The small-town record stores riding New Zealand’s vinyl revival

Friday, 16 January 2026

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On the corner of a humble Taupō street, there’s one store that stands out from the crowd.

Music posters are plastered to the windows, vinyl records look like they’re spinning across the panels above.

Records, once a medium relegated to the spare rooms of music tragics, have made a well-documented comeback. Even Briscoes - albeit briefly - was selling them.

In the first half of 2025, vinyl sales were tracking slightly ahead of CD sales, something Recorded Music NZ estimated hadn’t been seen since the 1980s.

Some, like music journalist Charlotte Ryan, who traced the vinyl obsession in Aotearoa for a recent podcast called The Long Play, believed the craze may have hit its ceiling - but it’s not falling out of fashion.

“In 1987 we had a record pressing plant that used to employ 250 people. From then until now, we've had no vinyl manufacturing here in New Zealand. But now we have two pressing plants in New Zealand, because we're also making vinyl here for Australia and stuff like that,” she says.

“So, yeah, it's definitely still peaking.”

In Taupō, it feels like the format never went out of fashion.

MyMusic claims to be the country’s “original” indie record store. Established in the 1980s, at first as part of a chain, on the same corner of the same street it can be found today, it boasts an impressive array of new and secondhand music across every genre.

Its manager Jason Hose has been part of the team since the 1990s, and looks like he could easily have been a frontman in a band back then too; he’s fast talking, energetic and appears to wear only tank tops.

On the Friday morning The Post visits, the store is already bustling with pre-Christmas traffic. “I love this store,” one customer is overheard saying as they flick through the selection.

Hose is rarely behind the counter, preferring to help shoppers find something they are looking for - or something they didn’t know they wanted (he admits to enjoying an “upsell”).

In an age of Spotify, he’s like a walking algorithm.

“J.I I call it … it’s Jason Intelligence,” he jokes.

The size of the shop is deceiving. It’s small, but perhaps because it hasn’t been ransacked by city folk, there are hidden gems. A limited edition Billie Eilish record that’s sold out in Auckland is perched on one stand. In fact, there are multiple copies.

Hose says people flock from all ends of the country - and indeed the world - to check out his store. Orders regularly go out to customers in Australia, and even further afield.

“I love what music does for people,” he tells The Post. “There’s a lot of stress and stuff out there, but I love how music takes people away from it. And I love how people come out of their way [to] visit the store, and I'll make damn sure this place is fully armed.

“Every genre, I don't care what you listen to. Come and … talk about metal, talk about jazz, country, whatever.”

On the store’s Facebook page, Hose regularly lays out an eclectic assortment of albums that are in stock that day. It might be the latest Taylor Swift release, some Limp Bizkit, a classic rock record or something more niche.

Swift’s role in the vinyl revival can’t be understated; she was quick to realise that packaging up her music in novel and attractive ways could lure in both superfans and casual listeners alike with different variants, cover art and bonus tracks.

She is the best-selling artist on vinyl of the past 22 years in New Zealand, according to a new album chart released by Recorded Music NZ. The best selling vinyl on the list - Swift’s Tortured Poets Department - was released only in 2024.

And number two? Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.

Other artists in the top 50 include other heritage acts like David Bowie, and contemporaries like Harry Styles.

Ryan thanks Swift for helping get people through the door of record stores who may never have done so otherwise.

“As much as we might love or hate her music, the fact that she's now encouraging 10 to 20-year-old women into record stores is amazing,” she says.

While one indie record store in America recently claimed its entire year’s rent could be paid purely from sales of Taylor Swift, that’s not the case in Taupō (though Hose claims he was the first to stock her albums back in the mid-2000s).

Instead, he says, sales from mainstream pop stars mean he can stock a wider selection of less mainstream artists.

“When you move a few thousand units of Taylor Swift, you’ve got the budget to go and buy Pantera. That's why people laugh at me. They go, ‘Oh, mate, you got all this great stuff. But why are you promoting this bloody thing?’ And I say to them, ‘Hey, guess who paid for that?’”

Further south, at Whanganui’s Vinyl Room, owner Ron Fisher says business has continued to boom throughout 2025.

“It's quite a cool little town to poke around,” he says of Whanganui.

“So people from Wellington have found that out, and it's only a couple of hours drive away. But also a lot of people travelling through [to] New Plymouth, they'll make a point of coming through the main street and stopping off. And I have had stories of people coming here, specifically, because it's got a record store, which is always cool.”

While the shop relies on local regulars during the week, off-peak times attract those from out of Whanganui.

“Let's say you come from Wellington, where there's half a dozen record stores, but they have hundreds of people through the door every day, so it's really picked over, and there's only so many gems you'll find. So they come here, and they can't believe some of the things they've found that locals … haven't picked up for a few weeks or whatever, because we just don't have the numbers through.”

It’s the “more obscure stuff” that is popular with casual shoppers, he says, along with releases from local label Flying Nun that would be “snapped up” in a city like Wellington.

“And then you've got the classic stuff too. Like we get a lot of ‘dad rock’ stuff traded in here. You can never have enough Dire Straits or Fleetwood Mac. I am often surprised when someone will come from out of town and say, ‘Oh my gosh, I've been looking for that’.”

Fisher has just finished an annual stocktake, revealing that Nirvana’s Nevermind was his store’s top seller in 2025 - just as it was the year before.

“Number two [the year before] was Nirvana Unplugged. So, funnily enough, they were one and two. But that's dropped down the list. Number two is Pearl Jam Ten.

“So when you look at those albums that are becoming absolute classics, that people my age grew up with on CD, now people my kids’ age or teenagers are rediscovering or discovering. And you've also got people that were older at the time when it came out - so it kind of crosses the generations.”

Even Rumours, Fleetwood Mac’s defining record that surely everybody owns by this stage, is a popular seller.

Ryan says she’s onto her fourth version.

“First I got a tape, then I got a CD, and then I got a vinyl, and then that scratched and I lost it. So I've got another one. It's funny how there's those iconic albums that everyone has to have in their collection,” she says.

Data shows different genres are more popular in different parts of the country, says Ryan.

“[There are] more metal sales in Hamilton [and] more hip hop sales in South Auckland,” she says.

It’s also pleasing to see the popularity of local artists among vinyl fans, Ryan says.

In Whanganui, Fisher says, the teenagers are into “the classic stuff, the good stuff” - and by that he means the likes of Green Day and Jeff Buckley.

“Jeff Buckley Grace is huge with teenage girls, which is really cool. And it's cool for me because that's my generation of music.”

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