Brookside Music

I have to admit to bring pretty disappointed with this store, sadly.
Digital music doesn’t really appeal to me (the magic is lost!) unless you can’t get the music any other way — though I do acknowledge the convenience of just downloading something straight onto your phone! I think it’s important to support struggling artists who work hard on their art, and it’s so nice to hold the CD in your hand, flip through the artwork, and hear the album in totality, in the sequence that was probably painstakingly decided. But anyway, rant over ;).
These days, for little music stores to survive, they have to be pretty darn special, or at least try to be a little bit quirky and individual. Rockaway records at Carindale are a great example of this. Their artists and albums are hand picked, often highly respected alternative, and you can see the effort that has been spent deciding what they should sell with their size limitations.
Sadly, from what I can see — Brookside music just stock the most popular lines. CDs, DVDs, and often the stuff that is on the clear-​out racks elsewhere. It just feels really uninspired and you don’t experience any of that small business magic. Today, neither of us were even acknowledged by the two staff working, and, as the only two customers, that’s pretty disappointing.
In a pinch — I’m sure they are ok. But I won’t be rushing back.

Since iTunes came into my life I haven’t really found much use for music stores — which means that if I need to go to one it’d better have some top notch service and a good range.
iTunes doesn’t have everything, particularly in the Jazz /​Blues /​Classical compilation arena’s so I wandered in here to have a squiz while my husband got his eyes tested.
The staff are nice and I saw a couple of old compilations I quite wanted (I love a bargain bin) so I picked them up.
I’m still not going to drive to a shopping centre if iTunes will provide, however I’ll definitely pop in next time I’m in Brookside looking for a bargain.

This music store has been around for a long long long long time. They have quite an extensive range of CDs on offer, and in the bins near the front they have CDs for quite bargain prices. They have a huge range of country music as well if you’re into this particular genre of music.
The staff are really friendly and helpful, so if you’re looking for an obscure sounding CD that you think no one has heard of, chances are no one has. But they will know the next best thing. The prices are reasonable and the CDs see up to date.
I’d just like to point out that they aren’t a Sanity, they do have a limited range but do stock quite a good range across all types of genres of music… even classical as I found out.