indie radio station WXNA. As Grimey’s expanded on 8th Avenue, they leased the building next door and opened the bookstore Grimey’s Too.
At the same time, Grimey’s began supporting artists through in-store performances that allowed bands to promote their new records. In 2008, rock band Metallica recorded the album Live at Grimey’s at The Basement before their performance at Bonnaroo Music Festival.
“We carried it for 10 years until it went out of print,” Davis recalls, also noting that Nashville resident and Americana luminary Isbell once played a show in the back parking lot of Grimey’s, with more than 1,000 people in attendance.
“[Jason] did an in-store performance with us for every solo album he ever released until the pandemic hit, and he wasn’t able to do that one,” Davis recalls. “We had The Black Keys early on when they were still playing clubs. Years ago, the band fun. did an in-store, and then Black Pumas did an in-store performance, and six months later they were huge and on the Grammys. I had always hoped we would get Wilco to play here, and they finally did in November 2019, right before the pandemic.”
After the landlord did not offer Grimey’s a long-term lease on the 8th Ave. location and noted the building would be put up for sale, Grimes and Davis knew they needed to scout a new site for Grimey’s, which led to its current location.
“My real estate agent showed me a photo of the building and it was the right size, it was beautiful, and it was affordable,” Davis recalls, noting that he did have some concerns at the time about relocating to East Nashville, where the area was already home to at least two other record shops, The Groove and Vinyl Tap.
“What I hoped might happen seems to be what happened: that the customers coming over to East Nashville to visit our store would also visit the other stores,” Davis says, noting that in the ‘90s, he visited London’s Berwick Street, which was known as “Record Road” for its large number of record shops. “Each store had its specialty and if you’re an omnivorous music fan, you would hit all the shops. I know from talking to folks that on Record Store Day, for example, lots of people will hit Grimey’s, Vinyl Tap and The Groove, because we’re all in the same neighborhood.”
Paramore + Doyle & Grimey
Courtesy Photo
While streaming rules the modern-day music marketplace, vinyl has seen steady growth over the past nearly two decades, something Davis attributes to the popular Record Store Day that started in 2007. Grimey’s focuses on buying from original source distributors but also uses one-stop distributors, with Davis estimating the shop has approximately 12,600 new vinyl records and 3,000 used records.
“By 2010 or 2011, we were seeing 30% and 35% increases year over year — and that’s broadly, not just in my store,” he says. “Vinyl was back, but it wasn’t mainstream at the time.” Since the pandemic began, Davis says vinyl has “reached a whole new tipping point,” nodding to pop artists such as Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo moving large numbers of vinyl units.
“We’re selling tons of Taylor records and Olivia. For a while, we couldn’t keep enough Harry Styles records in stock,” Davis says. “That’s new to me. We’ve got high school kids coming into the store. We’ve always had some percentage of college students, the early adopter kids. Vinyl was seen as a hipster thing for quite a while, but I don’t see anybody looking at it that way. If anything, it’s seen as a pop trend.”
While Davis does acknowledge commerce challenges in pricing and direct-to-consumer sales, he sees indie record shops as an enduring part of the music ecosystem.
“If you can only afford one record a month, just due to prices, then even the used ones are not cheap,” Davis says. “You’ve always had the dollar bins, but records that were straight to the dollar bin previously are sometimes $5 records. I also see the direct-to-consumer initiatives, but we’ve faced that pretty much most of the way. And there’s an experience in a record store you can’t get online — it’s a physical space, with like-minded people; I love watching my employees interact with customers. If you’re really into this culture, there’s nothing like an independent record store, as far as experience goes.
“Vinyl never went away and it’s here to stay. I do believe that,” Davis says of the future of the format. “We’ve seen steady growth now for well over a decade, and it’s already moved into a new generation. Now you have kids [buying vinyl] whose parents did not grow up with vinyl — their parents were CD and digital natives. Vinyl is a way to slow down. You get the lyrics, the inserts, the art — the artist’s whole vision.”
