In this episode I sat down with Nick Tan, the owner of Hear Records in Singapore, for my first-ever interview (yeah… sorry about the audio—captions help, and I’ve already upgraded gear for future chats). We get into what makes vinyl culture tick beyond just “buying records,” and Nick drops one of my favorite ways to describe collectors: there’s usually a music lover, an audiophile, and a little bit of a stamp collector in all of us. We talk about why certain records become insanely expensive (rarity, not always “quality”), and why the memories attached to a $5 beat-up copy can make it priceless. Nick also breaks down what it’s like running a brick-and-mortar shop in a time when music is effortless online. His take is simple: if a customer walks in and you don’t have what they want, that’s on the shop—stores have to offer what the next generation is actually listening to, not just the same staple classic titles. We also dig into Japan as a vinyl paradise (Tokyo alone with 140 record stores!), the joy of the hunt (including a wild 23-year search story), and where vinyl might be headed over the next 5–10 years—bubble or not, there will always be people who want physical format.