Record store employee here. I want to hear about your personal

>>73749907
What do you do all day? Working a a record store sounds comfy.

i live in minneapolis and there's this awesome record store that's about the size of kitchen but the quality of albums is great and the owner is an amazing guy that will talk to you for two hours straight about anything music related. he was in a new wave band in the 70s or 80s and had his album produced by albini

>>73749907
I wish I had record stores around me

>>73749921
It is extremely comfy, but it's also a real job. We don't just hang out and listen to music all day. One of our employees purchased several crates of used records, and most of them are garbage. Lately I've been spending all day looking up and pricing used records. We also have to keep up with new releases, and decide which new records to bring into the store every week. Every week, we change out the records that we have up on the wall, and make sure everything is under the correct artist card. Other duties include average things like dusting and vacuuming.
Pro-tip: it's really annoying when people put records back in the wrong place, and it makes it really difficult to find them when another customer wants them.

What's the grossest record you've ever come across? I see a lot of moldy ones

How much would a vinyl of Dark Side of the Moon go for? Found it in sis' storage unit that mom was good enough to pay for.

>>73749907
What's the most interesting one-off experience you've had. Is there any recurring customers that come in? Any stories on that front?

>>73750051
>it's also a real job.
>Lately I've been spending all day looking up and pricing used records.

lmao

>>73749986
this

>>73750126
You'd be surprised what people bring in. I've seen mold, water damage, dead bugs, extreme warping, cracked/broken records, and one that somebody's ex girlfriend (I assume) had written on in lipstick or something. She wrote directly on the fucking grooves.

>>73750161
I hate to be vague like this, but depending on the condition and pressing, it could be anywhere from totally worthless to hundreds of dollars. Most of them are worth $15-30 used and in decent shape.

File: stacks-of-vinyl-records.jpg (131KB, 602x307px) Image search: [Google]

131KB, 602x307px

>Go to local record store
>Records are stacked horizontally

>>73749907
there's this record store in pittsburgh that i go to whenever visiting family in the area called rather ripped records. the guy that works there is probably about 70 years old and super knowledgeable about shit like krautrock or the residents type stuff. always cool talking to someone who not only has that much passion in music, but also someone that knowledgeable. i usually walk out of there with a few records and like 4-5 CDs or tapes.

is it true that 90% of vinyl will not appreciate in value and actually lose value?

>>73750240
I have some albums that have parallel razor cuts all over the cover from cocaine

>>73750240
Well at least you should be able to clean the grooves out with a toothbrush. And thanks, no clue on the pressing of the record. Condition is meh, just kept it because it's a cool keepsake.

>>73749924
>>73750259
it's my dream to be a really chill and knowledgeable record store owner.

what's the most expensive record you've sold?

>>73750176
We have one customer who sells us really obscure noise, krautrock, and dub records and he'll ocassionally come back into the store months later and buy his records back if we still have them. I don't understand his reasoning behind this, because we obviously sell them for more than we paid for them. He loses money by doing this. He's a really cool guy, though. He's super chill, and he's brought in some really cool shit.
Annoying customer experiences include people calling us and asking if we have a song that they heard on the radio. They usually don't know the name of the song, artist, or album, and they'll either tell me the lyrics and I'll have to Google them to figure it out, or in rare cases they'll hum it to me, in which case I usually can't help them. I don't listen to the radio.
One customer got really angry because I wouldn't leak the Record Store Day list to him a week before the official announcement.
Lots of older people ask, "So is vinyl making a come back?" or tell me that they own hundreds of records and they think they're worth a lot, but they're usually really old and dirty and not very valuable at all.
I've been given several local demos. Some of them are really cool, but most of them are not.
People call us and ask if we sell instruments or sheet music ALL THE TIME, and I have to explain that we're a record store, and not an instrument store like Guitar Center.

>>73750461
What's the metal collection there like? Do you guys have a lot of metal stuff, is it obscure or well-known records? Do you ever get people coming in buying them or asking for them?

>>73750282
I don't know about 90% but most records go down in value. Some go way up in value, but those are usually weird pressings of popular records (Japanese pressings, censored covers, promo copies, etc.) or obscure records that saw a limited run.

>>73750408
I remember selling a $100 Japanese pressing of "Thriller" and an $80 Pink Floyd bootleg. Usually, the most expensive records we sell are weird/rare pressings of really popular records like that. I'm sure we've sold more expensive records, but I don't remember. I've been there for a few years.

>>73750502
Metal is probably our 3rd best selling genre, behind alt/indie and hip-hop respectively. I think our metal section is great. I try to keep all of the essentials for each sub genre in stock, as well as some more obscure ones.

File: Amoeba-Music.png (2MB, 1500x878px) Image search: [Google]

2MB, 1500x878px

>>73749907
well in the bay area there are a few of the oldschool big guys left. Amoeba music still has fuck huge stores, and the last Rasputin is still around. They both have real big sections of used dvds, if your looking for a specific region code or printing they are pretty good. The movie guys are more fun then the record guys, and totally have great taste in shitty movies.

The actual records are ok, they keep most of the 'top' albums in stock by artist, but its mostly new pressing. Any real deal vintage stuff of anyone worth a damn is up on the wall for the big bucks. (I'm guessing the Haight-Ashbury has plenty of shop lifting yea think?) The bargain bins are great though, they just blow through shit like crazy, 6 for 5 dollars kinda thing. If you have an hour to go through all the shit, you can get some pretty cool stuff. You can tell when the cashier looks impressed or knows exactly who fucked up and marked something wrong.

There are a few smaller shops that curate their stuff, but its always a race to find the good stuff with them. From what they told me is that the demand is way out stripping stock, and the internet is a massive sink hole on the market.

I'm a total pleb and I think they can smell it on me.

>>73750601
Any examples of such records? Do you have any stories about selling them or buying them?

>>73750634
We mostly sell popular titles, and outside of classic stuff like Metallica, Slayer, Iron Maiden, Sabbath, etc. we mostly sell doom and black metal. We've sold quite a bit of Darkthrone. We've sold Emperor a few times. We sell Sleep's "Dopesmoker" all the time. For a while, we were selling a lot of Deafheaven. Every now and then, we'll sell Obituary or classic Death.
Most of them are reissues. We rarely have people sell us used metal records, and when they do, its mostly Maiden and Sabbath. I've lost track of how many used copies of Paranoid, Master Of Reality, and the first 5 Maiden records we've sold.

Which genre has the most annoying fans?

>>73749924
Hey, man can you tell me the name of the store? I'm flying out to Minneapolis tomorrow to visit family and I always like to visit record shops.