Shuga Records

Shuga Records is fugggin GREAT! Adam, Will, Norman, and all the staff there are super chill people who are very knowledgable on rock, indie, doom, grind, metal, psychedelic, jazz, pop, etc. Very in touch with the local diy music scene in Chicago and across the Midwest. These guys partner up with Emporium Arcade Bar and book shows with the dopest acts you would never have even heard of. It’s small business record shops like this that contribute to the thriving music scene culture in Chicago. Visit this gem in the Wicker Park neighborhood along with neighboring beer & grub spots. Well worth the visit to the city. Everything about this place and their mission is 110% great.

One of the coolest record stores I’ve been to! Friendly staff and a great selection.
They (almost) only carry vinyl and have a massive online store as well. Good selection of hip hop, psych, indie, jazz, dance and more. They also have the new King Gizzard album, which is my all time favorite piece of music ever recorded.

Cool selection of records! But… to echo a few other reviews on here, prices are completely ridiculous. And when it seems reasonable, condition of vinyl does not reflect price. Maybe the new sealed vinyl is priced OK (??) But for someone in the market for good copies of used LP’s, this is not the place.

Selection is decent but not as extensive as another store down the street (understand they have a warehouse of records available if it’s not in the store). And pricing can be better than another store down the street, sometimes not. But… as nice as these guys are, their non-​return policy (which was told to us at a Schuba’s Pig Swig and Dig meet) doesn’t cut the mustard. When asked what the policy was on buying a brand new record at the Schuba’s thing, we were told there are no returns as «We don’t know what happens to them after the records leave us.» This is poor customer service. I have bought a few new records of late and that have been defective (warped, gouges, knicks, etc.) and needed to be returned or exchanged. Luckily, I had bought them somewhere else, who happily made good on the records.
As a result, I will browse for some used records here, but will never buy a new piece from Shuga.
Updated to four stars with clarification of return/​exchange policy on new product.

Fantastic place. Lovely building design in a cool neighborhood. Great selection for their size and a great online selection as well if you can’t get to the store. I was able to stop in on a random afternoon and see a live musical performance and pick up a new release. Will return every chance I get!

What a horrible setup for an in-​store performance, I’m extremely disappointed, I can’t see anything that I paid money for

Super stoked when I come across new record stores! Great staff very helpful and the collection is off the chain!

Incredible selection. Very reasonable prices. Cool spot!

Great staff, selection, and atmosphere. As a beginner in collecting vinyl, Shuga makes the hunt for «the one» sweet!

Great store with a great selection of used, new, and reissues. I grabbed several titles during my recent first visit here. The employees were very friendly and helpful. Highly recommended. I’ll definitely be back every time I am in town.

This is the place to go if you are just getting into your vinyl collecting addiction and looking for that harder to find stuff you missed out on while downloading mp3s that other record store employees have already grabbed for themselves or are only available in your ebay follow feed.
Plenty of well priced new and used records here as well. They really know there music and have the best selection. I always walk out of here with a few things on my list that I never see in person at other shops.
They also have some solid used audio gear from the golden ere of home audio which is priced in the sweet spot between expensive brand new gear and that junker record carving first crosley turntable.

Great prices, I had previously gone to Reckless and they were overpriced– paid $ 40 for a record there that I found for under $ 10 here. Shuga definitely has reasonable prices and good selection, staff is super friendly and helpful.

Today was the first time I went in. When I first walked in I found a couple Record Store Day Releases that just arrived that I didn’t get on RSD, so that was great. The owner of the shop came up and started talking about one of the albums with me. He recommend some great albums that I had never even seen in shops. I do agree the prices are high on some, but the condition is all great. Coming from personal collections and hard to come by albums. If you know what you want and know the price its worth then you can probably find it here or on their online store. It was cool that they had Ipad’s that you could search their stored records. I will be going back in the future.

I stopped in for my first visit on the way to the new Reckless location. Like the many reviews here I was taken or shaken back by the high prices. Not just moderately higher prices but extravagantly high.
So instead of going on about prices, I should say that i realized this is a concept record shop. This really puts it in perspective. Shuga is about the ultra record store experience. A shop where you will see hard to find, rare vinyl pressings that you only see in your ebay Follow Feed. On my visit, I did see neat Brazilian editions of Bowie on colored vinyl that I never seen before (around $ 70). Original pressing Pink Floyd titles were priced at around $ 70 as well. Browsing about, I saw titles that I don’t normally see on the shelves. The shop is very organized, clean and has an ultra cool vibe. So for this concept to work, you must suspend reality and be ok spending $ 25 for a late era Talking Heads record (ok last price reference). They have digital stations where you can browse additional stock not in the store. All this really differentiates them from the other shops along Milwaukee Ave.
For me, it was pretty cool seeing so much cool titles all in one shop. It’s like a museum of collectable vinyl releases. Not sure I ever see myself impulse buying anything, but I know where to come if have a taste for exotic vinyl.

