Science & Technology

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.”