London's independent record shops

Map of 20 locations in London, United Kingdom

Vinyl retail in London runs on specialisation and on buildings that were something else first: a brewery, a bus depot basement, a butcher's shop on Golborne Road. The shops here are independently run, most of them by the people who started them, and several came up the same way, from a market stall in Camden or Greenwich to a lease and a counter. Where a shop also runs a label, cuts a disc on the premises or keeps a stage in the back, that is noted, because it is usually the reason the shop is still trading.

Places in this collection

  • Flashback Records Crouch End — Taken over by the Flashback team in 2006 and moved into larger premises on Tottenham Lane in 2021, which bought shelf space the old shop di…
  • Dreamhouse Records — Started by Jon Clifford, who lives in Leyton, with the intention that the shop double as a communal space for musicians in the area rather…
  • Flashback Records Islington — The oldest of the three Flashback shops and the one most weighted towards second-hand, with the stock handled carefully rather than dumped.…
  • Supertone Records — Supertone was a sound system before it was a shop, playing reggae around the country from 1969; the Acre Lane premises followed in the mid-…
  • Banquet Records — An offshoot of the old Beggars Banquet franchise and the hinge of the Kingston music scene: acoustic in-stores and small gigs from acts muc…
  • Rye Wax — In the basement of the Bussey Building, under the CLF Art Cafe, where it opened in 2014. The shop's stated aim is to give space to music it…
  • Kristina Records — Independent underground dance and its sub-genres are the core here: techno, breakbeat, jungle, deep house, electronica, nu-disco, EBM. New…
  • Third Man Records — The first outpost outside Nashville for Jack White's label, in a Marshall Street unit that was previously the clothes shop Oi Polloi, repai…
  • Idle Moments — Named after the Grant Green record and run by the people behind Brilliant Corners, the Dalston bar that started London's listening-room hab…
  • Next Door Records Two — The larger second site of the Shepherd's Bush shop, on Stoke Newington Road, following the same pattern: neighbourhood workspace with coffe…
  • Next Door Records — Three childhood friends, Thom, Louis and Alfie, started this in the 2020 lockdown next door to Bush Hall, and it works as vinyl archive, na…
  • One Eighty One — Opened at the end of 2025 on the Holloway Road: record shop and cafe through the day, listening bar and bottle shop after dark. Wednesdays…
  • All Ages Records — The Camden shop for punk and hardcore, and known well enough in that world to draw a particular customer from a long way off; within the ge…
  • Stranger Than Paradise — Named after Jim Jarmusch's 1984 film and run by people who worked at Rough Trade East before opening their own shop, this one sits inside t…
  • Phonica Records — The dance specialist of the West End, a few minutes from Oxford Circus, where some of the DJs browsing the racks also work behind the count…
  • Casbah Records — Twenty years of trading from a stall at Greenwich Market came before the Creek Road shop. The emphasis falls on girl groups, garage, psych…
  • Honest Jon's — Trading since 1974, when it sold jazz records out of a former butcher's shop on Golborne Road, and on Portobello Road since the 1980s. Mark…
  • Sister Ray — Named after the Velvet Underground track, the shop moved from a Camden market stall to Berwick Street in 1989, when the street still held a…
  • Sounds of the Universe — The business began as a market stall in Camden Town before taking the Broadwick Street shop in the early 1990s; the same owner founded Soul…
  • Rough Trade East — Rough Trade started as a shop on Ladbroke Grove in 1976 and became a label afterwards; this branch, in the cavernous remains of the Old Tru…

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