Best record stores in Philly

Philly is a great music town, that’s no secret. We’re home to Patti LaBelle, Jill Scott, and The Roots, plus acts like Hall and Oats and Diplo got their start here. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s also a great place to build a record collection with plenty of stores, while listening bar concepts have slowly emerged in recent years.

“This city has some great record stores,” says Bruce Warren, assistant general manager of programming at WXPN (and former Inquirer music writer). “Repo Records, the Philadelphia Record Exchange, Brewerytown Beats … all these places have one thing in common: really passionate people that work there.” Note, Brewerytown Beats has since closed its store.

Every year, Record Store Day is an opportunity to remind people that records, and record retailers, are something to be passionate about. But across the city’s shops, not everyone is so passionate about Record Store Day itself.

When it was declared back in 2007, the event seemed uncontroversial — an annual quasi-holiday to encourage people to support independent record stores, launched at a time when such stores were under serious threat. It was a gentle reminder to patronize your local record store because, well, they could use the patronage. And Philly, certainly, has no dearth of shops worth patronizing.

Since then, things have become more complicated. It has grown from a day (usually a Saturday in April) to an organization that works with labels, distributors, and shops to provide exclusive releases, making it an occasion for music fans and collectors.

“It’s hell,” says Keri Girmindl, manager of Common Beat Music in West Philly. “It’s like Black Friday. But much worse. Because it’s all record people.”

Think Starbuck’s Red Cup Day or Blaze Pizza’s $3.14 pizza for Pi Day, where a small group of employees get crushed by a wave of thousands of orders. Girmindl says smaller shops like Common Beat in Cedar Park (which throws its own annual birthday celebration with sales and freebies for regulars) can’t handle the stress.

The event has also drawn criticism from collectors who say Record Store Day caters to “flippers” looking to score rare releases and sell them online; that special releases tend to privilege larger stores; that the pressure on the nation’s few remaining record-pressing plants makes it harder for smaller artists to produce and sell their albums; that it has, more generally, transformed physical music into pricey souvenirs, valuable more for their rarity than their content; and that it turns music into museum pieces, instead of living, breathing, grooving works of art.

Record Store Day lands on April 20 this year with various events including a pop-up vinyl market at the newly opened 48 Record Bar in Old City from noon to 5 p.m. — the listening bar will also have listening parties, live podcast tapings, and other events from April 18 to May 5. Score your top five RSD titles at Main Street Music with live music sets throughout the day, and find WXPN’s limited-edition “Homegrown Originals Volume 2″ album, featuring XPN-exclusive original songs from 10 Philly-area artists, at various area record stores.

Here are some of the region’s most notable shops, well worth a visit on Record Store Day, or just whenever. Because really, can’t any day be Record Store Day if you, you know, visit a record store?

West Philly’s Common Beat Music is more than just a record store. It’s an all-purpose music hangout. You’ll find a healthy selection of folk and country LPs, rounded out by stacks of 7-inch singles and a smattering of new releases. “We don’t buy a lot of new stuff,” manager Keri Girmindl explains. “There’s a lot of intentionality in how we source our stock.” What distinguishes the store is its similarly curated selection of music instruments, amplifiers, straps, strings, and other accessories. It has an intimate, friendly, local vibe. “It makes more sense to go to a record store on a regular basis,” says Girmindl, “as opposed to two or three times a year.”

📍4916 Baltimore Ave., Philadelphia, Pa. 19143, 📞 215-726-8742, 🌐 commonbeatmusic.com, 📷 @commonbeatmusic

» Read more: The ultimate neighborhood guide on where to eat, drink, and play in West Philly’s Cedar Park

On a recent trip to Digital Underground — the wildly eclectic Queen Village shop — one young browser ambling through the racks of recent reissues by bands like Sacred Reich, Mercyful Fate, and the industrial metal dance band Combichrist, commented that their distaste for mainstream music was so profound that, if stuck in traffic without an aux cord or Bluetooth hookup, they’d never even bother to turn on the FM radio, preferring instead to “sit in silence and vibe.” Digital Underground caters to such listeners, with its deep trenches of metal and electro, as well as used novelty records (I spied multiple copies of a 1970 promotional tie-in record for the sitcom All in the Family) and Japanese imports of old PlayStation game soundtracks, for which there is, apparently, a market.

📍732 S. Fourth St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19147, 📞 215-925-9259, 🌐 facebook.com/digitalferret, 📷 @digitalundergroundphiladelphia

With a street-facing window display prominently featuring prop skeletons playing cards, Long in the Tooth could easily be mistaken for a magic shop — or some sort of dungeon-themed escape room. But don’t be fooled! The venerable Center City hangout is a crate-digger’s dream. It’s the sort of place where a well-stocked new arrivals racks can stoke general excitement. “Ah! A copy of Miles Davis’ Live-Evil! Oooh! A Posh Record compilation of ‘80s L.A. hardcore! Wow! A bunch more stuff that I can’t afford!” Where other shops seem to streamline their stock for a more, let’s say, “user-friendly” experience, Long in the Tooth makes a virtue of its abundance. A tastefully curated selection is all well and good. But there’s still a lot to be said for the pleasure of dredging out the rare gems from the stacks yourself.

