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The UK’s record renaissance continues apace. In 2024 a whopping 6.7 million vinyl albums were sold in the UK, marking seventeen consecutive years of annual sales growth and the highest level of vinyl sales in three decades. And it was a good year for record stores, too. In 2024 iconic record shop brand Rough Trade opened two new outposts, one on London’s Denmark Street and another – its largest to-date – in Liverpool.
The UK has plenty of excellent record shops for every kind of music lover, and that fact was recognised this week in a new list of the world’s ‘greatest’ record stores by the Financial Times. The FT’s list featured shops as far-flung as California and Australia, but also included 18 in the UK.
Seven of the FT’s top record stores were in London (you can read more about those on Time Out London here – and find our list of the capital’s best record shops here). As for the rest? They’re all over the place, from the north Welsh coast to English market towns.
Included in the list are the likes of Banquet Records in Kingston upon Thames, as known for its gigs as its record stocks, Cob Records in Porthmadog, ‘a Tardis of musical rarities’, and Stroud’s ‘eclectic’ Klang Tone Records.
Here’s a full list of all the UK record shops included in the FT’s list of the ‘greatest’ in the world.
- Cob Records, Porthmadog
- Sounds of the Universe, London
- Carnival Records, Malvern
- Third Man Records, London
- Truck Store, Oxford
- Banquet Records, Kingston upon Thames
- Tribe Records, Leeds
- Honest Jon’s, London
- Hawkeye Enterprises and Starlight Records, London
- Klang Tone Records, Stroud
- Vinyl Whistle, Leeds
- Jumbo, Leeds
- Thorne Records, Edinburgh
- Assai Records, Dundee
- Rough Trade, Denmark Street, London
- Uptown Vinyl, Weston
- Soul Brother Records, London
You can find the FT’s full list in the original article here.
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