Guide
how to track vinyl restocks
Vinyl has quietly become a limited-edition business. A single album now ships as half a dozen variants: the standard black, two or three colourways split between retailers, a signed edition, and a store exclusive that exists in a few hundred copies. The signed and exclusive pressings are the ones that sell out during the announcement.
The announcements are also fragmented. Artist stores, labels, independent record shops and the big retailers each get their own allocation and each put it live on their own schedule, usually without warning. Following one source means you hear about one slice of it.
Developed for mobile:
the three kinds of scarce pressing
Signed editions
Almost always the first variant to go, often within minutes of the store page appearing, and almost never restocked.
Retailer exclusives
The same album in a different colour, tied to one shop. If you want a specific variant you have to watch the specific shop that carries it.
Quiet repressings
Out-of-print records come back without an announcement. These restocks stay available for hours, not minutes, so an alert is usually enough.
shops, labels and artist stores
Australia & NZ
The Sound of Vinyl, Warner Music
Europe
Hopeless Records, Nuclear Blast
United Kingdom
Banquet Records, Blood Records, Decca Records, Epitaph Records, Rise Records, Warner Music
United States
Atlantic Records, Decca Records, Epitaph Records, Hopeless Records, Magnolia Record Store, Nuclear Blast, Rise Records, The Sound of Vinyl, Urban Outfitters, Warner Music
keywords for a variant hunt
Keywords filter every store you track, so one list covers all of them. Start broad, then cut it down once you have seen a week of alerts.
- signed
- vinyl
- lp
- exclusive
- picture,disc
- repress
how to catch a pressing
Filter on signed
A keyword of signed across your stores catches the single highest-demand variant of every release without flooding you with standard stock.
Follow the label rather than just the artist
Label stores list releases from their whole roster, which is how you find out about pressings the artist store never mentions.
Track the artist store and a shop
Artist stores get the signed editions, independent shops get the exclusives. You want both.
questions
How do I know when a record is back in stock?
Add the shops and artist stores you buy from, set a keyword for the artist or the word signed, and MerchVault notifies you when matching stock appears.
Can I track one specific record?
Yes. Set the album title as a keyword and you will only be told about that record across every store you have added.
Do you cover independent record shops?
Yes, including over a hundred Record Store Day stockists. The full list is on the stores page.
Does it cover pre-orders as well as restocks?
Yes. A new pre-order going live is the same event as a restock from a monitoring point of view, and for signed editions the pre-order window is the only chance you get.
start tracking Vinyl
Install the app, add the stores from the coverage list above, and set your keywords. The free tier includes three music stores, and Premium removes the limit along with Shopify Scanner and price drop alerts.