On the Record How Austin’s vinyl businesses have survived through the years By Bao-Vy Pham
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The different records on the shelves of BLK Vinyl. Photo by Bao-Vy Pham.
or decades, record stores have consistently been highly successful businesses. The feeling of walking into one of these stores and finally finding a record that you’ve either never heard of and just catches your attention, or have been searching for everywhere is like no other. When customers get home, they can play their purchased records and see them on the turntable spinning and producing sound with their own eyes. And once they’re finished listening to the album or single, they can add it to their ever growing collection.
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Austin boasts many record stores all around the city, and whether they’ve been here for decades or merely a few years, they have all helped music fans find their favorite artists’ albums in physical form. Every store has its own unique catalogue with different genres and decades, so music listeners can choose whichever fits them the best. Besides an abundance of record shops, Austin also has its very own record pressing plant, Gold Rush Vinyl. Gold Rush Vinyl is Austin’s first vinyl record factory and works with many different clients from independent artists to record labels.
According to Jonathan Schanke, who is in charge of sales, customer service, project management, and production coordination, “We have two press operators and one shipping/packaging teammate. So two of them run the machines that we have and do the actual pressing of the records, and they do quality control, making sure all the music sounds good on it. And then they send it over to our packaging and shipping team member who packages it all up and gets it ready for shipping.” It takes Gold Rush Vinyl about four to six weeks from the time that orders are