Next Store: Twist & Shout in Denver, Colorado
Sometime in 2000, Patrick Brown nudged Paul Epstein, then-owner of Twist & Shout in Denver. “Hey,” the record store manager told his boss, “I think Eric Clapton‘s out there shopping.”
“What should I do?” Epstein said.
“How about you say, ‘I’m Paul, I own the store, how can I help you?’”
Epstein helped Clapton search for an obscure Bing Crosby soundtrack from the ’40s, and the two bonded over blues and jazz records. Epstein learned Clapton was waiting for his clothes to dry at the laundromat across the street from Twist & Shout’s then-location. And Brown listened quietly. “It’s not my thing so much,” he recalls. “I said hello and that was it.”
Today, Brown is the owner of this music community capital on the west side of Denver, a soothing gallery of colorful rectangles, from the Madonna and Pete Townshend portraits facing off at the top of a west wall to the rows of books, CDs and LPs that seem to go on forever. Epstein and his wife, Jill, who co-founded the store in 1988, retired in 2022 and sold to Brown, one of two remaining employees who has worked at each of the three locations where Twist has existed over the years. “Patrick is a little less likely to fanboy, even over people he is a fan of,” says Alf Kremer, the store’s longtime bookkeeper. “With him, it wouldn’t be Clapton — it’d be, I don’t know, [Robert] Fripp.”
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Brown landed his first job at Twist in 1992, after he’d spent an earlier summer wandering the aisles, blasting indie rock and avant-garde jazz through his headphones. Epstein put Brown to work tearing up cardboard CD longboxes and slipping their liner-note booklets into plastic sheaths; the idea was to store the actual CDs in the back to avoid in-store theft.
He turned out to be not only a loyal employee but an indispensable one. “Six months, this guy’s on the fast track. Whatever I ask him to do, he does it. And then he just stayed,” Epstein says. “He went from the absolute lowest part-time additional help to doing every single job at the store over the years.” Eventually, Brown rose to general manager.
Patrick Brown
Courtesy of Twist & Shout
Today, the 11,000-square-foot Twist & Shout remains Denver’s signature record store, having weathered the Napster-era downturn that felled chains from Tower Records to Virgin Megastore, then leaned into the unexpected vinyl revival that has kept indie retailers afloat for two decades. Twist’s sales mix, according to Brown, is roughly 60%-70% vinyl, 15%-20% CDs, 10% merch and posters, 5% movies and 3% stereo equipment. “There are not a lot of stores like this,” he says. “Waterloo in Austin, the Amoeba stores, Record Archive in Rochester, Music Millennium in Portland. We’ve all had that old-school-record-store depth of catalog. We do all genres. We’ve invested heavily in physical. There just aren’t stores with the big footprint.”
Brown, a soft-spoken 55-year-old who is just as comfortable talking about seeing experimental-jazz composer Anthony Braxton at a festival as the evolution of music-retail inventory, has a more low-key presence among staff and customers than Epstein did. “I want it to still be what it always has been — a comfortable space for anybody to shop,” he says. “Record stores have a reputation for being snotty and disdainful of your tastes, and we try to avoid that as much as possible. We’re here just to help you find what you’re interested in.”
The store’s historical customer roster includes not only Clapton but Morrissey, who once made an impromptu visit with two beefy bodyguards, whom he positioned on each side of the “M” aisle so he could be unbothered while shopping. “I’m charitable — I think he was buying those as gifts for other people,” Brown recalls. “But he was still buying his own music as gifts.”
When the Epsteins opened Twist, they were “selling obscure music to a small but dedicated clientele from an over-cluttered building on a quiet Denver side street,” as Billboard later reported. They upgraded twice over the years, to new locations throughout the city, finally settling on West Colfax Avenue, what Brown calls “The Cultureplex,” a busy corner that includes iconic but struggling bookstore Tattered Cover and indie-movie haven Sie Film Center. During an interview on a weekday afternoon, packs of East High School students roam the stores. (The Epsteins own the building, and Twist & Shout, along with the adjacent Chipotle and a sushi restaurant, pays rent to them.)
