If you’re a local music lover, you’ve likely visited the widely loved West Ashley record store, Monster Music & Movies. Though it was opened during a time of declining CD sales, the store has not only survived but thrived over the last 20 years due to a resurgence of popularity in vinyl sales.
The record store represents the core of what record collectors all have in common: a deep love of music. And for Galen Hudson, the longtime general manager and, as of this year, the store’s new owner, his life’s path has been guided by his love of music.
Hudson said he became a “record nerd” while growing up in the 1980s in Chapel Hill, N.C.
“I just couldn’t get enough of it — learning about new artists, new music. There’s this sense of discovery that happens at a record store. When I got out of college, naturally, I got a job at a record store,” he said.
When Hudson moved to Charleston in 1993, he started working for Manifest Discs & Tapes, an independent record store chain based in Columbia with five stores in the state.
In 2004, Manifest announced it was closing operations and sold off its individual stores. The Charleston store was purchased by Bruce Carlock and Mike Wise who operated a chain of stores called Cat’s Music. Hudson, who was then overseeing three Cat’s stores in the Charleston area, took over management at the West Ashley Manifest store — now called Monster Music.
“We had to change the name, and there was a giant sign up over the store, ‘Manifest Discs and Tapes’ and these giant, probably 4-foot neon letters. We said, ‘Well, what can we change the name to so that we can use as many of those letters as possible?’ Somebody had the idea of Monster Music.”
Hudson’s managed the store since, and three years ago, began the process of buying the business, fulfilling a lifelong dream to have a store of his own.
A changing industry
Monster — a store that sells CDs, DVDs and vinyl records — has survived in a rapidly changing industry partly because Hudson created a used record section of the store in the mid-2000s when vinyl’s popularity resurged and partly because of Record Store Day, a nationwide celebration.
“Around the mid 2000s, the CD sales started to decline, year after year after year … That’s when things felt a little bleak,” he said.
The tide began to change in 2006 — Hudson would annually represent Monster at an industry trade group called the Music Monitor Network, where independent music stores would get together to create initiatives to drive physical music sales. In 2006, the network conceptualized “Record Store Day,” and Monster hosted its first Record Store Day celebration the next year.
“It was an effort to kind of change the conversation a little bit, show the world what role the record store plays in its community and the relevance it has to its customers,” Hudson said. “We got record companies to create some exclusive releases just for record stores who were participating in Record Store Day. For Monster, I turned it into a store-wide sale with bands, food trucks, a big party.
“By that time, the newness of the iPod had kind of worn off and people had started getting kind of frustrated with a couple of things,” Hudson said, like missing the physical experience of finding and buying music.
Every year between 2007 to today, Hudson said there has been a nationwide increase in vinyl sales.
“It’s the biggest part of our business,” Hudson said. “We’re not comparing it to streaming — we’re comparing it to what it was 20, 15 years ago. And the fact that it’s grown every year, that’s fairly dramatic. There’s some relevance there.”
Making space for connection
Another reason for Monster’s success, Hudson said, is its customer-focused approach and offering of things like posters, T-shirts and more — “stuff that a Walmart or Best Buy is not really going to care about. Our focus is on knowing our customer and the kind of experience they want to have in our store.”
The staff at Monster is full of passionate melomaniacs — looking at the store’s Instagram account, you’ll find staff members pictured with favorite records, photos of well-attended listening parties and an annual music-themed Halloween costume contest.
“I want to help promote local bands, create a space where you can find live music from time to time,” Hudson said. “I think for a lot of people, the store has that same importance that my record store in Chapel Hill meant to me — it’s the place you go to learn about new music, to learn from really passionate music people and meet fellow music fans.
“Over the years, I’ve known and met a lot of people who ended up marrying people that they met in record stores,” Hudson said. “This is so much more than just about moving units, moving units is boring. It’s really all about the personal connections we make over this shared love of music.”
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