Spillers Records is the oldest continuously running record store in the world. It’s been open since 1894, and has been celebrating Record Store Day for years. They said that before the vinyl revival a decade or two ago, they were seriously considering stopping selling vinyl altogether.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00From day one we were selling wax cylinders, obviously seeing the whole evolution of music formats and music buying and preferences.
00:11But yeah, we've been doing record store days since the year minus zero, before there were any releases.
00:18And yeah, still loving the day and what we do.
00:24Vinyls have made a remarkable comeback over the last decade or so.
00:26While there are plenty of older people who can remember having vinyls from back in the day, the younger generation have now got on board like no one could have imagined.
00:35Spillers Records, here behind me, has seen generations of people queuing up for new releases from people's favourite artists and has the amazing title of the oldest record store anywhere in the world.
00:46Spillers has moved around a few times around Cardiff, but it's still the same business it was way back in 1894.
00:51Events like Record Store Day were a great chance to keep people's imaginations tuned into records.
00:56I love everything about Record Store Day, you know, it's the people who are queuing overnight and sacrificing a night's sleep to get the releases.
01:07I mean, that dedication is just, it's something that's, it's not unique to music, but it's certainly very prevalent within the music world.
01:17And, yeah, that dedication is awe-inspiring.
01:20So, yeah, got to get everything checked off and ready to go, really, and try and get some sleep.
01:26Records and record stores themselves are iconic.
01:29They're a haven for real music lovers to come in and shout about new releases or hidden gems that they've just got to check out.
01:35And has created a real community for people in Cardiff.
01:37And with such a storied history, Spillers is at the centre of it.
01:40We have some customers who have been literally shopping with us for decades.
01:45Fonts of information, guys in their 80s who, you know, have literally been coming here for, you know, nearly 70 years.
01:53And, yeah, I mean, it's like on any given day you'll see people turn around and go,
02:00oh, there's my mate so-and-so.
02:01And, you know, they'll start chatting or people just making friends, you know, in the shop.
02:06Everything's online nowadays and physical copies of music and films are hard to come by outside of charity shops and even antique shops.
02:12So vinyl holds a really special place in people's hearts where they can physically hold and physically play the music that they love.
02:18I mean, I can literally track our figures for 20 years and show the increase goes back that far.
02:26You know, I was in the shop in the early 2000s and a conversation was had, which was we may stop selling vinyl.
02:37It's losing us more money than we're making because so few people are buying it.
02:42More is ending up as dead stock on the shelves than is, you know, generating any revenue.
02:47And it was actually the younger generation of employees at the shop.
02:53So that was myself, my sister, a couple of other people who were teenagers at the time.
02:56And we were getting into vinyl ourselves.
02:59And we were getting into vinyl.
03:00And we were getting into vinyl.
03:00And we were getting into vinyl.
03:01And we were getting into vinyl.
03:02And we were getting into vinyl.
03:02And we were getting into vinyl.
03:03And we were getting into vinyl.
03:04And we were getting into vinyl.
03:05And we were getting into vinyl.
03:06And we were getting into vinyl.
03:07And we were getting into vinyl.
03:08And we were getting into vinyl.
03:09And we were getting into vinyl.
03:10And we were getting into vinyl.
03:11And we were getting into vinyl.
03:12And we were getting into vinyl.
03:13And we were getting into vinyl.
03:14And we were getting into vinyl.
03:15And we were getting into vinyl.
03:16And we were getting into vinyl.
03:17And we were getting into vinyl.
03:18And we were getting into vinyl.
03:19And we were getting into vinyl.
03:20And we were getting into vinyl.