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Zia Records Turns 40: How The Phoenix Record Store Has Survived Revolutionary Music Industry Changes

On this week in 1980, the top album was "The Wall" by Pink Floyd, followed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Dan Fogelberg, Rush and Michael Jackson’s "Off the Wall."

Everyone listened to music on terrestrial radio or on good old cassette tapes — and Brad Singer opened Zia Records opened its first store in Phoenix.

Now, 40 years later, we’ve gone from cassettes to CDs to vinyl making a comeback, all the way to Spotify and Apple Music and YouTube. In short, the music industry has been revolutionized, but, through all of it, Zia Records is still around.

In fact, it’s expanded in that time, and its current general manager has plans to expand more. The Show sat down with Zia’s Jarrett Hankinson to talk more about how a record store today survives and the impact it’s had on our city in the last few decades.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The story has been updated to correct the spelling of Dan Fogelberg's name. 

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Lauren Gilger, host of KJZZ's The Show, is an award-winning journalist whose work has impacted communities large and small, exposing injustices and giving a voice to the voiceless and marginalized.