Are record stores dying?
No — and unlike most takes on this question, we can show our work. This site exists to count record stores one at a time, with a dated source for each. Here is what the count says.
- Open right now
- 7,055
- record stores, combo shops & listening bars — each with a dated source
- Cities with at least one
- 2,064
- across 114 countries
- Opened in the 2020s
- 606
- of the shops whose founding year we have on record
The honest version
Record stores did nearly die. The 2000s closed thousands of them worldwide, and every year some real, beloved shops still shut — we log each one we can confirm on the memorial instead of quietly deleting it. But "dying" is not what the current numbers look like. New shops keep opening — 606 of the stores we have founding years for opened in 2020 or later — and they open everywhere, not just in a few hip capitals: our map runs from Tokyo and Berlin to single-shop towns in Peru and the Philippines.
One caveat we insist on: these are floors, not estimates. We only count a shop after verifying it against its own site, socials, press, or a recent dated review — so the true worldwide number is higher than ours, never lower. That is the opposite of how most "vinyl revival" statistics work, and it is the point of this site.
Want proof there is one near you? Open the map or browse every city we cover.