Waco: Spin Connection

Not every record store tries to keep every format alive. Spin Connection in Waco does. The shop on Franklin Avenue stocks vinyl — but also cassettes, CDs, and 8-tracks. That last format is the tell. A store willing to keep 8-track cartridges on the shelf isn’t chasing trends. It’s curating a conversation with the past. And Waco, sitting at the crossroads of Central Texas, has plenty of musical past worth curating.

A couple runs Spin Connection together. That partnership shows up in how the inventory feels. The selection spans vintage LPs, modern releases, cassettes, CDs, and 8-track cartridges — a format most shops abandoned decades ago. Spin Connection treats it as a feature, not a relic. That’s the right call.

Franklin Avenue’s Throwback Shop

Waco has lived between two music capitals for decades. Austin sits ninety miles south. Dallas sits one hundred miles north. But the Central Texas corridor has always carried its own musical weight — country, gospel, blues, Texas rock. Spin Connection sits in the middle of that tradition. The shop stocks what the region has listened to across the decades. And it keeps the formats those records originally came in.

For more of Waco’s vinyl scene, Vintage Mio Records downtown carries 20,000 albums and donates its proceeds to nonprofits. But Spin Connection on Franklin has its own argument. It’s the shop where every format still has a seat at the table.