“It feels like, ‘This is our world, here,’ all in this space,” says Mollie O’Brien, a veteran Denver folk and R&B singer. “It’s welcoming.” Like the Epsteins, she adds, Brown continues to purchase physical albums by local artists, even if they don’t record for major labels or big-time distributors. Usually, though, Twist & Shout buys wholesale from all the major labels, plus big indies such as Sub Pop and Secretly Group and one-stop distributor Alliance Entertainment. “I wouldn’t change our mix,” Brown says.
Like everybody, the Epsteins spent the early part of the pandemic terrified that consumers would stay out of record stores forever — but business quickly picked up as shelter-in-place customers rediscovered their turntables and records; Epstein told the Denver Post that 2021 sales were 25% higher than 2019 sales. The Epsteins, though, realized they were tired of running the business. After the longtime owners of The Record Exchange in Boise, Idaho, sold to three employees and one of their spouses in fall 2021, Epstein made a similar offer to Brown, who took over the store in March 2022.
When the Epsteins called a staff meeting to announce the new owner, Brown told employees, “I’m sure you’re wondering what I’m going to change. And I’m not going to be changing anything. Otherwise, I wouldn’t want this business.” Kremer, who moonlights as a Denver dance-music DJ in a gorilla suit called There’s An Ape for That, says this prediction came true: “The philosophy is the same. The approach to the business is the same.”
In his 36 years at Twist & Shout, Brown has experienced micro and macro changes in the record business. In the ’90s, dance music and rave parties exploded in the Denver area, and the store emphasized vinyl to accommodate DJ demand, which diminished when dance-music performers went digital in the early 2000s. Then came mp3s, file-sharing, Napster, the iTunes Store, YouTube and Spotify, and demand for physical products briefly dipped. Once the LP revival kicked in, Brown says, “We were ready for that.”
Large record retailers are rare in this era of tiny stores devoted to punk or dance or other niches, according to Andrea Paschal, president of the Coalition of Independent Music Stores, of which Twist & Shout has been a member since the coalition’s 1995 inception. Since Napster and file-sharing disrupted CD sales, she says, “It’s really tough to build a store with the catalog and inventory that Twist & Shout has when you don’t have the decades of doing that.”
Twist & Shout isn’t invulnerable. Brown acknowledges the vinyl boom could dissipate, and while CD and cassette sales are rising again, they’re unlikely to make up the difference. If something happens to neighbor Tattered Cover, which recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, foot traffic could drop at The Cultureplex. And Brown won’t even try to predict record-business trends. He’s a steward of the store, not a visionary. “Nothing drastic,” he says. “Keep it as it is.”
At many of the more than 1,500 independent record stores in the United States, vinyl sales have been growing at a healthy clip for almost a decade — up 14.2% across all retailers in 2023 alone, according to Billboard’s data provider, Luminate. So why did Luminate track 47.3% fewer vinyl sales in January and February than it did for the same months in 2023?
On its face, such a precipitous drop might appear troubling — and puzzling — given the surge of vinyl sales since the pandemic. In actuality, the decline is mostly a result of Luminate changing the decades-old methodology it had used since Billboard adopted SoundScan’s measurement system in 1991 to count sales at indie retail outlets — a change that Luminate had warned last year would make 2024’s vinyl sales numbers appear significantly lower. But some of the drop reflects a protest by independent retailers against that adjustment, which one indie community executive worries “may put a damper on one of the industry’s high-profile, feel-good stories.”
Frustrated by the methodology change, some of these indie stores have stopped reporting sales to Luminate, and the Coalition of Independent Music Stores (CIMS), the Record Store Day board, the Music Business Association and other organizations have launched an alternative chart to measure physical and vinyl sales.
