A pedestrian walks along Queen Street West in Toronto on Sept. 7, 2010. (Flickr / latigi project)

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Customers checking out at Sonic Boom Music, a 14,000-square-foot record shop in Toronto, April 15, 2010.

CTV.ca

A key episode in Jay Ferguson’s music career came about when, at age 12, he landed a job at a small record shop in Halifax.

“Another guy got fired while I was in the store,” Ferguson recalls. “So the owner looked at me and was like ‘do you want a job?’”

He worked at the store for the next four years, immersed in music by artists such as Elvis Costello, The Kinks and The Who. Those years changed his life.

“Working in that environment opened up a whole other world of music to me. I just really fell in love with it and wanted to play in a band ever since,” Ferguson said. “Everything else went by the wayside.”

Nearly three decades later, Ferguson and his bandmates from veteran power-pop quartet Sloan are joining dozens, perhaps hundreds of bands around the world by playing a free in-store concert on Saturday, in a collective gesture of support for the embattled neighbourhood record shop.

The performances are being held as part of Record Store Day, an annual campaign held on the third Saturday of April. This is a day to remind music listeners that, in the face of changes wracking the recording industry, independent music retailers would love their support.

More than 1,400 stores are participating in this year’s festivities, mostly in the United States and Britain. About 70 Canadian shops are taking part, including Vancouver’s Zulu Records and Sonic Boom in Toronto, where Ferguson will be playing with Sloan.

Record Store Day was dreamed up three years ago by Chris Brown, an employee at a New England indie music shop. Since then it has grown into a major international undertaking.

A long list of industry giants including The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Velvet Underground, R.E.M. and Emmylou Harris are marking this year’s event with limited edition releases available only at independent record stores.

“It seems to have grown at a phenomenal rate,” says Spencer Hickman, a spokesperson for the event who runs Rough Trade East, a three-year-old record shop in London, England. “But I work in a busy store so I know how much people love record shops still.”

Industry changes

The Internet has visited sweeping changes on the recording industry, changes that are still playing out and that no one seems to fully understand yet.

Many specialized independent record shops, particularly in major cities, say they’re doing well. Others are closing their doors due to competition from music piracy, online retailers and big-box stores.

The number of indie record shops in Britain dropped from 734 in 2005 to 269 last year, according to the Independent Retailers Association. An estimated 3,000 stores sell recorded music in the United States, down from 12,000 a decade ago.

In Canada, sales of compact discs and vinyl fell nearly 7 per cent last year while digital sales jumped 42 per cent, mirroring changes in other markets. Business is quickly migrating online to outlets like iTunes, which boasted in February that it had sold an astonishing 10 billion songs.

Phil Gallo, an American journalist who has been writing about music for 25 years and co-authored a new book called “Record Store Days,” says neighbourhood music retailers are still coping with industry decisions that were taken more than a decade ago.

In the 1990s, the major labels embraced large chain stores as a way to sell huge volumes of “hit” CDs, ignoring small independent shops, Gallo said. Then the Internet collapsed the market.

But record labels such as Warner Music are starting to pay attention to small retailers again, he said, because they’re learning that such shops “drive the pace, either in the types of music or how it’s sold.”

“I think they’re starting to realize how vital they are to telling them what consumers want.”

Bouncing back?

If the 21st century has been tough on brick-and-mortar music shops so far, Record Store Day might be a sign of better times ahead.

EMI, Universal Music and Warner Bros. Records are among the event’s sponsors in the U.S., and Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said the date will be officially recognized in New York City.

Audiophiles are also turning to vinyl records in greater numbers, a format that many independent music shops never stopped stocking. In the U.S., vinyl sales shot up 33 per cent last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Still, in the Internet age, big questions loom over many independent retailers, particularly those outside major markets like Toronto or Montreal.

“We’re a dying breed,” said Chris Boyne, an employee at Encore Records in Kitchener, Ont. “I mean it’s sustainable for now. But who knows?”

On Record Store Day in 2009, there was a line-up out the door of the 29-year-old shop, he said. But overall, sales have been dropping since he started working at Encore six years ago.

“We all love good music, and we like to try and share it with people,” Boyne said. “You can find that stuff on the Internet by yourself. But it’s not the same — it’s really not.”

Customers browse through rows of vinyl records at Rotate This in Toronto, Thursday, Dec. 3, 2009.

