The door chimes as Joseph Mason opens the door at Back-A-Round Records. The sound of rock music fills his ears as he ascends the narrow staircase lined with graffiti-esque art, glowing under black lights. Mason, a regular at the record store, begins thumbing through the worn sleeves of vinyl that crowd the small shop. All around him are boxes packed with music from records, CDs and cassette tapes, spanning genres and decades.
“You never know what you’re going to find in a place like this,” Mason said, his eyes fixated as he flipped through the records. “It’s like you’re actually surrounded by Spotify.”
During his search, Mason pauses when he pulls out “Why Can’t We Be Friends,” a 1975 album by War, and smiles. He quietly sang the chorus of the R&B song to himself as he began sifting through another crate of records.
Moments like these are why Shawn Adkins, 45, opened Back-A-Round Records in Fayetteville. Coming from a family of musicians, music has always been a major part of Adkins’ life, he said. In 1987, Adkins remembers getting his first cassette tape, Poison’s “Open Up and Say…Ahh.”
He and his brother would “spend hours per day jamming…headbanging and playing air guitar” while listening to the tape on their parent’s Sony boombox. When Adkins opened Back-A-Round in 2017, he wanted to share his love for music with others; however, he wasn’t sure if it would be a good idea with the domination of music streaming, he said.
“I was thinking, if you start a McDonald's, people are going to come to that McDonald's because everybody wants McDonald's,” he laughed. “But a record store, I was like, dude, is there one person in Fayetteville that'd be interested?”
Since the rise of music streaming in the early 2000s, millions of Americans have turned to platforms like Apple Music and Spotify to listen to their favorite artists. In 2025, 82% of music revenue came from streaming services, according to a new report from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
However, vinyl has quietly made a comeback over the last 26 years. In 2000, records brought in less than one percent of total music revenue. In 2025, vinyl sales surpassed $1 billion for the first time since 1983, making up about 12% of the industry’s sales, according to the RIAA. This marks vinyl’s 19th consecutive year of growth.
Vinyl is still just a slice of the market, but people like Mason represent a niche audience gravitating toward the format. For Mason, being in a space like Back-A-Round, or any record store, “gives a story” to the music he finds. Instead of just scrolling through a streaming platform, Mason said he can spend hours sorting through the stacks of vinyl and CDs, making the search for new music feel a lot more personal and intentional.
“It gives me something to show for the music I like,” Mason said. “You can always buy a shirt or something, but telling your friend, ‘Hey, check out this cool album I found, let’s listen to it,’ it’s just more personal.”
To Adkins, having a tangible product of music is why people have been coming back to records. In an age of digital streaming, he said, something gets lost when music exists only as files you can’t hold.
“Once you have that in your hand, you got the artwork, you can smell the new on it, or the old on it,” he said. “It's one of the most magical things in the world.”
It’s not only the ownership of an album that brings a personal connection between musicians and listeners, said Michal Palm, a UNC-Chapel Hill associate professor in the Department of Communication. Physical albums can also create a richer experience through their artwork, he said.
“It can function as a way to kind of publicize your fandom, for a particular artist in the way that a poster or T-shirt can,” Palm said. “You can learn about your favorite artists by reading the liner notes and the information on the jackets.”
Of course, online spaces like Amazon or eBay offer a quick way to buy records or CDs, but convenience can’t replace the satisfaction of discovering music in person, Palm said. Stumbling across something unexpected can make an album feel more meaningful and the environment of a record store adds to the experience in a way a website cannot, he said.
This “thrill of the hunt,” as Adkins describes it, takes a “rare breed of artistic minded people” who are dedicated to sifting through music to find hidden gems. Mason is one of these “rare breeds” of people. Despite being a regular at Back-A-Round for the last five years, he said the excitement of “the hunt” never quite wears off.
The ache in his back from slouching over the crates of records did not sway Mason from his search. Nearly an hour had passed since he first walked in, but Mason continued his hunt with determination.
“Some days you might not find anything you want,” Mason said, tucking War’s album under his arm as he continued sifting through the records. “But sometimes, you’ll feel like you’ve won the jackpot.”
And today, Mason felt like a millionaire.
He stopped his search again and pulled out The Isley Brothers' “The Heat Is On,” an album Mason had recently fallen in love with. He carried both of his treasured finds to the front of the store where Adkins sat, sorting through his latest shipment of records for the shop.
Mason chatted excitedly with Adkins about his finds from the day, before heading back down the colorful stairway.
“I’ll see you again soon, man,” Mason said with a small wave to Adkins.
After Mason disappeared down the stairs, Adkins returned to the stack of new arrivals. Music habits have changed, he said, but the community that fills his shop makes him feel like the culture around record culture is far from over.
“What I'm able to do for people is give them that opportunity to fall in love with music because in the end, I want to give back,” Adkins said. “I want to share music with people because it changed my life. So, I want to give back to music what it gave to me.”

(Photo: Shawn Adkins, owner of Back-A-Round Records, says music has always been a part of his life. Photo by Anna Tart)