Post-punk, dark-wave… Music store has survived for 30 years in Porto thanks to “very loyal niche”

It grew up during the decline of vinyl and the widespread use of CDs, and the emergence of the Internet and piracy was a ‘break’. Remains to this day, with a vision naive and a focus on punk and gothic music, on the “500 thousand aspects” of metal. More recently, in its subgenres — darkwave, synthpop, “all that stuff”.

The music store, which celebrates 30 years this month, resists in Porto thanks to a “very small niche” of customers who “are very loyal”, he told Lusa Miguel Teixeiraowner of the space located in Centro Comercial Itália.

At the end of the shopping arcade, on Rua de Júlio Dinis, you can hear the Sisters of Mercy by the hand of Armando Marquesa worker at Piranha, and Miguel Teixeira arrives to tell the story of his workplace, which is also his passion.

“I am the owner of the store, I originally founded it in 1995at the time I wasn’t alone, I was with other people who have since left”, he tells Lusa, recalling that At first it was called Carbonthe result of a partnership with a store in Lisbon.

At the time, Miguel Teixeira was “a Carbon consumer and he went to Lisbon a few times to buy music, not only there but also in other places, having “the idea of ​​creating the store” almost “as if it were a branch of Carbono” in Porto.

Although, Piranha’s origins run even deeperdating back to the time of ‘fanzines’, namely the Peresgotic by Miguel Teixeira, and the collaboration with New Era radio, then pirate radiofrom the end of the 80s.

“They invited me to have a program, if I wanted, and I was never an announcerI never had a voice in this, I had to learn something, and that’s it, I started making a program, I did several. The one that lasted the longest and the best known was a program called ‘The Blind Man’s Arc‘. This program alone lasted more than 10 years in Nova Era, so it is something significant”, he reports.

As a result of his activity in the musical world, Miguel Teixeira “received a lot of promotional material”, at a time when thethings worked differentlyand at a time when the Internet, in Portugal, was little more than a utopia.

“I remember there was a Contact a publisher in Switzerland in which they had a catalog with hundreds and hundreds of recorded band concerts and then we traded that, but that was just ‘trading,’ ‘trading’ really”, without money to the mixture. “It was music for the sake of music that we lived in. There wasn’t any kind of business”, he says.

With exposure to different realities abroad that later arrived in Portugal, Miguel “I had a lot of trouble finding music wanted”, an obvious question arises.

“Why, instead of publishing this elsewhere, why don’t I actually do this, if this is what I want and this is what I like?”, he then asked himself.

Like this Carbono appears in Portowhose name remained for a few years until it was transform into Piranhaas Porto and Lisbon ended, according to Miguel Teixeira, due to not having “the same business vision”.

“They had a business vision and we didn’t have a vision – maybe we were but ‘naive’ – properly the music business. We wanted to be a bit… not elitist, because I don’t think we ever were, but a little more alternative and explore a niche, because otherwise we would be like everyone else“, account.

The store grows at the time of the decline of vinyl and the popularization of CDsand this is still visible in the store today: if with the resurgence of vinyl in the last decade and a half many stores found themselves occupied by it, Piranha proudly maintains its ‘original moth’, very marked by the CDalthough open to all formats.

O ‘boom’ of the CD at Piranha “it was crazy” for “about 10 years”. “At that time, just to give you an idea, we had periods when we had to have one person at the door, because the store is small”, in which “two would leave and enter two people at a time“.

The emergence of the Internet, and with it, piracy, was a ‘break’ for Piranha, which today lives both from loyal customers and from online orders.

“Sustainable is stillotherwise we wouldn’t be here 30 years ago. We explored a niche and we have the perfect idea that it is a very small niche. But this very small niche, fortunately, is still very loyal”, he says, speaking of a legion that is not “fanatic in a bad sense”, but “faithful” and “who continues to like what is physical, what has quality”.

In terms of genres, Piranha focuses mainly on espectro do ‘post-punk’‘punk’, and gothic to the “500 thousand strands” of metal, and “more recently those subgenres – ‘darkwave’, ‘synthpop’, all that stuff“.

To mark 30 years, during the year they held “the presentation and launch of a book related to metal, called ‘The Fury of the Sky’” and also released the album by the Portuguese band Radiant Though.

In 2026, it is planned to holding an exhibition with the theme “30 years, 30 albums”, a “very personal” project based on Miguel and Armando’s taste, being “an exhibition with the covers of these albums”, in front of the store.

Piranha will also try to hold a meeting with some of the biggest representatives of ‘darkwave’ and ‘post-punk’ current, the Turkish She Past Away, who have a concert scheduled for Porto on January 23rd, and in Lisbon the following day.