Cory Miller, aka DJ Good Grief, based the cell Document Klub in 2013.
It’s Document Honest night time at 93’ Til in Montrose, and the vinyl-covered hangout is crammed with curious diners and visitors buzzing round storage containers filled with data. The stacks of vinyl—a mixture of soul, funk, R&B, rock, disco, jazz, soundtracks, previous rarities, and new releases—belong to DJ Brian Powell, who’s spinning tunes under a scorching pink neon signal that reads, “Music for the individuals.” However Powell isn’t just taking part in the data. He’s additionally promoting them.
Regardless of the age of music streaming, bodily data are again in excessive demand. The Recording Trade Affiliation of America reported that vinyl music purchases within the US reached $1.04 billion in 2025, marking the nineteenth consecutive yr of progress. That’s not unhealthy for a medium whose gross sales peaked at $1.5 billion in 1978.
With vinyl’s return to being a billion-dollar enterprise, the seek for bodily music goes far past the common document haunts. DJs and collectors like Powell are branching out to promote their collections at public occasions, together with document swaps, native markets, and membership gigs—a motion that’s aiding the revival.
After almost 15 years of DJing and gathering 80,000 45s, Powell knew he had sufficient wax to begin a aspect enterprise, however “you’re not gonna get wealthy doing this,” Powell says. “None of these guys are making a lot cash,” he provides. Many document retailer homeowners are incomes simply sufficient to dwell, and whereas some retailers are thriving, others have been compelled to name it quits. This yr, the final remaining location of the beloved music chain Soundwaves shuttered. None of that stops music followers from asking when he’ll open one in every of his personal. Nonetheless, like many different DJs within the metropolis, Powell chooses to maintain promoting data as a aspect hustle—on-line on web sites like Discogs and eBay, and at scheduled pop-ups.
Cory Miller, higher generally known as DJ Good Grief, was his inspiration. The 30-year music veteran and DJ-producer would all the time move alongside his spare vinyl to aspiring DJs. Following a profitable pop-up throughout a gig at Midtown’s Alley Kat Bar & Lounge almost a decade in the past, he started promoting titles from his assortment and inspired fellow DJs to do the identical. “I used to be like, ‘We are able to’t simply hold holding onto all these data,’” says Miller, who reasoned on the time that they might begin a store or pop-up to make extra cash, significantly at a time when venues had been chopping their hours and wages had been lowering.
Miller ultimately launched Document Klub, a pop-up the place he brings in data on the market throughout his DJ gigs, together with his month-to-month residency on the HiFi on the Finn on the second Saturday of each month. He’s even negotiated agreements with sure venues to DJ at a decrease fee in change for the chance to promote his data there, “simply to sort of make up for it,” he says.
Broadly generally known as DJ Elevated, Kazembe Grey has additionally been entering into the vinyl-collecting-and-selling sport over the previous decade, sourcing whole collections from web sites like Whatnot and Fb Market, and trying to find vinyl whereas DJing overseas. He recollects as soon as wandering into the house of a person promoting data on the streets of Ghana. “It’s actually data piled as much as the ceiling, of, like, African and worldly music,” he says. He spent hours sifting by the stacks that day.
Vinyl followers flick thru the gathering of Kazembe Grey (DJ Elevated).
Grey based Third Ward Vinyl Membership earlier this yr, holding document pop-ups at neighborhood spots Doshi Home, Wonderlikewander, and Third Ward Blooms, owned and operated by his youngsters’s mom, Brittany Mayfield. “My front room simply began to turn out to be my document storage, and I didn’t have any shelving,” Grey explains. “I felt like, okay, this may very well be a cool factor”—a DJ, recognized for his top-tier musical selections, promoting his private data. “[There’s] simply an pleasure about that,” he provides.
Different native creators are in on the scene, too. Montrose-based photographer Daniel Jackson, who has shot native bands like The Suffers and Ghost Social gathering, has collected data since his teenagers. “I grew up a Christian child that wasn’t in a position to hearken to secular music, so once I received outta the home at 17, I simply began shopping for the most cost effective music,” he says. A job at Sears allowed him extra cash to purchase stacks of data, and his fascination grew from there. “I’ve simply all the time held onto them,” he says. “Now, I’m 50 years previous, and so I’ve received sort of a protracted historical past with bodily media typically.”
Jackson started promoting at Insomnia Gallery’s month-to-month Punk Rock Storage Sale earlier than shifting his assortment of round 7,000 LPs and 12-inch data to venues like Dan Electro’s within the Heights and Midtown beer backyard Axelrad, the place he launched the venue’s month-to-month indoor vinyl swap. Except for being the person behind Good Junk Classic Information (which sells “data off a folding desk within the fourth-largest metropolis in America,” as said in its Instagram bio), Jackson has additionally hosted pop-ups at Montrose companies like Jardin and Little Dreamer Espresso. “That’s sort of my imaginative and prescient: to carry music and data outdoors of the document conference setting and into bars [and] eating places,” he says. “I actually wish to be the place the persons are.”
93’ Til is one in every of a number of “document bar” operations in Houston the place vinyl just isn’t solely part of the decor. Co-owner Lung Ly says internet hosting an everyday document market was the following logical step to the vinyl listening classes they have already got. “It’s on model for us,” says Ly. “Additionally, all people eats, you realize? The DJ will get to promote his data. I get to make slightly cash. I feel it’s referred to as—what’s the phrase—synergy.”
There are all the time some good finds when DJ Elevated organizes a sale.
Elsewhere, Museum District’s Mo’ Brunch + Brews and Sugar Land’s Vino & Vinyl Supper Membership have record-filled cabinets diners can flip by after a meal. Downtown’s Off the Document Listening Bar and Montrose watering holes The Flat and Resort Saint Augustine’s Listening Room additionally base a lot of their themes round vinyl, and Houston mom-and-pop shops like Montrose’s Cactus Music and Sig’s Lagoon in Midtown are simple go-tos. You can additionally decide up just a few titles (and a houseplant) at one in every of Blessings Crops, Herbs & Music’s two places within the metropolis.
For vinyl lovers, it’s not nearly getting paid to do and promote what they love. It’s additionally about making a group of vinyl followers right here in Houston. Jackson is crammed with pleasure when individuals attend his Axelrad document swap trying to both construct or unload their collections. There’s one thing about hanging with of us who respect holding music of their arms and giving it their undivided consideration.
“It’s an intentional factor to sit down there with a document and open it up and say, ‘That is the factor I’m doing on the time,’” he says. “I’m not placing it on within the background. I’m not hitting Bluetooth.” As a substitute, you may discover him soaking it in, as a result of “what we’re promoting and what we’re spinning,” he says, “…is dwell artwork.”
