Loud, quiet, loud.
A record store’s taste, on the internet — automated where it can be, curated where it counts.
What this is
LoudQuietLoud is a music discovery site for record collectors. Browse artists, labels, and vibes; follow a thread from one band to the next; and when something grabs you, buy the record direct from the source — the artist’s own store, their label, or an independent shop we trust. We favor artists and labels over marketplaces, so as much of your purchase as possible goes right back to the people behind the music.
How it works
Under the hood, a few sources get stitched together into one browsable catalog:
- A knowledge graph of music. Artist relationships, label rosters, and genre threads built from open music data (Last.fm, MusicBrainz, Discogs), refreshed automatically.
- The music press. New reviews and coverage from outlets like Pitchfork and Stereogum keep the front page honest about what’s worth hearing right now.
- Public radio airplay. Yesterday’s most-played albums across six public radio stations — KEXP, KCRW, KRCL, KUTX, The Current, and WXPN — surface on the homepage, matched to pressings you can buy. The stations are credited as the source of the airplay data; they don’t endorse or sponsor what’s shown here.
- Shopify’s product catalog. Every “buy” link is a live listing from a real store — including a hand-picked set of label and record stores whose records we boost. Checkout happens with the merchant, not with us.
The result is automated but curated: machines do the collating, taste does the filtering. It’s a side project, and we hope it’s useful to anyone who misses browsing a good record store.
An experiment
Let’s be upfront: this is an experiment, not a finished product. Much of what you see — which artists connect to which, the vibe tags, the editorial matches, and which products get paired with which artists — is assembled automatically. Machines are decent record clerks but occasionally awful ones, so some of it will be wrong.
If a product match looks off — wrong artist, wrong record, wrong everything — use the “Wrong match?” flag on the product card. It tells us exactly what to go fix.
Who’s behind it
LoudQuietLoud is a side project from Softlimit, an ecommerce agency. Our day job is designing, building, and growing Shopify storefronts for merchants — this is what happens when that toolkit meets a record habit.
We may earn a commission on purchases made through links on this site. Prices and availability come from each merchant and can change.