Fingerprints Music

Fingerprints Music is a five-thousand-square-foot record store on Atlantic Avenue in Long Beach that has been one of the most respected independent music retailers in Southern California since 1992, and its in-store concert series has made it a live performance destination in its own right. Owner Rand Foster has built Fingerprints around a philosophy of community, curation, and connection: the store carries thousands of new and used records, CDs, cassettes, and 8-tracks ranging from hits to obscurities, and the staff's depth of knowledge is as much a feature as the inventory itself. Live at Fingerprints, the in-store performance series, brings artists of all scales into the shop for intimate sets that put performers directly in front of a crowd that showed up specifically to hear them in one of the most personal settings a record store can offer. The series has hosted an extraordinary range of artists over the years, from local debut performers to nationally touring acts doing exclusive in-store appearances. Record release events, listening parties, and signing sessions round out a calendar that keeps the store as active a cultural space as any dedicated venue in the city. The experience of seeing a show at Fingerprints is unlike a club date: the audience is standing in the aisles between vinyl bins, you are close enough to the performer to count the strings on their guitar, and the room is filled with people who actively love music in the way that only regular record store visitors tend to. For Long Beach, Fingerprints is not just a store; it is a musical institution with a three-decade track record of bringing people and music together in the right spirit.