I wish there was phone apps when I started this subforum. That would have been the ideal platform for this idea I had to grow.
Discogs didnt me or my small asks to improve how this subforum could work. I think they thought this forum would direct people to stores to buy music and not to Discogs (which at the time was just about to launch the marketplace). Discogs sort of took the idea then and it didn't really pan out because they didn't put much thought into it. I wanted to make it much more. (See my thread sticky in this forum on what information to put about the stores people list and update). I still really like the idea of what it can be. A true listing of all the stores and how to make it a great experience shopping. Everything from how to get there thru public transport to what records they had, their prices, who the owners were what bars and clubs were near to each store to get a beer or hear some music. I really wanted it to be much more.
Ah well, I dont even know what it is now. Or if anyone gets anything out of it.
BTW the simple ask that I asked Discogs and got denied was the simple ability to edit threads/posts. Now they are all locked and you can't edit the info. Lame.
recordstores.love is just what you describe. It's a website, but it works like an app on your phone. When I started developing it, I had the same idea like you - and the early versions also included a list of styles the stores offer. But this didn't really work, because most of the stores just checked all styles. So I decided that photos are what diggers need more, because from the photos most of them see whether they are interested to visit the store or not.
I also thought about including routing to the stores, but google charges a lot for these result, so instead for every store you can see a link "Show directions in Google Maps".
To be honest I think Discogs never had an interest in increasing offline sales for record stores. When they started vinylhub, they wanted to get closer to the record stores and hoped that the stores would put their records online. Then corona came and all the stores had to do this anyway to survive, so Discogs somehow saved many stores. But now many stores had online offerings on discogs, and so there was no reason to keep vinylhub alive. Because, as I said, Discogs had absolutely no interest to increace offline sales for physical record stores. So they stopped that project.