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“There are consequences to every decision,” Music Business Association president Portia Sabin said in a statement.
Until the end of last year, Luminate extrapolated indie retailers’ physical album sales using a methodology that weighted actual sales by a small sample of independent stores — approximately 70 accounts totaling 140 storefronts, Billboard estimates — that represented 1,500 to 2,000 retailers of their ilk that are operating in the United States, according to label and distribution sources.
Last year, physical purchases such as vinyl and CDs at these independent retailers — even with weighting — accounted for less than 3% of total music consumption units in the United States.
Indie retailers say they don’t oppose more accurate measurement of their sales. Rather, they are incensed that Luminate stopped weighting sales just months before it plans to begin the beta phase of its upgraded Connect measurement platform, which it had designed to only count actual indie physical sales. (The final version of the enhanced platform is expected to launch in 2025.) They had wanted Luminate to delay the methodology change until it onboarded hundreds more indie music retailers to report their sales.
Until the Connect beta is launched, Luminate is basing indie physical sales solely on the actual sales retailers report, which due to the protest has been cut in half to about 33 accounts with 70 storefronts, Billboard estimates.
Indie stores say they are protesting because of concerns that they — as well as the indie labels and artists who rely on them for marketing — will lose influence if their sales suddenly appear significantly lower across the board.
Indie-label executives and their distributors say they, too, are worried about the methodology change because it might affect the marketing of developing artists. “We are extremely disappointed that Luminate chose to stop weighting indie retail sales without launching a serious program to enlist store reporting and to count the physical market,” Matador Records president Patrick Amory wrote in an email. “Independent labels and independent artists over index in physical, and especially at indie retail, and we need a level playing field with the majors to measure success. Luminate is penalizing serious, career-building, album-oriented artists on the charts. Their sales are not being counted. Their market share is being allotted to the majors. That is a disaster for independent musicians, labels and retailers.”
An additional concern is that smaller sales numbers and less weight on the Billboard charts, which are based on Luminate data, will “diminish the importance of the physical market to the music business ecosystem,” as four independent record store coalitions and indie retailing giant Amoeba Music put it in a statement issued in October.
The worry is that less music will be released in physical formats, which would financially hurt indie retailers. But a record label executive says given the booming demand for vinyl — a high-margin product for labels — those fears are unwarranted. “Right now,” says one major-label executive, “with the high prices that the growing vinyl format commands, labels are printing dollars with healthy profit margin.”
Indie retailers, many of them iconic local businesses that have served their communities for decades, have panicked ahead of big changes in the past. When the major record companies decided to change the official day for new music releases from Tuesday in the U.S. to a worldwide Friday street date in 2014, “indie stores told labels, ‘You are killing us,’” recalls the major-label executive. “And yet no stores disappeared in the aftermath of that change.”
Some chart mavens say the boycott could be a risky move. By intentionally shrinking their influence on Billboard’s charts, indie stores could drive fans — who, thanks to social media, are much more attuned to the metrics that determine chart positions — to start shopping at sites or stores where they know their purchases will benefit their favorite artist.
Artists and record labels hoping to climb Billboard’s charts, meanwhile, might opt to stage meet-and-greets and other in-store promotions at businesses that report their data, though plenty of acts and record companies still host such events in stores that don’t report to Luminate.
In response to the protest, Luminate says it’s working to lure back stores that stopped reporting and onboard a critical mass of indie merchants that have not reported their data before. Stores that have stopped reporting are now permitted to bypass Luminate’s standard four-week onboarding process if they commit to reporting data for at least a year. For the latter, Luminate offers an instructional video and a written guide to the process, although indie merchants say they have pressed for personalized assistance and simplified reporting requirements.
