Best Used Record Stores in the World

Shops where you can walk in, name five albums you love, and walk out with something that might be your new all-time favorite.

The Similarities Engine has always been about albums rather than songs, which makes a used record store the most natural room in the world for it. Everyone in there already gets albums vs songs. Nobody needs the idea explained.

There is also something a streaming service cannot do for you. A recommendation you can act on in the next ten minutes, with your hands, in a shop that has the record in a bin somewhere, is a different experience from a name added to a queue you will never reach the bottom of.

So the shops below display a card with their own code on it. Scan it, name five albums you love, and the Engine hands you a list of what listeners with overlapping taste loved too. Then go find out how many of them are in the racks. That last part is the fun.

The shops

This list starts at one and is meant to grow. Every shop on it agreed to display the card, which we greatly appreciate.

If you run a shop

The arrangement is simple. You display a card and point it out now and then, usually to somebody who is clearly browsing without a plan. They scan it, name five albums, and inside a couple of minutes they are holding a want-list for the shop they are standing in.

Your shop is named on their results, listed on this page, and named again at the top of the email if they ask us to send their list. We never pass on anyone's email address, to you or to anybody else, and we only ever email a person once.

There is no charge, and there is nothing to install. Get in touch and we will make you a card.