Record shop chain Fopp is set to close its Glasgow Byres Road branch, following wrangles over rent for the property.

The shop was already earmarked for closure earlier this year during a string of cuts to shops in the collapsed HMV / Fopp music chain.

However, following a pubic outcry and support from Scottish musicians, new owners Sunrise Music relented and the store was given another year’s lease.

Closing down signs appeared in the shop’s windows on Christmas Eve with the premises set to finally shut up shop on Burns Night – January 25th.

A string of ‘closing down’ signs have appeared in HMV stores across the UK with Bury St Edmunds, Nuneaton, Grimsby, Worcester and Plymouth all seemingly set to close on the same day as Byres Road’s Fopp. Fopp’s name vanished from Bristol earlieer this year, and HMV in Leeds seems to be going through a landlord dispute similar to that experienced in Glasgow’s West End.

The Byres Road branch holds a special place in the history of the Fopp chain – being just round the corner from the place where it all began, founder Gordon Montgomery establishing the business in 1981 as a stall in nearby De Courcy’s Arcade .

However, Fopp went into administration in 2007 when it was bought by HMV, which itself hit financial troubles and was bought out of administration in February 2019 by Canadian firm Sunrise Records

The takeover saved 1,487 jobs across the UK, but 27 stores were earmarked for closure, including in Ayr and the Braehead shopping centre – and the later to be reprieved Byres Road Fopp branch.