Luminate also recently hired respected veteran music data executive Chris Muratore as its director for partnerships. Muratore worked for 18 years in various positions at Luminate’s previous iteration, Nielsen SoundScan, and more recently founded Border City Media, the startup behind music consumption data tool BuzzAngle Music (now Alpha Data, and, like Luminate, a subsidiary of Billboard’s parent company, Penske Media Corporation). He will focus on building and maintaining relationships with the independent music retail sector “to ensure physical music sale data collection is as accurate and representative as possible,” according to the release announcing his appointment.
When Billboard began tabulating charts using SoundScan data in May 1991, mass merchant sales, such as those by chain stores and, later, internet or other mail-order operations — were based on actual sales. But the data company used weighted samples of independent store sales because not all stores back then had the point-of-sale (POS) technology, nor the capability to transmit store reports. So, to compensate, stores were assigned weighting depending on how many other non-reporting stores were in their DMA, or designated market area. But over the years, that process became more difficult, and less scientific, as thousands of stores closed, sources say.
Using data from a confidential Luminate report shown to labels, Billboard estimates that last year, the data platform counted each album scanned by 140 indie retailers as 8.54 physical albums. Based on that extrapolation, Luminate reported that an average of close to 72,000 physical album copies — vinyl and CDs — sold each week, totaling 31.9 million copies sold in indie stores for the year.
Overall, in 2023, U.S. physical sales totaled nearly 87 million copies, of which 49.6 million was vinyl while 36.8 million was CDs. Of that total, indie stores, when they were still weighted, accounted for 36.7% of sales; non-traditional, which includes internet, mail order, Christian retailers and stores like Urban Outfitters, comprised 41.5% of physical sales; mass merchants like Target and Walmart, 16.5%; and chains like Barnes & Noble, 5%. As a result of the methodology change and boycott, Luminate reported a 40.2% drop in total physical sales (including vinyl and CDs at indie shops, chains and big-box stores) for the first eight weeks of 2024 compared with the same period in 2023 — from 13.6 million albums to 8.1 million. Within that, indie store sales fell 95.4%, from 5.71 million albums when weighted last year, to 262,000 copies.
Meanwhile, the aforementioned unweighted average weekly physical sales of nearly 72,000 averaged reported by indie retailers from January to November 2023 are now averaging 27,000 per week for the first eight weeks of 2024 because of the stores that have stopped reporting to Luminate.
As part of its plans to calculate actual sales instead of extrapolating them from a weighted sample, Luminate revealed in October that it had identified 570 indie accounts — with, industry sources say, the aid of labels, distributors and store coalitions — that it wanted to add as reporters. But as of Dec. 19, with the change in methodology looming, Luminate’s Music Connect website indicated that only six more indie sales reporters had been added, with the indie account total growing from 72 to 78. After the apparent boycott began, that fell to 36 reporters, and as of Feb. 22, to 33 indie store reporters.
Some of the retailers that have stopped reporting to Luminate are now sending their numbers to music data analysis platform StreetPulse, which is tabulating the Indie Retail Top 50 published by Hits Daily Double. Sources familiar with the chart say approximately 82 accounts operating about 185 indie stores are providing sales data, and another 50 stores are reporting online sales only.
Indie stores that have switched to StreetPulse claim it is more user-friendly because “Luminate expects the store reporters to do all the work to prepare the data for ingestion,” says one source familiar with the situation. “That takes time and [requires] a system able to make the reports. Luminate expects an indie store owner, who may be a one-man operation, to have the technical capabilities and manpower of a chain like Target.”
The source says the StreetPulse system “is cloud-based and has already integrated all the preeminent POS systems like Square for Retail Free, Shopify Clover and even some of the legacy systems like Lightspeed and Fieldstack, so it’s much easier to report.”
CIMS and ThinkIndie Distribution executive director Andrea Paschal says she supports the alternative chart because she felt her organization was “brushed aside” by Luminate.
