About Tracks & Tales - Tracks & Tales

About Tracks & Tales

We traded our attention for convenience.

Endless playlists, infinite skipping — music became something that happens while we do something else. Tracks & Tales exists for the people who feel that loss, and for the rooms that answer it.

What we do.

We find the places where sound is treated with care — listening bars, hi-fi cafés, sound-first restaurants, rooms designed around a record — and we map them. 171 countries. 6,465 cities. Every venue assessed against one standard, from London to Tokyo.

Think of it as the Michelin Guide to Listening — if such a thing existed.

How the guide stays honest.

No ads. No paid placements. No venue can buy its way in — not a listing, not a Star, not a kinder sentence. Reviews are anonymous, the criteria are published, and Stars can be gained, held, or lost as venues evolve. We'd rather be small than wrong.

The Listening Club.

The guide finds you the room; the club is the ritual. One album a month, all the way through, together — a listening session on vinyl, hosted from one room to members worldwide, capped at 200 Founding Members.

Who's behind it.

Tracks & Tales is written by Rafi Mercer — a life spent in record shops, listening rooms, and the quieter corners of the music business. It's independent and self-funded, built page by page, and shaped by its readers: the contributors who submit venues, the Ambassadors who assess them, the members who listen together every month.

Where it goes.

It begins online — deliberately, carefully — gathering the right people. In time, physical rooms: real spaces shaped around sound. Every city with a map. Every venue treating music as an experience, not an afterthought.

That's the whole plan. Slower than most. Built to last.