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. One good sign that the industry is in good shape is that in the last ten years or so, a number of independent reissue labels have sprouted up and released a lot of great music and have been successful. The big companies have ramped up their production of vinyl as well, but it’s always the independents that lead the way.”
Rocket Number Nine leans toward the traditional independent record shop model. Though they have an online social media presence, they primarily sell music over the counter.
“By choice, we do relatively little business through Discogs or eBay,” said Wygal. “We much prefer offering our records to our faithful in-store customers.”
When Rocket Number Nine Records opened a decade ago, the “vinyl comeback” was already well underway, though it was still gaining mainstream momentum. From the start, the shop sold primarily used records, though their new vinyl and compact disc sections have increasingly grown.
“When we opened, there was not nearly the interest in vinyl that there is now, but there were plenty of dedicated record collectors to sustain our business,” Wygal said. “I opened this store to be part of the record buying community. For us, this is not trendy or just a fad. We love finding great records for our customers.”
Looking ahead at 2025, Wygal expressed measured optimism.
“Every new year brings challenges, but I feel confident about the year ahead,” he said. “We are still very active in searching out and buying collections and will continue to do so. One concern is that with so many more people getting involved in the buying and selling of records, demand has risen and so have prices. We are dedicated to keeping our prices, particularly used vinyl, reasonable and affordable.”
A block away from Rocket Number Nine at 6 North Front Street is the Kingston location of Rhino Records, owned along with the New Paltz location in Water Street Market by Rick Lange, who cited his most frequently asked questions in an email interview:
Can I use the bathroom?
Are you related to the record label?
Do people still buy vinyls?
Rhino offers a curated selection of used and new vinyl and CDs, and in their larger Kingston location also sells books and movies. Lange worked at Rhino in New Paltz in the ’90s, eventually buying the business and affirming its importance in a college town. The Kingston location came later, and has been a success. Rhino has also established a social media presence, selling some titles on Discogs, an online music marketplace and database.
Like most shops which sell used records, their stock isn’t entirely coming through the front door. Lange is no stranger to crate-digging at yard and estate sales to stock his own shelves.
“Any store is only as interesting as its stock,” he said. “I definitely try to get new material out every single day. The preferred way is for people to bring me the stuff that they don’t want any longer but barring that I do go out searching for anything that interests me in the hopes that it will interest somebody else.”
One thing Lange doesn’t do is try and figure out what might be more popular in one or the other of Rhino’s locations.
“A few years after I took over the shop I decided not to try to figure out what people wanted and just decided to carry anything that I thought was interesting and it turned out to be a fairly good idea,” he said. “The largest difference between the two stores is space. The Kingston store is much larger and it allows us to flex our other two passions beyond music, films and books.”
Other local brick-and-mortar options can be found as part of other businesses: Inquiring Mind Bookstore in Saugerties has a nook dedicated to vinyl records. Newburgh-based Sound Shack has a Kingston outpost at Red Owl Collective, a large antique and vintage design center at 25 Cornell Street.
And then there’s Zip’s Ziggurat, owned by Mark Zip, a.k.a., “the guy with the red and white signs in Woodstock.” Zip doesn’t have a brick-and-mortar shop at all, instead selling at his Legendary Huge Music Yardsales three times a year, at record shows across the northeast, and via mail order on his website (www.zipsziggurat.com).
“I worked in record stores for a long time,” he said. “Not having a traditional storefront means that I make my own hours, and my own mistakes. Also keeps overhead costs lower and allows for flexible responses to larger economic trends.”
Zip mostly sells used records and CDs, some DVDs, a few cassettes, and every now and then a piece of stereo equipment. He’s added “an increasing number of carefully chosen new items here and there, but there is little margin on those.”
The vinyl comeback, Zip said, is still going, but may be at a turning point.
“I have been in business for myself since 1988 or so,” he said. “I have seen many ups and downs in many parts of the business. When I started the business, it was mostly CDs and little vinyl. To the extent that people still associate cultural expression with its physical manifestations, that ratio has swapped almost completely.”
But as interest in new vinyl has risen, so too has its costs.
“The price of newly pressed records has steadily increased and we are now seeing some pushback from customers on that,” Zip said. “This has meant that people are thinking more carefully about their collections overall.”
And even with Target and WalMart getting in on the vinyl action, Zip doesn’t see it as fully mainstream as it once was.
“It’s important to realize that this is still a niche business,” he said. “Most people do not care to own music, preferring the convenience of streaming or leasing music. Absent an official physical manifestation of music, you do not own music. If you cannot sell it to me (streaming, purchased digital files), you do not own it.”
Zip said last year was good, but there’s been “a slight softening in the vinyl market…as people move away from the object fetishism we observed over the last several years.”
He also believed that interest in compact discs is rising again, as average consumers see better value for money than they do in vinyl.
“I expect used CD sales to slowly increase,” he said. “The largest unanswered question is whether the people who took up record collecting as a signifier of hipsterism over the last few years will continue to collect. I’ve been doing this long enough that I am skeptical. Further, given that this business relies almost entirely on discretionary income — records are nice to have, rather than a must have — a downturn in the larger economy brought on by chaotic national policies can have immediate negative effects.”
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