Music has long been a defining part of Seattle’s culture. Great musicians from all genres have started their careers here, some of which have gone on to make their mark on the rest of the world. Others, however, amassed only a local fan base, while some never made it out of the record store. Until digital retailers became the primary outlet for distributing music, record stores were in many cases the only places for discovering and buying music. Locally, West Seattle has had many record stores but for most residents only one really comes to mind.

Its distinctive double sign hangs from a corner on the outside of the shop, one reading “Easy Street” and the other with the latest café or record deal. Its storefront windows are overlaid by posters of both up-and-coming and established musicians alike. Inside, racks of CDs line the lower floor, while a staircase in the back of the store leads to the upper level where rows of vinyl records entice customers to browse through them. Patrons roam the store with the hopes of finding another album to add to their collection. Inviting smells waft from the café that serves breakfast and lunch. “It’s kind of a destination place for people to meet up,” says store manager Adam Tutty.

Located on the corner of California Avenue and Alaska Street, Easy Street Records and Café is a business unique to West Seattle. Founder Matt Vaughan opened the store in 1988 after amending the closure of two local record shops he worked at as a teenager by convincing both owners to sell their shops to him, using the name from one of them afterwards. Over the years it has grown to be a staple of the Seattle music scene by stocking albums from independent artists that do not have labels to handle their distribution. A café was added in 2000 after Matt purchased the coffee shop adjacent to it. “Music and coffee went well together, at least with the friends I grew up with,” he states in an interview with Seattle Coffee Scene. Once only known to locals, the store has now been recognized nationally for its place in the Seattle music community by Rolling Stone and Time Magazine.

A second location was opened in Queen Anne in 2001, although it closed 12 years later due to major rent increases coupled with an unpredictable retail market. At both shops, local and major artists played shows there frequently, often with crowds spilling onto the sidewalk, as was the case in August when I saw the local rap group Shabazz Palaces play. In tradition, the artists mingled with the crowd before and after the show, signed records for those that bought them, and posed for photos with excited fans. I elected to buy a vinyl copy of their new album while a friend of mine chose a CD. Seen as an obsolete format to most people, vinyl records still have a place in some music collectors’ libraries.

As the first medium for storing recorded music that could easily be mass produced, vinyl records birthed home music, and with it, the record store. Vinyl records were the most popular music format up until 1993 where they were eclipsed by digital CD sales. Most casual listeners of music will find that digital song files will meet their needs, but some music enthusiasts prefer warmer sounding vinyl to harsher sounding digital songs. Others prefer vinyl because of the physical experience of being able to hold an album versus digital formats where songs are either on a hard drive or a small plastic CD. However, records are much more fragile than CDs and cannot be backed up into more copies like digital formats.

“In the mid-2000s all you heard about was the CD is dead and record stores are going away,” Matt recalls, “and in truth they were.” Easy Street made efforts to adapt to the digital age by opening up a website that features an online ordering system. This has helped it to stay afloat while competing with major digital distributors like iTunes and Amazon. Still true to its name, however, Easy Street Records has an extensive vinyl inventory stocking both used and new records. Recently in the U.S. there has been a resurgence in interest in vinyl, with sales increasing from about 100,000 new records sold in 2007 to 4.6 million in 2012 nationally. “Trends change … and the MP3 didn’t take over the world like Forbes magazine thought was going to happen.”

Easy Street Records has earned a firm place in West Seattle’s history as an open establishment that’s dedicated to the community it exists in. It has overcome the challenges that many businesses succumb to when markets shift towards new technologies while still retaining its core values that attracted so many people in the first place. As an icon of West Seattle, and more broadly the Seattle music scene, Easy Street represents the diversity in Seattle’s music in ways that niche record stores can’t achieve. Having existed for 26 years, it’s easy to see this business continue to be a part of West Seattle for many more years to come.

From Analog to Digital: How a Record Store Thrives in the 21st Century