📍2027 Sansom St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19103, 📞 215-569-1994, 📷 @longinthetoothrecords

Manayunk can already feel like you’re stepping into its own little village, and Main Street Music is the kind of small, well-stocked record store you used to find in any town: collecting new records, pricey box sets, and a great selection of used vinyl. The shop majors in the sort of souvenir vinyl releases to entice buyers. And, manager Jamie Blood says the pandemic has birthed a whole new class of such buyers, who began building collections as a pastime in the past couple years or so.

📍4444 Main St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19127, 📞 215-487-7732, 🌐 mainstreetmusicpa.com, 📷 @mainstreetmusicpa

Is Molly’s, in the Italian Market, a record store? Or is it more of a book store that also sells used records and tatty old issues of Rolling Stone? I suppose it’s the latter. You’re not likely to find much in the way of brand-new, thickly-pressed, souvenir vinyl here. But among the rows of old paperbacks and shelves of vintage rock rags, there’s plenty of fun to be had flipping through the reasonably-priced, quickly-rotated stock of used records. Whether it’s a record store or a book store or some amalgam of both, I just know it’s exactly the kind of place built for wasting away half-an-hour, elbow-to-elbow, sifting through the stacks with other hardened admirers of old and reused things.

📍1010 S. Ninth St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19147, 📞 215-923-3367, 📷 @mollysbooksandrecords

Fishtown’s hallowed Philadelphia Record Exchange excels at the sort of cluttered, controlled chaos that draws in local listeners and collectors. The store’s highly eclectic selection includes a huge bin dedicated to sound tracks (everything from “Jesus Christ Superstar” to more curious cuts like “Conan The Barbarian”) and another marked, simply, “Shlock.” With stacks of as-yet unsorted albums piled along the aisles, the Philadelphia Record Exchange can feel a bit like the inside of a record collector’s head turned manifest. Decent prices, too.

📍1524 Frankford Ave., Philadelphia, Pa. 19125, 📞 215-425-4389, 📷 @philarecx

HBO’s hit whodunit Mare of Easttown generated plenty of hype for its regional accents, and its abundance of Yuengling bottles and plentiful hoagie-based supper scenes. Less remarked upon was the Repo Records shirt sported by one of Easttown’s millions of wayward, bleary-eyed teens. Celebrating more than 35 years on South Street, Repo is the rare record store that warrants its own merch (which it also sells). In addition to Repo Records T-shirts and stickers, the store also boasts an impressive collection of new and used vinyl, slanting toward classic rock. You’ll also find plenty of band shirts, posters, pins, and patches. Basically, if you were to wake up one day and decide, “I want to get into rock music,” you could be totally kitted out at Repo. A dream for music fans, or costume designers desperate to nail those lived-in, hyper-local sartorial details.

📍506 South St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19147, 📞 215-627-3775, 🌐 reporecords.com, 📷 @reporecords

Nestled in a historic brick building in Doylestown, Siren Records looks from the outside more like a public library than a record shop. Inside, you’ll find rows of new and used vinyl and plenty of CDs. Remember those? With its stock organized and subcategorized, by genre, subgenre, and artist, it’s easy enough to find exactly what you’re looking for. They offer plenty of marked down, budget vinyl titles — a throwback to the days of building an ad hoc collection purely from dollar bin records.

📍25 E. State St., Doylestown, Pa. 18901, 📞 215-348-2323, 🌐 sirenrecords.com, 📷 @sirenrecords

South Philly’s Sit & Spin is another spot catering to serious collectors: of used heavy metal vinyl, extremely rare (and, the sign warns, “expensive”) punk 7-inches, and assorted ephemera (think 500-piece Metallica puzzles). Sit & Spin’s the sort of store where you’re more likely to score a rare Ice 9 single, or peruse a rack of T-shirts dedicated to Cleveland hardcore outfit Integrity, than pick up a rare RSD exclusive release of a Robert Plant live concert.

📍2243 S. Lambert St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19145, 📞 267-773-8345, 🌐 sitandspinrecords.com, 📷 @sitandspinrecords

This East Passyunk record store scours the east coast — from Virginia to Connecticut (and beyond) — for records to supply their storefront and online store. They’ll even drive to you and pay cash if you got the goods. Under the name Philadelphia Music, they offer a collection of more than 100,000 vinyls, CDs and DVDs spanning all music genres on their Discogs and eBay store pages. Drop into their South Philly storefront.

📍1619 East Passyunk Ave., Philadelphia, Pa. 19148, 📞 215-805-8001, 🌐 philadelphiamusic.net, 📷 @beautiful_world_syndicate

At this Fishtown record store, you can try to find a Rick Rubin-produced record while eating a “Rick Reuben” sandwich. MilkCrate is a local record store with thousands of offerings in their collection, but also an all-day cafe and music hangout spot in Fishtown and West Philly.

📍400 E Girard Ave., Philadelphia, Pa. 19125, and 4435 Baltimore Ave., Philadelphia, Pa. 19104, 📞 267-909-8348, 🌐 milkcratecafe.com, 📷 @milkcratecafe

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