Record Store Day gives music stores a new reason to celebrate
VANCOUVER — Independent record stores across Canada are gearing up to celebrate the first Record Store Day on Saturday, with dozens of in-house performances and a national contest to find the best indie music vendor in Canada.
Record Store Day is the brainchild of a collective of media store owners in the U.S. that wanted to draw attention to the plight of independent record stores hit by a drop in CD sales and an industry supposedly wrecked by the Internet.
CBC Radio 3 host Grant Lawrence, who hosts a popular podcast devoted to independent Canadian music, came up with the idea for a concurrent contest in this country - Searchlight.
"I wanted to celebrate the entrepreneurs and these small businesses, the moms and the pops, that against all odds are surviving. Some are hanging on by a thread, and some are thriving," he says.
Lawrence says he's been astounded by the response, which has seen 47 nominees whittled down to five finalists for the title of Best Record Store in Canada.
"When we started, we sat around and said, 'This'll be fun, but it'll obviously be Zulu in Vancouver and Rotate This in Toronto, and nobody else stands a chance.' I don't know whether those stores' cash registers are ringing too loudly and they're too busy, but this has turned into a total underdog contest that has completely surprised everyone."
With the exception of Edmonton's Sound Exchange, Canada's large cities are absent from the top 5, which also includes Backstreet Records in Saint John, N.B.; Back Alley Music in Charlottetown; Taz Records in Halifax; and Meow Records in Prince George, B.C.
A winner will be announced Friday.
Bryndis Ogmundson, the 30-year-old owner of freshly minted Meow Records in the blue-collar northern B.C. logging city of Prince George, has her fingers crossed.
She wasn't swayed by rumours of the retail industry's decline when she opened Meow 16 months ago, despite a slew of closures by corporate stalwarts like MusicWorld.
"I, of course, saw all the statistics, all these indie stores closing, downloading this, downloading that. . . I just refused to believe it," Ogmundson said.
She went to university in Prince George and worked at the local campus radio station, where she heard the same refrain over and over again: "There's nowhere to buy good music here."
So, she says, she stuck around after finishing school and opened a record store.
"You can survive as long as you understand the niche and how to nurture it."
For example, those who think vinyl died when cassette tapes were introduced in the early '80s might be surprised to hear it's the traditional LP - which still sees a solid slate of releases - that Ogmundson has the most trouble keeping on her store shelves.
But not every record store is chirping with good news.
"For us, this is the worst time since the recession in the '80s," says Mark Logan, the owner of Encore Records in Kitchener, Ont.
To deal with fewer people coming through the doors, Logan says his store has found niches that aren't serviced by the box stores. That, and service, service, service.
"If you come in looking for something, chances are I can get it faster than Amazon, for a relatively comparable price, and I think that's the one thing that saved our asses," he said.
That commitment to service is something Eric Levin knows well.
Levin is one of the founders of Record Store Day, and the owner of Criminal Records in Atlanta, which boasts an in-house label, booking services for bands and a coffee shop. It's all part of his vision for the modern record store, he says.
"It's a cultural temple, a curated selection of awesomeness," he says. "(Stores) have got to be deep, deeply involved in their city, their community. If it is not the place where musicians work, where art happens, then it's doomed to failure."
"If you're engaging, if your place is a social scene, you can't lose."
