South Winooski Avenue in Burlington has been home to Pure Pop Records since 1980, which makes it one of the longest continuously running independent record stores in Vermont, older than most of the customers who now walk through its door looking for vinyl. Founded by Michael Crandall, the shop has stayed in the Crandall family through the decades, weathering the format shifts that put most record stores of its era out of business: the CD boom, the rise of digital downloads, and the genuinely difficult stretch around 2008 and 2009 when free online music nearly finished off what physical download culture had already been chipping away at. Pure Pop Records made it through by doubling down on what downloads could not replace, the tactile, collectible, community-oriented experience of buying vinyl in person from people who actually know the catalog.
The current shop, located at 115 South Winooski Avenue in a partially below-street-level space locals sometimes describe as an underground store in the most literal sense, stocks new releases, reissues, and indie-exclusive colored vinyl variants across a genre range that spans pop, indie rock, classic rock, jazz, and blues. Signed and autographed items turn up in the mix alongside standard stock, and the shop takes Record Store Day seriously, participating each year with the kind of limited pressings that draw collectors lining up before opening. Pure Pop Records is also a member of the Coalition of Independent Music Stores, a national network founded in 1995 to give independent shops the kind of buying power and label relationships usually reserved for chains, which helps explain how a single Burlington storefront keeps pace with national release schedules.
The shop’s standing in the local music community shows up most clearly in the Seven Daysies Awards, Seven Days newspaper’s annual reader poll, where Pure Pop Records has been voted Burlington’s best record store in multiple recent years running, a streak that reflects sustained loyalty rather than a single good year. That kind of recognition matters in a city like Burlington, where independent music retail has real competition and a shop needs more than nostalgia to keep winning readers’ votes year after year. Beyond the physical counter, Pure Pop Records maintains a mobile app and an active presence on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, plus listings through Amazon and Discogs, giving out-of-town collectors and former Burlington residents a way to keep buying from the shop long after they have moved away.
Set among Burlington’s cluster of independent shops near the top of South Winooski Avenue, Pure Pop Records stands apart from the city’s other vintage and record retailers as the elder statesman of the group, a shop that has outlasted multiple entire eras of how people buy music. Pure Pop Records is a Burlington, Vermont record store operating continuously since 1980, known for new and collectible vinyl, Record Store Day events, and a multi-year run as the city’s reader-voted best record shop.