CTV.ca

Carlin Nicholson is itching to get his hands on the test pressing, or vinyl prototype, of his band’s debut album. It’s currently being mastered in Los Angeles and should arrive next week, he said.

In a few months, the 12-track LP by Zeus, Nicholson’s Toronto-based rock band, will be released in North America, Japan and Europe through indy music label Arts & Crafts.

In keeping with the band’s preferred medium, the vinyl LP will hit store shelves two weeks ahead of the compact disc. And the downloadable version of the album will be recorded from the vinyl master, making the tracks sound more like a good old fashioned record.

“Really, we’ve been looking forward to vinyl the whole time,” Nicholson said by phone from a recording studio in the city’s east end. “If it’s about listening to music, then it’s got to be about music that sounds as good as it can.”

Thanks to devoted fans of vinyl LPs in the indy music scene, and to DJs who have been spinning electronic music or hip hop on their turntables, the record has survived on the fringes of the music industry for years.

But that may be changing as artists, listeners, technology companies and record labels come back around to the music format that dominated the 20th century.

Yearly vinyl sales are on course to surpass 2008′s total by 37 per cent, according to Nielsen Soundscan, which tracks music sales at 14,000 vendors across Canada and the U.S.

Last month, Soundscan announced that vinyl LP sales broke the two million mark for the first time since the company started keeping tabs in 1991.

The market may be significantly larger, however, because Soundscan excludes many independently owned retailers that stock vinyl, as well as second-hand sales.

‘Obsessive’ listeners

Brian Zirk has been listening to records for decades. About three years ago he decided to beef up his collection, now 3,000 strong, by searching his Vancouver Island community, and the Internet, for anyone selling used rock, jazz and blues records.

“It’s quite obsessive. Always looking for that perfect sound I guess,” Zirk said in a phone interview from Campbell River, B.C., where he runs an audio-video equipment store.

The 50-year-old owns several turntables and eschews the MP3 format, describing it as “the scourge of the world” because it offers inferior sound.

“There’s more colourations to the vinyl,” he added. “It’s a better way of listening, it’s more personal.”

Catering to the small but growing base of consumers with Zirk’s tastes, manufacturers are bringing new turntables to market.

“Certainly in recent years there’s been an upswing in sales,” said Simon Wilson, the manager at Audio Ark, an Edmonton store that sells audio and video systems. “Quite possibly we stock a greater variety of turntables than we did back in vinyl’s heyday.”

To stand out from the competition, some newer models come with USB ports, allowing vinyl fans to connect the turntable to their computer and digitize their collection.

“There seems to be a growing number of younger people who are getting interested in the format,” Wilson wrote in an email. “It’s almost as if they’re content with the iPod for digital but, at least presently, make a stronger connection with the whole ritual of playing a record.”

Turning the tables

When the compact disc was introduced in 1982, it seemed like the writing on the beginning of the end for vinyl LPs. And as recently as 2006, vinyl sales were dropping steadily.

Canada lost its only remaining commercial record press two years later, when the long-time operator of a plant in Pickering, Ont., retired.

“We were having trouble finding someone to take over physically running the operation,” said Lindsay Gillespie, president of Music Manufacturing Service, which owned the factory.

Then vinyl sales started to rebound, and a new vinyl press called Rip-V opened in the Montreal suburb of St. Lambert, Que. It’s currently pressing a new live album by Tom Waits.

Meanwhile, CD sales dropped more than 20 per cent in Canada last year, according to the Canadian Recording Industry Association.

Even though vinyl still makes up a tiny fraction of the overall market for music, devotees are asking whether their beloved analog medium will outlive, or even help bring down the CD.

Staff at Rotate This, a music store in downtown Toronto that arguably has the largest vinyl selection in the city, estimates they now move at least 10 records for every compact disc.

Vinyl sales at Vancouver’s Zulu Records are up at least 30 per cent compared to a few years ago, and are now on par with CD sales, the store’s general manager, Nicholas Bragg, told CTV.

“A lot of record labels are thinking, ‘well, we’ve got to make up these losses that we’re incurring with CD sales,’ and I think that they’ve looked to the niche market of records,” Bragg said.

“In some ways (records) are going to become the most vital part of the market, because it’s analog and because it represents something different than the MP3 format,” he added. “I’ve got to be frank — it’s cool, too.”