Record Store Profile: Glitter Records QLD

What is your store called? 

Thanks for asking. Glitter Records. 

Where are you located? 

California Lane, Fortitude Valley and online here.

Do you cater to a specific niche or genre? 

The shop houses around 5,000 handpicked vinyl records, cassette tapes, CDs, singles, and shellac discs. There’s also a separate warehouse for the wider catalog. I hold over 35,000 unique sound recordings in total. I gravitate toward what gets overlooked. In the store, you’ll find everything, Japanese City Pop, an obscure Brisbane black metal record, bebop, soundtracks, field recordings, ex-radio promo CDs, and pre-WWII discs. I see Glitter Records as a kind of living archive — a musical encyclopedia. A space where recordings can be better appreciated and understood. 

Tell us about the people behind the scenes. 

I’m Riley, the owner and curator. My dad Brian helps with sourcing — we often go to house visits to buy collections. My mum, Sue, is brilliant with packaging and putting care into the smallest details. Maddy, a good friend, works weekends in the shop. It’s a family operation, but with a much bigger vision. I’d love to build this into a team — maybe 70 people one day — all working to archive, preserve, and share music meaningfully. 

When and why did the store open? 

It started from curiosity. I wanted to understand collecting and the culture of musical objects better. Early on, The Music sent a writer and photographer to document the store. That article was a big boost. I reread it recently and think it is worth mentioning here because it captures perfectly the spirit of what was going on at that time.  

What do your customers most know you for? 

A wide range of music. 

What’s the most popular title you stock at the moment? 

I started online, where uniqueness matters more than popularity. Instead of competing with dozens of Australian record stores and Amazon for the cheapest trending pop record, I’d sell a thousand lesser-known titles slowly and more steadily. Over time, it adds up—financially and creatively. 

Music has its own “winner’s curse.” The more popular a title, the fiercer the competition and the higher the price to stock it. Meanwhile, a large number of obscure but culturally valuable records outperform those handful blockbusters. The secondary market favors rarity, curiosity, and diversity. 

Sure, I’ve stocked the occasional sealed Frank Ocean, ‘90s Radiohead first pressing, hard-to-find Taylor Swift variants, Daft Punk rarity, rare Go-Betweens and late 1970s Brisbane punk band singles worth thousands. But I don’t chase trends. They come and go. Most of my inventory comes from what people bring in, and that unpredictable mix consistently outperforms the obvious bestsellers. 

I’ve made peace with that. It suits me—curious, independent, and comfortable with ambiguity. I study pop culture and its trends, but I’m not trying to pick winners. My job is to serve the music, preserve formats, and give the overlooked a shot at being heard. 

What’s your most popular evergreen title? 

The classics. Bach, Beethoven, Elgar. Intellectual, solitary, foundational. 

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

We’ve never had better tools for understanding the past. About two months ago, one of the exhibitors from Studio Brunswick — our local art gallery in California Lane— started chatting with me about her parents' old music collection. I went to her house to take a look. As you’d expect, there were some musicals and the usual fare, but before we left, she showed me something else. 

Her parents had lived in Asia after the Second World War, and beside the main collection were a handful of Chinese and Hong Kong releases. She was surprised I’d even consider them part of the collection. But I told her — no, this is exactly the kind of thing I hope to find. The labels were printed entirely in unfamiliar Chinese characters, mysterious and beautifully designed, with a 1940s and 1950s silver screen Hollywood feel but in a different cultural context. 

The next day, I’d identified the disc and cataloged it on Discogs. The day after that, it was on its way in the post to an avid collector who appreciated it greatly. AI translation helped me decipher this rare Chinese record in minutes. What used to take months of digging — cross-referencing label codes, reference books, languages — or simply being resigned to the unknown with a sigh, can now happen in moments. 

And the impact is real. These recordings have a second life and hopefully will be passed and enjoyed many more times before the end of their lifecyle. More stories can now be told, more voices heard, and more history reconnected to the present. 

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

Acting with integrity. Facing the unknown.