Coda Music

I had no idea Coda Music still existed. It had been at least 10 years since I was last in a Coda. I thought that they went defunct. So imagine my surprise when I took a different path to my bus stop one morning and came across this store. I was going to give it a pass when I saw a «Vinyl room» advertised in the south-​facing window and immediately u-​turned.
They had a soundtracks section in the vinyl room and I immediately found one of the albums that I had been looking for (Basil Poledouris’ score to RoboCop) for a good price. It was a depressing morning up until that point, so it cheered me up discovering the store. I will definitely check it out again in the future.

La tiene es estupenda! Tienes un montón de vinilos y discos de todo tipo de música pero se centran mucho en música folk y sobre todo escocesa !!! Parada necesaria para los amantes de la música.

This place is great! It specializes in folk, indie, country, etc. The folks who work at the store were really helpful in picking out music. If you are looking for top hits, skip this place but you will anyway. If you like Americana, folk, world etc, give it a try. And if you are unsure why not stop in and support this business.

It’s a pretty good CD shop, if you’re looking for something in particular. One of my friends released a CD that was only available in the Tesco in my local home-​town, but I went into Coda and asked them about it and I had it within 2 days. Great!
The staff are really knowledgeable too, and if you want to find something new then this is definitely somewhere to come.

Wait a minute — what? Was I in the same shop as everyone else? I didn’t see any whale CDS!
Maybe my head was up my bum, but I don’t hold Coda in such contempt as the other reviewers seem to. Sure, it’s very specialised, but what’s wrong with that? Why must every music shop be one big olé homogenised mess? And some independent music shops miss the mark, sadly, because they try too hard to please the «super cool» indie kids.
I thought I knew about folk music until I stepped in here. The only artists I recognized were Linda Ronstadt, Stealer’s Wheel and Runrig. But aside from well own and popular folk artists, they have a very generous selection of Irish and Scottish bands, not to mention world music.
For tourists especially interested in picking up some new music, this would be a good place to look for traditional Scottish. The bands represented in here are real pioneering bands, so it’s more related to the Scottish folk scene than the crowd pleasing stereotypical CD’s you’ll find in tourists shops. If you’re particularly interested, they will dfeinitely have something more specialised.
I’m not as into folk music as I thought, clearly — but if you are, this is a good place to start.

Coda — no thanks.
I dont want to buy your crappy Napalean Nose Flute CD.
I dont want to by an album called ”The Slow and Aimiable Camel” by the African version of Billy Ray Cyrus.
I dont want to by ANYTHING even remotely associated with Billy Ray Cyrus.
No, I dont want to hear 33 different types of rainforest noises or whale songs.
NO, I dont want to listen to any form of local county music.
NOOOOOOOOO! I dont want to hear a bagpipe/​country/​death metal fusion band.
F*ck Off Coda.

We all know there are few things in life more satisfying than pointing out the shortcomings of others, so I’ll take great pleasure in highlighting how every other review of Coda has entirely missed the point. The shop is not aimed at 20 somethings who like Facebook and style bars, it’s aimed at ageing old hippies, who are in the zone when sitting cross-​legged in a dingy bedsit, out of their face on a cocktail of hallucinogenic drugs and Indonesian pan pipe music.
Coda provides a huge selection of nonsensical music /​noise for Edinburgh’s tree hugging fraternity, and even if they don’t provide the mind altering narcotics I’m sure they can tell you where to find someone who does. The shop fills it’s requirement perfectly, and so deserves no less than four stars.

I thought this was one of these cool independent music stores like Avalanche when I spotted it from across the road, and when I stepped in the door, it was.
However, this really isn’t my bag baby. In fact, I kind of fail to see who’s bag it is, exactly. Maybe a couple of hippies but not enough to merit a whole shop in this prime location dedicated to this.
If you like dingaling, dippy sort of tambourine tunes then this is for you! If not, HMV will have to suffice!

Maybe it’s because I have absolutely no interest in folk music but why is everything in this shop so ethnic and crap? How many rainforest plus tambourine CD’s have been made in the last 10 years? Too many.
Even though I have no idea how to save or not spend money wherever I go I couldn’t find a single thing in this shop that couldn’t be described as «wank» except for one CD by an Ethiopian saxophonist but really, that was pushing it a little bit.
I don’t mean to sound like an uncultured fascist, but how come this shop gets such a prime location in Edinburgh’s city centre but still only caters for the 1% of people who pretend to like this stuff?

If you are a folk and world music enthusiast, Coda is the shop for you. It covers a huge range of styles, from trad folk to new acoustic music, old favourites to the latest and greatest young prodigy of the folk world. New releases can be listened to at the listening booths, and the friendly staff will order in any album you can think of. Being one of the few dedicated folk music establishments around, this shop deserves your patronage!