Was really looking forward to this shop, until I stopped in one afternoon and saw the price tags. Everything was way too much. A lot of original used records in good shape, which was cool, but the prices were ridiculous. This is a store for tourists, people who buy most their records at Urban Outfitters with their student loans, or for people looking for VERY SPECIFIC records. (Looking for original Beatles records in VG+ condition? Go here, but spend $ 90 on it.) It’s kind of like those sports memorabilia stores at the mall, lots of cool items to look at, but all too expensive to buy. Like some other reviews say, very similar to Shuga on Ebay. Just look at the website to get a sense of their pricing before heading over to the store. Better yet, skip it altogether and go to Reckless, where the selection is bigger, better, and cheaper. Never seen a more expensive record shop.
They do have a lot of cheap singles. $ 2 singles, but they’re the same kind of garbage singles that Dusty Groove has down in their basement for $ 1 or less.

Thus far, Shuga Records in person is a lot like Shuga Records on Ebay – overpriced and overhyped. Why do I say this? Because they have some pretty inflated ideas about pricing currently. Also, they oversell the rarity of the items they carry in the store in discussion with customers and on their website.
For example, yes, it may be the case that some Japanese collectors are willing to pay upwards of $ 120 dollars for a first pressing of Love Supreme or Olé Coltrane online in a bidding battle on Ebay. But one would not pay anywhere near that much at other Chicago record stores, where one can find these records offered for ½ what Shuga is charging or less, and much more often than you might think. But this is currently what they are charging for a first pressing of those records at Shuga in store.
Pricing is not this badly out of whack just on the jazz records either. One regularly sees classical records on Shuga’s web site that are, frankly, significantly overpriced for the current market, as well. Take a conductor like Bernstein, Ormandy, or Szell on Columbia. One should never pay more than 5 – 10 dollars for their LPs, depending on what the album is, unless something is truly rare and collectable – like say the 6 eye stereo pressing of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto by Ormandy and Oistrakh. Yet you can routinely find records by these conductors on Columbia for much more than this, for upwards of $ 20 on the Shuga site, if not much, much more, including many you can find on clearance in VG+ for .50 cents or 1.00 at many area stores in the clearance bins, if you are just a little patient. They haven’t brought as many «out of storage» into the store just yet, but if they follow their own lead in Jazz, one can only imagine what the prices will be like in store.
Classic rock works the same way, the prices at Shuga tend to be 2 to 3 times higher than other places in town. Certain pressings will be even more, even though other places get them quite often, and for far less, too, if you hang on and are patient. Ask about getting added on waiting lists at other places (several have them – just ask), and see for yourself.
Actually the same holds true generally for all genres of records offered by Shuga versus other places in town, be it rap, metal, r and b, or «fill in the blank.»
You can verify this for yourself by checking out competitor stores websites and comparing.
Shuga says they have different records in the store than online, but thus far, the price on collectible records in store is quite similar, so their website appears to provide a good relative gauge on their pricing generally.
In terms of rarity, the owner argues that he carries records one rarely (or ever) sees in the Chicago marketplace, and that this is one reason he has high prices (due to collectability of the items). That might have been the case in Minneapolis, the place the owner used to have shop set up in, but it’s not so true in Chicago. While it might be true that one doesn’t see these records every day, one does see them more often than «rarely» in the Chicago market. For instance, those first pressings of Olé Coltrane and Love Supreme I mentioned are found more commonly than «rarely» around here. I know because, for example, I picked up copies of both in the same pressings elsewhere in Chicago in recent months (and they were much less than the price I mention above).
Other sellers like Reckless, Dusty Groove, Dave’s Records, Jazz Record Mart, Oak Park Records, Logan’s Hardware, The Old School, and Hyde Park Records all have more realistic prices on LPs than Shuga on the items they sell that they share in common with Shuga. I know these details not because I work for any other store or am trying to promote anyone else*, but because I have personal experience in the Chicago market as a customer for years now. As my other reviews show, I’ve been to most others stores in the city a number of times and so know the market quite well – see my 60 reviews of other records stores for details.
If Shuga Records is going to succeed in a physical location within the Chicago market, they need to realize the reality of their physical location and price the records accordingly. You aren’t just on Ebay anymore.
* My first review (first for store!) was taken down because it was read as «promotional» when I named Shuga’s competitors who have lower prices even though I don’t work for another store and stand to gain nothing from such a comparison financially or otherwise. Actually, it was probably because I gave links to websites so readers could make comparisons themselves. There was nothing to this; I’m just trying to be an honest reviewer and show the real price differences.
Full disclosure – I am a college professor for a living who collects records as a hobby. And I have shopped records stores in the Chicagoland area for nearly 28 years now. This is the background I write from, and thus, I have no conflict of interest in the posting of this review.

These guys are awesome! Awesome music playing, the selection is great, reasonable pricing for the quality of the product. Apparently their online stock is huge, something like 60,000 records not on the floor. I dig it. They were very helpful and I walked away with a few things to look up. One being the Studio One version of 99 Problems by Jay-​Z. So great.

Awesome location, helpful staff and great selection.
Shuga had the local feel of an independent record store with the selection of a bigger player. Listening stations allow you to hear the actual record you will be buying before you buy it.
Really glad we stopped in. We’ll be back.

One of the best Record Stores I’ve had the pleasure of shopping! They have awesome recommendations and service. I’ll stop by any time I’m in the neighborhood.

Great record store. They have everything and can get anything. Also have an awesome bargain space and set up. Love to come and dig again!