Clint Harris is sitting behind the counter at Heavy Sounds, his West End Arcade music shop, when David Rose bounds in. David, who owns Eric Rose's Music Inn at the other end of the arcade, is ordering a shipment of CDs from EMI. He wants to know if Clint needs anything. They often double up on orders to keep down costs.

All this sounds more normal than it necessarily looks.

David's neatly trimmed beard and jumper worn over a collared shirt gives him a pleasantly professorial look – the sort of fellow who would know which recordings need to go into a definitive collection of jazz tenor sax legend Dexter Gordon's works (minutes later when he's back in his shop, that will in fact be the phone conversation he's having with a customer). Among the posters in David's shop window is one for a new Friday jazz night at Edin's cafe in Hockley.

The posters in Clint's shop windows include several promoting Motörhead's November gig in Nottingham. His attire leans heavily on the colour black. If you wanted to discuss the relative merits of Trivium, Slipknot and Marilyn Manson being on the bill at the Download Festival, he's your man.

Their client bases do not often intersect. And they'd be all for more music sellers in the arcade between Long Row and Upper Parliament Street.

"We'd love a reggae store to come in or a punk store," Clint said. "The more, the merrier. It would be really cool if there were a lot of specialists in here."

Heavy Sounds, which Clint opened just over a year ago, is the newest of Nottingham's small independent music shops. Eric Rose's Music Inn, which has operated in one form or another since David's great-grandfather first opened a music shop in 1919, is the oldest.

Recent news has not been good. Last week Selectadisc, the king of Nottingham music shops, announced it would close at the end of March. Phil Barton bought Selectadisc when it was threatened with closure two years ago and has pumped money into a venture that has not made any since. He notes that there were more than 1,000 independent music shops a decade ago in Britain. Last year, it was just over 400. Now, there's barely 300.

But in Nottingham, other independents are surviving: Funky Monkey, Mushimushi Records, Anarchy Records, Ohmygosh Records, Heavy Sounds, Eric Rose's Music Inn, Crucial Music Store, Classical CDs and Good Vibrations are among those who remain.

So how are they doing it? Well, a plan hatched by long-time Selectadisc manager Jim Cooke offers a clue. Mr Barton has given him rights to use the Selectadisc name, and he's looking for a smaller premises to try a new shop. Other shops are specifically not trying to get too big or broad.

"We specialise in dance music and we're starting to do more secondhand stuff now, whereas Selectadisc was pretty much everything known to man," said Dave Boultbee, manager at Funky Monkey in Hockley. Like many others, the shop has appealed to specialist collectors by going online.

"We find that we've got quite a few repeat customers online," he said, adding that they come from across Europe and as far away as Brazil and Australia. "I'd say that online trade is at least 50% of our business."

David Rose has similar advantages.

"We're quite happy with things because we're a specialist," he said, adding that high-street chains don't stock much niche music. "We've always specialised and I'm glad we have."

Although he has younger customers, David's typical client tends to be middle-aged and older.

"The age group of a lot of my customers – many of them don't have computers," he said. "Or they don't want to be giving someone their credit card over the internet."

Richard Gibson, owner of Classical CD on High Pavement in the Lace Market, agrees.

"Our age profile tends to be people of middle age to upwards," he said. "It always has been."

But both agree that discomfort with online shopping isn't the only reason for success.

"People who buy classical music – and I suspect this goes to any speciality music – like having it on the shelves," Richard said.

Smaller shops can offer a personal touch, David Rose said. "It's such a small business that we can get to know people by name."

Other local shops depend on age groups more at home in the world of downloads.

"My music, it's for the younger urban type," said Daddy Crucial, who runs Crucial Music Store next door to Classical CD and hosts a weekly reggae programme on Kemet Radio. "And the R&B seems to be so easy to download."

Nevertheless, he gets plenty of business from people who want hard-to-find reggae and soul – either the proper old stuff or albums that haven't yet had a mainstream release.

"I've got the current albums – they're collecting dust," he said. "What sells is the really, really old stuff or the brand new."

Many of his customers, he said, are students "looking for reggae music that was out when they were babies and when they weren't even born".

Clint also extols the virtues of a more streamlined approach.

"If you focus on one thing, it narrows down the stock, the expertise you need to have, the staff," he said. "Here, it's just me."

Many of these small shops are not exactly in prominent, high-footfall streets. When you rely on word-of-mouth and return customers more than heavy drop-in traffic, less rent for less exposure is a good trade-off.

A few different products that fit in well with your musical theme can be a good idea.

Crucial Music and Eric Rose's Music Inn do a good business in DVDs. Both offer live concert DVDs while the Music Inn has hard-to-find older documentaries. Crucial, meanwhile, stocks Caribbean and African-American films and comedies.

Anarchy Records, a secondhand shop in Mansfield Road, sells clothes, books and magazines.

"People come in and maybe their partner's not into records," said Anarchy owner Rob Taylor. "But they're into vintage clothes, or books and magazines. We're sort of organised, but not so organised it's boring."