[1]The Sam the Record Man store in the Quinte Mall is the last remaining outlet of the once-mighty record-store chain. Owner Spencer Destun says vinyl records make up a small but steady portion of the store’s sales. Photo by Martin Allen
By Martin Allen
BELLEVILLE – The shelves of Spencer Destun’s record store are surprisingly similar to what they were in 1979 when Destun, then 39, was stocking them with LPs by Frank Zappa and George Harrison, and Pink Floyd’s groundbreaking album The Wall.
Today you can still find vinyl albums at his store, the only remaining Sam the Record Man in Canada. Lined up in the middle of the shop, vinyl is next to new retro-look record players, a throwback to the days before digital.
Destun, now 74, spends his time in the cluttered back room of his Quinte Mall shop among boxes, piles of paper and CDs. He owns and operates the store with his wife, Holly, and their son Krystofer.
[2]Sam’s owner Spencer Destun in the crowded back room of his store. Destun says he thinks vinyl records may be making a comeback because of their sound quality. Vinyl “has a warm feel to it,” he said. Photo by Martin Allen
Big red letters that proudly say SAM on the storefront are a reminder of a once-mighty empire. Destun attributes the store’s longevity to staying true to the formula of the flagship store that once lit up Yonge Street in Toronto.
“Hard work. Outwork your competition,” he says of the winning formula. “Reward customer loyalty and please the customer.”
Destun said DVDs and Blu-rays account for 60 per cent of his sales and CDs 36 per cent, with 2 per cent of sales from vinyl. The customers who come in to buy vinyl range in age from 20 to 60, he said.
Peter Reedyk, owner of the Chumleighs store in downtown Belleville, says vinyl sales make up 2 per cent of total sales in his shop too.
According to Amazon U.K., vinyl sales have skyrocketed 745 per cent since 2008 in the United Kingdom. The Recording Industry Association of America reported that in 2012, vinyl sales saw a 29-per-cent increase from the previous year. Vinyl currently makes up 2 per cent of all music sales in the U.S., according to the association.
The loyalty of vinyl listeners is one reason Destun and Chumleighs keep selling it.
“There is a consistent group of people who buy vinyl,” said Reedyk, adding that this may have something to do with vinyl’s sound quality. “It has a better, true sound to it. Destun agreed, saying that vinyl “has a warm feeling to it.”
But not everyone agrees. Greg Schatzmann began his career in radio spinning vinyl on two turntables at CJGL, then the only FM radio station in Swift Current, Sask., in 1983. Asked about the sound of vinyl vs. digital, Schatzmann said, “I don’t really see a difference,” though he added, “Some audiophiles might.”
He fondly remembers how radio stations worked in the days before digital.
“Back then, the station had to be manned by someone” 24 hours a day, he said. “Now it’s all done digitally, and organized like that.”
Schatzmann said vinyl records would often be subject to cue burn – indentations caused by a DJ repeatedly cueing up a song on the record – and would have to be replaced. Even so, he does have fond memories of them.
“I have a soft spot for vinyl. Nostalgia,” said Schatzmann, now an instructor in the Radio Broadcasting program at Loyalist College and station manager at Loyalist’s 91X FM.
His format of choice is iTunes, much like his students. He sometimes shows them a vinyl record and talks about how a radio station was managed in the time before digital. His students often look baffled, as if the equipment is alien, he said.
“It’s foreign to them,” Schatzmann said with a chuckle.
The reinvigorated interest in vinyl is a nostalgic one, he said: “People got rid of (their records); now they’re rebuilding a collection.”
Back at Sam’s, Destun reports that National Record Store Day, an event in April to celebrate music shops, was a big hit at the store. Forty customers bought vinyl that day, and he got a lot of special orders.
“It was young guys, too, under 30. They didn’t grow up with records,” he said, adding that he thinks those under-30s are getting tired of overproduced digital sounds.
“I learned from my teaching days (Destun taught high school from 1974 to 1997) that you can fool a kid the first day. You can fool him the second. But you can’t fool him the third.
“Kids don’t want the same repeatedly processed songs coming out of a machine over and over again.”