Since I wrote this post I’ve ordered more music and had to revise my opinion of a few of the shops, so here’s the revised countdown with notes, now in more of an order.

Going up

Sister Ray (formerly Selectadisc) in Berwick Street, Soho, London
Still great, still highly recommended.

Boomkat
Has maintained its fantastic website, they truly are fanatical about experimental music.

Direct from the label
This remains a great way to order vinyl, I’ve had the best packaged, fastest delivered vinyl this way, often with free stuff thrown in.

Non-movers

Rough Trade
It’s still a good place to get vinyl but customer service can be poor. They took absolutely ages to tell me they couldn’t possibly get in a piece of vinyl (Jan Jelinek “La Nouvelle Pauvrete”) which was incredibly unhelpful.

Amazon
Still an excellent way to get hard to find stuff, via the Marketplace Sellers.

Hard to Find Records
Still got a good range of vinyl; I haven’t used them again so I can’t really add any more information. They have a very thick catalogue of vinyl stuff (like turntables, cases etc) which is quite good. Definitely more suited to the DJ vinyl spinner.

Oxfam Music Shops has also remained a non-mover with its expensive older vinyl with the occasional gem.

Going down

Newt Records
I thought this was a great shop but had some terrible service (via the website shop and via their eBay shop) with orders not turning up and absolutely no communication from them. Turns out the website shop closed down and one partner took all the stock to sell on eBay. He’s had similar feedback from other people on eBay about a lack of delivery and communication. What a shame.

System Records
A bit mean of me to put this one on the list, really, but I visit their site every time I want to order vinyl and they never seem to have anything so I certainly won’t be using this shop again.

New entry!

Norman Records
Yes, a vinyl addict is always on the lookout for new sources and I discovered this shop before Christmas. I don’t know why I hadn’t found them before because they fulfill all the important criteria; a good selection of music on vinyl, really excellent customer service and communication, plus the best packaging I’ve experienced with vinyl (always an important thing). As an added bonus, they take PayPal payment. Highly recommended.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 14th, 2008 at 4:55 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.