As this conflict continues, it’s worth noting that vinyl sales keep growing. Even if indie store vinyl counts were eliminated for the first eight weeks of this year and last, Luminate’s Connect system indicates that year-to-date vinyl sales for the other nonweighted store sectors — chain, mass merchants, internet/mail order/venues and nontraditional retail — are still up nearly 7%. And the vinyl sales bonanza Record Store Day that was launched by independent record stores in 2007 is slated for April 20, less than six weeks away.
A version of this story originally appeared in the March 9, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Ron and Angie Roloff, owners of Madison, Wis.-based record store Strictly Discs, have sold the business after 35 years.
Stepping in as the store’s new president/owner is Rick Stoner, who takes over following an 18-year marketing agency career. The Roloffs will continue in their day-to-day roles through the end of 2023 before assuming an advisory relationship with Strictly Discs starting next year as they transition into retirement.
“Angie and I are grateful to our staff and customers, who we’ve had the privilege to work with for 35 years,” said Ron in a statement.
Stoner has served in several vp-level leadership, business development and digital and event marketing roles at prominent consumer brands. He’s a 2006 University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate and a board member at Communications Arts Partners (CAPs), an alumni organization that supports the university’s communications arts department.
“I’ve been a Strictly Discs customer since I was a student here in Madison,” said Stoner in a statement. “I view the store as everything right about the culture of the Madison community and look forward to maintaining that presence. Entrepreneurship has long been a destination for me and my family. Owning Strictly Discs is a dream come true. I can’t wait to meet our dedicated and loyal customers and get to work with our team to grow the business.”
The acquisition includes nearly half a million records, carefully curated over close to four decades. The business will maintain an e-commerce presence, which Stoner views as a key area for growth initiatives such as a subscription-based record club as well as pop-up, event-based record stores.
In June 2024, Strictly Discs is slated to open a second retail location in nearby Cambridge, Wis. in a space that hosts the majority of the store’s inventory.
Several Strictly Discs employees will remain with the business following the transition. They include 14-year employee Evan Woodward, who leads the buying team and works the front counter, as well as assistant manager Mark Chaney. Joining the team are Dru Korab, a record collector, DJ, media production professional and Stoner’s college classmate who will step into a part-time operations role in addition to his minority investment in the business. Also holding a minority investment is Stoner’s friend Kyle Nakatsuji, founder/CEO of Clearcover, principal at American Family Ventures and a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School.
Opened in 1988, Strictly Discs was a subject of Billboard’s “In a Pandemic” series from 2020-2021. During this time, Angie discussed the challenges she and Ron faced and the creative solutions they employed at the store during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Angie tells Billboard that an evaluation of Strictly Discs’ worth, performed during the pandemic, “planted the seed” that ultimately led her and Ron to sell the business. After listing it in early May, they were approached by Stoner in June; a letter of intent was signed in July. The deal finally closed on Oct. 31.
Starting next year, Ron will continue on with the store in an outside buying capacity, while Angie will serve as the “boots on the ground” for the Milwaukee-based Stoner when he’s not in Madison, she says. “We’re invested in his success because we’ve lent him money as part of this process,” Angie continues. “So we’re definitely not leaving and we’ll be available to him really in any capacity that he needs us for.”
Angie says Stoner brought a good mixture of knowing what made the business work while proposing solid ideas about where it could grow: “He already understood that the things that have made Strictly Discs successful are the people and the product and certainly the experience. I think he respects all of that, and he knows that there are areas that he wants to grow the business but he doesn’t want to fundamentally change what we’ve already done.”
At the heart of Strictly Discs’ more than three-decade run is a love story: Angie and Ron met at Strictly Discs in 1994, when Angie was a customer and Ron was working the front counter. In the years since, says Angie, the store has become their baby.
“We don’t have kids and so it’s kind of like Strictly Discs takes that place,” Angie says, adding that with both she and Ron being “super high-strung type A personalities,” even while on vacation, they would end up talking about the store. “That’s the part of it that I’m looking forward to having go away,” she says.
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