Record Store Profile: #Beatniks Records QLD

What is your store called? 

#beatniks Records

Where are you located? 

Big B Arcade on James Street Burleigh Heads, Gold Coast and online here.

Tell us about the people behind the scenes? 

We are a small family business run by husband and wife Jayden and Melanie Faass.  Jayden is the face of the business and works in it full time, whereas Mel works more behind the scenes in admin, finances and all other boring non music related stuff!  We also have Anthony, Fletcher and Joe, working in various roles within Beatniks.  All of them live and breathe music, have a stupid amount of music knowledge and are more often than not immersed in music in some way, especially the Gold Coast music scene. 

When and why did the store open?

We opened the store in Broadbeach originally in March 2016.  Jayden had been in the music industry for years, first playing in bands, then owning a recording studio then working and managing various record stores.  The time had come for us to start a family and have him closer to home and opening up our own store had always been the goal.  Two weeks after opening we welcomed our first daughter.  We were in Broadbeach for 8 years before making the move to Burleigh in August 2024. 

What do your customers most know you for?

Community.  Some of our favourite people are our customers, those who walked in one day to look at records and have now become close friends.  We like to keep things casual and social.  

What is the most popular title you stock at the moment?

At this very moment probably the new Turnstile album Never Enough or Surprise Chef Superb.

What is the most popular evergreen title?

Fleetwood Mac - Rumours is the biggest.  However, we are still consistently selling classics from Rage Against The Machine, Alice In Chains, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin etc.

What is the best thing about running a record store in 2025?

If we can have two 'things', it would be the music and the people.  As we mentioned before, our store has become such a community of like minded people.  Customers dropping in at all times of the day to catch up, have a chat, see the latest release or at least discuss it.  We enjoy all the stories, people sharing their insight, their recommendations, their memories.  Stories of family members who had 'this and that' in their collections.  There's also nothing like playing someone a recommendation and seeing the look on their face as if to say 'this is exactly what I was looking for' or 'how have I never heard of this before'.   We love being across the new releases coming through and then the oddball secondhand records that come through in collections that we have never seen before!

What is the hardest thing about running a record store in 2025?

Small business is hard.  Competing with the big players in the market and streaming.  When you know that the physical product sounds soooooooo much better than the electronic format but it can be hard to get that across especially when there are people out there still yet to discover vinyl.  We still hear 'are they still making vinyl?' on a regular basis.