A deep blue wall, a row of low racks and a fridge full of craft beer set the tone at Venus Vinyl, the new-vinyl specialist that has become one of the reasons to walk north over the river in Norwich. Almost everything here is chosen title by title rather than ordered in bulk, and the shop makes no secret of its priorities: limited pressings, imports and records worth carrying home.
Background / History
Venus Vinyl started in the summer of 2014 as a market stall on Broadway Market in East London, selling only new vinyl at a time when most stalls dealt in second-hand. After about a year the stall closed and the business moved online, taking its records out to pop-up shops at festivals and music venues. In 2019 it launched a vinyl subscription service built around each subscriber’s own listening rather than a single fixed monthly title. The move to Norwich came next, first as a record concession inside Quanström Studio on Magdalen Street and then permanently, with the full-time shop opening in April 2021. Founder Benjamin has run it from that address ever since, and 2026 marks five years of trading in the city.
What You’ll Find
Roughly 3,000 different titles sit in the racks at any one time, filed across ambient and soundtrack, electronic, experimental, folk and country, funk and soul, global sounds, hip-hop, jazz, pop and R&B, and rock. The buying leans towards limited editions, coloured and dinked pressings, imports, reissues and the better new releases, including records that are genuinely difficult to find in the UK. Pre-orders are taken, and anything not on the shelf can usually be ordered in. Gift vouchers, screen-printed t-shirts and tote bags carrying the shop’s own artwork sit alongside the music. Craft beer cans are sold from the fridge by the counter, and because the shop holds a licence you can open one and drink it in the small bar area while you dig.
Experience / Atmosphere
The room is light and airy, and the low, open racking makes it easy to work through a section without queueing behind anyone. Benjamin is usually the person behind the counter, and the shop is run on a simple principle: good music is good music, regardless of genre. Recommendations come without any hint of snobbery, whether you are chasing a rare pressing or looking for a way into a genre you have never bought before. In-store performances and signings bring artists into the space, and the shop takes part in Record Store Day, Record Store Day Black Friday and National Album Day. It is a place people settle into, beer in hand, rather than pass through.
Why Visit
- Around 3,000 new titles in stock, weighted towards limited, import and hard-to-find pressings
- A licensed bar area and a fridge of craft beer, so browsing can take as long as you like
- Genuinely wide-ranging buying, from ambient and jazz through to hip-hop, global sounds and rock
- Special orders and pre-orders taken for anything not already in the racks
- In-store sessions, signings and full participation in Record Store Day
- A record subscription service tailored to individual taste, running since 2019
Summary
Venus Vinyl is worth the walk up Magdalen Street because it does one thing extremely well. This is a shop built on careful buying rather than volume, run by someone who wants the experience to feel open to everyone, and it rewards both the collector hunting a specific pressing and the visitor who simply wants an hour, a beer and a rack to work through. Five years in, it has become a fixture of Norwich music life.
