Berkshire Record Outlet calls it quits

An unfortunate email arrived in my inbox yesterday from the folks who run Berkshire Record Outlet:

Dear fellow music-lovers,

The time has come to announce our closure within the next sixty days. In the interim, we have a backlog of new and restocked titles that we plan to offer you via our usual updates, in preparation for the subsequent sale of the entire inventory to a consortium of wholesalers.

With one exception, we’re all well past retirement age, and the challenges of running a niche business in the year 2025 are more than this near octogenarian is willing to confront. In short, after fifty-one years, we bid you farewell.

Thank you all for your patronage.

Best wishes,

Joe Eckstein

News that Berkshire Record Outlet (BRO) will soon close its doors feels like the loss of an old friend whose value you can only measure when they’re gone.Their closure is understandable. But it’s still a loss.

For years, BRO has been a reliable, if somewhat anachronistic, fixture in the classical music ecosystem. Their site was barebones, but what they lacked in modern gloss they made up for in consistency, depth and price. They catered to listeners like me: collectors who knew what they were looking for but also welcomed the happy accident of discovery.

Personally, I leaned heavily on BRO to help fill out my collection especially when it came to Hyperion. Whether it was lesser-known British composers, the latest edition in their Romantic Piano Concerto series, one of Stephen Hough’s eye opening compilation albums, or the latest album from the Takács Quartet, I could count on BRO to have what I needed, often at a fraction of the usual cost. It wasn’t unusual for a small curiosity to lead to a cart full of unexpected essentials.

Yes, there are still ways to track down physical albums. And yes, streaming continues to dominate. But places like Berkshire Record Outlet made it easier to be curious. They made collecting feel like a quiet, personal pursuit rather than an algorithmic inevitability.