THE RISE OF VINYL BARS

Across Indian cities, vinyl-led spaces are trading excess for discernment – and redefining what a good night out sounds like

- Words ARANYAA CHOWDHURY

Indian nightlife has long equated volume with vitality.

Louder meant livelier; noise stood in for mood; playlists were engineered less for listening than for momentum. Vinyl bars interrupt that logic. They are not anti-party so much as anti-distraction. These are spaces that resist the idea that music should merely lubricate conversation or drown out thought.

The idea itself isn’t new. Listening bars trace their roots back to Japan's kissaten — small, idiosyncratic coffeehouses that emerged in the 1950s, where music wasn’t background noise but the main event.

Today, as the concept migrates across Indian cities, it’s finding fertile ground among people craving intentionality over excess.

In Bengaluru, that craving takes the form of 33&Brew, India’s first vinyl microbrewery. Co-founder Karthik Chandrashekar saw the pairing as instinctive rather than experimental. Vinyl, for him, wasn’t a novelty; it was a bridge between eras. The space feels like a friend's living room rather than a bar — if that friend also happened to be a meticulous brewer and record collector.