Rough Trade

Rough Trade has a few locations in London, but Rough Trade East is their main head quarters. This place is a GREAT place if you are a true music aficionado...I'm not one exactly...but my roommate is, and when I went with her, she was really impressed...this store has been voted as "High Street Retail Store" of the year in Music Week (a popular music magazine in London) two years in a row...so it is absolutely a place that you should hit up if you are into the latest music trends.

I went on Record Store day, which is a day when record stores in big cities across the world open their doors and do special events...all in an effort to support local music. At Rough Trade, they had a series of live gigs playing throughout the day...the place actually has pretty decent acoustics!!

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Rough Trade is a little hidden when you're walking along Brick Lane, it's actually in Dray walk about 15 metres from Brick Lane so pay attention if not you will miss it. To help you out it's just next to the 1001bar which has a little shed in front of the bar where they sell hamburger (which are delicious by the way) and there will be lots of people sitting down outside at the terrace. Well Rough Trade is just in front of that bar.

Rough Trade is basically a music shop where you can buy all kinds of cds. The choice is really large they fit so many cds in a normal sized shop! also the staff takes a lot of time to help you out. You can tell that the priority of this shop is customer service you will also see little notes that they wrote, a little like reviews, on different albums to let you know if they liked it or not

The only con would be that the shop is probably a little more expensive than a big retailer or an online shop but you don't get all the help from the staff.

The Rough Trade launched a concept of The Album Club you can check it out at this site: thealbumclub.com. Basically you join the mailing list and each month you receive news about the new albums every month.
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