As big retailers retreat from selling music, independents are moving in. Slow Century, a new record shop in Knowle, is betting on vinyl, curation, and slow browsing to boost the high street. This report asks what that means for local people, trade, and the future of physical music.
00:00High streets work when people have reasons to stop, not just pass through.
00:05Music helps with that, not the background stuff, but a space where you can slow down, flick through sleeves and talk to someone who knows the records.
00:14Large chains walked away from music years ago, leaving gaps in towns like this.
00:19Independents have started filling them, betting that curation beats an algorithm.
00:25John Ellis has spent months shaping this new space into a spot people might return to, not to just dip into once.
00:32The thing with the record shop is it's a destination store.
00:35It's somewhere that people will travel from far and wide to go and see.
00:38As a record collector myself, I would travel to Bristol, Manchester, London, various other places.
00:43So we can see that happening here as well. So for the local community, it's a great place to buy records.
00:48Streaming wins on speed. It doesn't always win on discovery.
00:52A good record shop can change that. Someone walks in with a rough idea, leaves with something they didn't expect.
00:59That keeps money on the high street instead of drifting online.
01:03John knows how this music fits into people's routines.
01:07I think the great thing about a record shop is that because it's a destination store, people will travel around.
01:12So you have the local communities and the local shoppers.
01:14We have people that come around specifically to buy records.
01:17So there are bars and there are restaurants along here as well.
01:20So they're going to benefit from that.
01:22And record store day happens once a year as a small version in November, which is a Black Friday thing.
01:27But the main record store day in April is a big deal where you get lots of read out of pressed records, out of print records and remasters and reissues and that sort of thing.
01:37Well, that brings a lot of record collectors here. So having more people on the high streets at the time, that's going to encourage people to eat, drink, you know, shop at jewelers, you know, various shops around the high street.
01:49And I think that will benefit the community.
01:51It's a gamble, of course. Big retailers left music for a reason. Streaming dominates, costs are high and a small shop has to graft just to stay a level.
02:01Some argue a niche store is risky in a place like this. Other site without independence, the high street sinks into chains and empty fronts.
02:10This shop sits between those views. It must stay solvent, treat any staff fairly and avoid turning into a private hobby in a bomb spot.
02:18Those decisions rest on how John runs it from day one.
02:22I think the overheads from working from home or selling online are obviously far less.
02:26And that's probably an attractive prospect to most people.
02:29But to have a bricks and mortar record store, it's a brilliant thing.
02:33And I think it's things that it's still a thing that people like, you know, people are discovering records now, younger people.
02:38And people have had records for all their lives and still want to buy records.
02:41So we can get some really good, you can see, we've got some great selections of secondhand records from the fifties through to more modern times as well.
02:49We're encouraging as many people as we possibly can.
02:51And you want to come and see the records. There's nothing better than looking at the crates, thumbing through, finding the records.
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