“I can’t do anything but records and music,” John Stapleton admitted when I visited his record shop on the High Street in Bristol city centre. Those who still listen to music on a record player will be well-acquainted with Wanted Records, and since expanding from a small unit in St Nicks Market to a shop just yards away it has become even more popular.
But moving to a busy street isn’t the only reason John and his team are busier than ever. Change is afoot in the industry where music streaming giants like Spotify have dominated for years: in 2022, the UK posted its highest vinyl sales volume since 1990 with 5.5 million units sold. This helped turn previously struggling HMV into its highest profit in years.
Of course, this number is solely new releases, which represent less than five percent of Wanted Records’ shares. Since it first opened in 2009, it’s always been about buying, trading and selling second-hand records, starting with John’s own vinyl collection from his DJing days, which has taken him all over the world.
Read more: FORWARDS 2023 Announces Return Dates After Successful First Year
The owner, John, has lived many lives – as a DJ, club promoter and album compiler – over the years. “Since I was a very young teenager I have been obsessed with records and music,” he said. His career in the record store began in the 1980s working for Tony’s Records on Park Street, where he got his first job just “hanging around all the time.”
His entry points into music included David Bowie and Roxy Music, but his world changed after seeing George Lucas. american graffitiwhich has an illustrious soundtrack that epochs in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. John found many of the tracks as singles for pennies in junk shops, forming the start of his own collection.
“I started doing booths at record fairs with all the spare parts and multiple copies of stuff I had and thought why not make a store?” she told me she
An Aladdin’s cave housing thousands of singles and LPs, the store has always maintained its existence by buying and trading records with customers. This is still how the store operates today: a “records wanted” sign is affixed to the wall.
“People sell records for all sorts of reasons,” John explained, whether it’s people discovering a great collection in the attic or just moving on to other genres. “95 percent of what we sell is secondhand and it all comes from other people, whether it’s someone bringing in five records or a collection of 5,000.”
Registration status is key for John and the team; the price ranges from £5 upwards and “the sky is the limit”. Some of the rarest records line the shop’s walls, including pressings by Aphex Twin, De La Soul, Black Sabbath, and Miles Davis, but the value fluctuates over time.
The definition of ‘rare’ in a record store has many meanings, and more importantly, rarity is not always synonymous with price. The value can be determined by the cult of the fandom. Rarity can also be passed on by misprints when someone accidentally used the wrong version of a track and released it.
“Some people take rare as valuable and that’s not necessarily the case. There’s one particularly rare version of Led Zeppelin’s first album, which isn’t necessarily rare since there are probably 10,000 of them in the world. There are other records where there may only be 200 of them that are less valuable because nobody wants them, whereas Led Zeppelin has a huge fan base all over the world.
“It’s the combination of rarity and how much demand there is for it. When Kate Bush’s song ‘Running Up that Hill’ came on Stranger Things, suddenly everyone wanted that record,” John recalled. The singer now has her own category in the store; his 1985 album love dogs it will be reissued on CD and vinyl later this year.
The Wanted Records collection is extensive, home to thousands of singles and albums, and the store is meticulously categorized, offering everything from acid jazz, psychedelic rock and soul, to contemporary titles (with everything in between).
“It’s what makes my side of things not seem like a job, really. I’m constantly amazed by people bringing things I’ve never seen before or things I haven’t seen in years or completely unaware of, which is great. That really happens all the time. There are so many different records.”
Without a doubt, physical music ownership has declined since the invention of Napster, which paved the way for Spotify to dominate the industry, now with 205 million paying subscribers worldwide (in contrast, Apple Music has around 88 million). We live in a jukebox-style culture where we can pick up almost any song in the online world in seconds.
As album sales have plummeted, musicians make most of their money through touring in the 21st century, with Spotify paying artists $0.003 to $0.005 per stream on average. So why are people spending money on albums again?
“One might wonder why there has been an increase in print book sales in recent years even though you can get them digitally on the Kindle,” John said. “I think Kindle sales are down and print books are up. It is about the physicality of the object.”
In part, we have become much more materialistic as a society. Others value the quality that vinyl or CDs offer and that some streaming services decimate. Artists have also announced that they can exchange the purchase of a record for pre-sale access to tours. It has also become much easier to mass-produce records.
Digital music libraries catalyzed the inevitable demise of music ownership in physical form, but John believes he’s also introducing younger generations to artists John himself hasn’t heard in years. Spotify uses algorithm-based software to make recommendations, which drives people to record stores with obscure requests.
“The fact that he’s 40 years older is irrelevant to the algorithm, and then we have people coming in asking ‘do you have any Gerry Rafferty?’ or ‘Where do you keep your Al Stewart records?’ These people are pretty dark these days.”
Wanted Records has battled a global economic downturn, industry changes and the Covid years, but going from a six-client stand to a sprawling store has certainly helped the store.
John said: “Since we moved we have been considerably busier, but that is partly because we are on the main road, whereas before in the market you had to know we were there. The clientele has changed considerably and is much more varied.
“We have a lot more young women buying records, which is brilliant because it’s often seen as silly, which it certainly is, but it’s nice to have a mixed customer base.”
Before, the typical clientele would be made up of record collectors, DJs, people who have never stopped buying records, and those who bought records from their youth for a dose of nostalgia. Now, the client group is growing with younger people who are interested in the tangible forms of music.
Virtually every home would have had a record player until the rise of CDs in the early 2000s, and now every record player is coming down from the attic in people’s homes. While most of the younger generation will get their recommendations through algorithms, nothing beats walking into a store to flip through stacks of records.
“It’s that coincidence, you arrive looking for one thing and you can end up with two other things that are completely different. That is something that is difficult to replicate not in a physical store. You can look things up online, but the juxtapositions are not the same.”
Find wanted records at 43, High Street, Bristol, BS1 2AT. Open from Monday to Saturday, from 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. https://www.wantedrecords.co.uk/
Until next time: