Newtown and Enmore’s Record Shops
- Jul 22
- 3 min read
Why Sydney’s Vinyl Revival Is Thriving in the Inner West, One Record Store and Crate Dig at a Time
By Belle Hann
Music has never been more easily accessible than now, with over 100 million tracks available to stream on Spotify and Apple Music. But, while 855 million people globally currently subscribe to digital music platforms, some Inner West residents remain devotees of the vinyl record.
Walk around one of Newtown’s thriving indie record shops and you’d be forgiven for thinking digital music was never invented. Across King Street and Enmore Road, customers dig through carefully curated crates filled with records ranging from Berlin techno to Ethiopian jazz.
Record lovers might be the first to admit that collecting vinyl is time-consuming, inconvenient and occasionally expensive (the one-off edition of Wu-Tang Clan's Once Upon a Time in Shaolin recently sold for $4 million) but they wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Record collecting is like a treasure hunt, basically,” says Dan Griffin, owner of Press Play Records on Wilson Street. “It really satisfies that thing in the back of your head [...] it's like op shoppers when you find that $10 Gucci or R.M. Williams boots.”
Local DJ Eric Layers owns over 300 records and believes that vinyl connects you to a tangible experience that you just can’t get from digital music. “If I'm going to get something on vinyl, I'm going to love that track for some reason,” he says. “You feel a bit more connected to the artistry of it. There's something real about it.”
The Sydney DJ scene has seen a resurgence of vinyl, harking back to the turntablist roots of the craft. “Ten years ago, DJs would rock up with a USB stick or a laptop and it was just assumed that vinyl would disappear,” says Dan. “But now, most Inner West clubs have turntables.”
Inspired by the Japanese “jazz kissaten”, or listening bar movement, Deadwax on Enmore Road boasts a 400-strong vinyl collection ranging from funk and hip-hop to Y2K nostalgia. Uncanny Bar on King Street hosts Vinyl Open Decks on Tuesday evenings, where DJs mix their own records with others committed to the art form.
Unlike an MP3, some DJs feel that mixing vinyl builds a different type of intimacy with their music. Eric, who regularly DJs at Uncanny Bar and the Botany View Hotel, says: “A vinyl record can get nicks, it gets scratches, it gets bumps, it warps sometimes, it gets dust on it, which all kind of give it a bit of character,” he says. “You end up knowing some of the glitches or the defects on your vinyl so you can work around them as well. So you feel a little bit more connected to the track in that way.”
Dan is encouraged by the growing enthusiasm for crate-digging among the younger generation. “We’re finding young people in their late teens coming into the store who want to buy all these ‘90s house records. It’s very reassuring.”
With global vinyl sales exceeding $1 billion in 2025, it seems the vinyl trend is not going away any time soon.
