Independent record stores often give higher cuts to smaller artists than bigger stores do, so if you want to buy music from a local, you should go to an independent store.

Discogs is a mix between a personal catalog of your own record collection and a marketplace to purchase hard-to- find records from others. This is a good place to browse to get an idea of the relative prices of releases you are looking for.

Discogs is the most popular place on the internet for vinyl collectors to showcase their catalogs and sell their items to other people. There are over 15 million releases on the site, covering 8 million artists and 1.7 million labels. It is pretty rare if you cannot find it here. Discogs sells a lot of musical media, including CDs, cassettes, and vinyl.

Experience Vinyl is a club that does not require a monthly membership. You are not obligated to buy the interesting and rare releases the company presses. There is a red vinyl pressing of Sly and the Family Stone's Fresh, a blue pressing of Leon Russel's self-titledLP, and a 500-disc limited edition of Eliott Smith's From a Basement on the Hill. Depending on what you are buying, prices range from $25 to hundreds.

Are you looking for obscure and cool records? One of the first stores to sell vinyl online was in Chicago, and it sold its first records in 1996. It feels like a local record store on the internet. It is immediately clear that this is a store for music lovers by the number of records added to the homepage each day.

The rare vinyl marketplace is still the only place you can find exclusive releases, despite the fact that EIL hasn't been updated since the early 2000s. The UK-based outlet is a great place to find rare European music that may never have made it in the US.

You can find rare records on the most popular online auction site, though you will want to be specific in your search. Before you buy, make sure you get photos of the record. Sometimes eBay is the cheapest place to buy things, but I prefer buying from actual stores or private sellers.

There is a good chance that a modern band can be found on the Secretly Group label. You can get access to limited-edition new releases from its artists with the company's monthly record club, which costs $240 per year. The June 2022, release of Big Time is in stunning pink and blue vinyl.