B-Side Compact Discs & Tapes

This shop is superb! Excellent locally owned store with a great selection of new vinyl releases.
Came here while visiting and bought some records from them. When I got home to NEVADA I found one had the wrong record inside. This was a weird manufacturer/​packaging error as it was new and sealed.
Well I am back a month later and told them about it and was quick to receive credit for the purchase price from them. No hassle or run around.
Thanks so much for the great service and for owning the error and fixing this for me even though you obviously didn’t package the record yourselves!
One small thing– re some other absurd note in an old review… Who cares how they keep track of ordering their stock and in what form?! Silliness.
It seems to work for them just fine, and they offer plenty of quality music for us audiophiles!

B-​Side is a very decent store, good for finding harder to find cds. Prices are fair, the guys that work there can be helpful, though on occasion haven’t seemed the most friendly. Overall, it’s still a good store and I like going there.

A small but packed store. If he doesn’t have what you want, he will order it and mostly you will get it in a few days. I often am look for something I or my husband hear on NPR or Wort and he will track it down for me. Once he gets to know your musical taste, he is great a recommending new artist you may like, a lot better than Amazons silly link to what other people buy.

If you are in Madison, and you still buy your music, then you need to go here. Though I don’t recall seeing Tapes here, oh well they sell cool new albums on Vinyl, which is pretty damn awesome. Chances are there will be some CD or LP that will make you go DAAMMMMNN I want that! I always like to check it out at least once a year when I go up to Madison, if not just to gaze at all the stuff I wish I had money for. Or wish that I listened to music not off my laptop or iPod. Curse you connivence! You make me not listen to my CDs or LPs anymore! If I did, I would buy them here so they would stay in business because they are pretty cool.

the epitome of supporting local businesses, the 2 – 3 guys who work at/​own B-​Sides are always there, always ready to help find things, always ready to comment on the show that you went to last night and are now buying the CD for, and always ready to do anything they can to order whatever you are looking for. Reserved and quiet, but always helpful– just the kind of service I am looking for when browsing for new music.
The experience that really sold me was when I went in looking for an album that wasn’t sold anywhere online and one of the guys at B-​Sides said he’d try to find it and call me. 2 months later (long after I’d forgotten about the album), I received a call that the album had just arrived and was ready for me… Best Buy sure won’t do that for you.

B-​side is a sweet little indie cd shoppe. This bugger isn’t corporate-​owned and does not attempt to feign trendsetting … they just are what they are. You come here when you want to dig into the genre that’s not pop. A couple years ago, I was on a neo bluegrass. He knew what to point out immediately. If I still purchased CDs … I would have returned.

I stopped by for the first time on Record Store Day and was giving tons of freebies; pins, cd’s, records and stickers. I haven’t had much time, or money, to go record shopping in Madison but this little store definitely rocks. From the very small section of vinyl I found a ton of great records including Moondogs ‘Viking of sixth avenue!’ some Serge Gainsbourg and some Scott Walker among other things. If you want that new Mariah Carey then go to Best Buy, if you have an actual interest in music this place is worth checking out.

When I first started coming to Madison, and then when I moved here, I didn’t like B-​Side. I thought it was all elitist and stuff. It’s a tiny tiny store packed with CDs and some records. I was totally intimidated by it and it’s rock guy ness. It’s only been in the last year that I’ve come to realize how rad that place is, especially if you’re a rock snob. It’s not a store for someone looking to pick up a CD by the newest MTV band, but it is great if you’re looking for things that are harder to find. I don’t know if they officially specialize in indie rock, but that’s mostly what they have so I’d guess that they do. If you can’t find what you want, they’ll order it for you. They’ve even looked up release dates for things that I wanted, so I could know when to come back.
Their world section is small, but full of delicious wonderfulness that you won’t find many other places, and especially not in chain stores. They also have a section of what I think they call «classics,» which is pretty much what you’ll hear on a good classic rock station. Not too much Zepplin (that’s a good thing), but they have plenty of that really incredible rock from the 60s and 70s that I like a lot.
If you’re looking for current indie rock and the things that inspired it, B-​Side is the place to go. If you want hip-​hop, electronic that isn’t on Astralwerks, metal, or pretty much anything besides rock, some blues, some jazz, some world, and some punk, B-​Side is not the place to go unless you want to expand your horizons.