Sonos to open “record store for audiophiles” in NYC

Audio company opens first physical shop next week.

Proving that sound has reached the height of fashion, home audio streaming brand Sonos is to open its first flagship store between Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior outlets in Manhattan’s Soho district.

Described by Billboard as “a sort of record shop for audiophiles”, the space is designed to “let customers experience the full range of Sonos’ surround sound speaker system”, each presented within one of seven listening rooms, that are built like tiny houses within the store.

Each 10′ by 12′ room is designed to recreate the furniture, design and speaker set up of different rooms in the home, allowing visitors to try the set ups in person. As Sonos’ vice president Dimitri Siegel tells Billboard: “We found that getting people into a great listening environment that had great acoustics where they could stop and focus on what they were doing really got them to understand the product better.”

As well as enlisting a range of designers and illustrators to help create the different environments, the seventh “legacy audio” room is adorned with a collection of Thurston Moore’s old mixtapes and no-wave cassettes from the downtown NYC scene. A far cry from the gritty ’80s scene it channels, the “legacy room” does let you listen to Bob Dylan on vinyl through a Sonos system.

“When I lived in New York, you could stop in off the street into Other Music or into Rock & Soul, Bleecker Street Records, any of these record stores and just listen to music and meet other music people,” Siegel says. “That’s kind of disappearing from the city, and it would be a dream come true to me if this store became like that. I hope that it’s casual enough for people to feel comfortable coming in.”

A worthy sentiment, but having cited gentrification as one reason for closure, it’s hard to imagine the recently closed Other Music sending its displaced disciples across Manhattan to Greene Street.

The Sonos store opens on Greene Street in Soho, NYC on Tuesday 19th July with a series of pop ups, listening sessions and podcast recordings planned to raise the curtain. [via Billboard]