1. Into the Music
2. Music Trader
3. War on Music

26-year-old Into the Music was voted reader's favourite—and store owner Greg Tonn demonstrates attentiveness to people's needs.  When told ITM won, he credits buyers. “We want to say thanks to people who have been our customers.”  A graduate of Red River College in Business Administration, he emphasizes, “It's not just about moving stock—it's about paying attention to people's experience in the store.”

ITM is the biggest and best-organized store selling vinyl records in Winnipeg. You can get everything from a rare, first edition of Buddy Holly's That'll be the Day to the brand-new Pearl Jam album.

“One of the reasons we've survived for 26 years is not just that we have this amazing love for music, but also because we're a business.”  For Tonn, that means matching the scale of your supply to the scale of your demand, and adding in research and constant change.

He describes the success of vinyl through the 1990s into the digital era as a result of DJs.  “This idea of the modern club DJ is a symbol of cool...The DJ is a romantic notion.”  He says when downloading became normal, these artists helped make vinyl stores successful, along with collectors.

“If your product is cool, what do you do when it's not cool?” Tonn asks rhetorically.  “We try and focus on the collectible aspect.  Collectors are people that build their collection.”

The store's best-selling albums this year were Jack White's Blunderbuss and Mumford and Sons' Babel.  The best-selling albums that were not new recordings were the fourteen rereleased Beatles albums—with the White Album at the top of the list. The best-selling local album was Royal Canoe's Today We're Believers. The music played most in-store by staff was from Charles Bradley's new album Victim of Love. Tonn predicts next year's best seller will be the new Arcade Fire record.

Part of the series: The Uniter 30

Published in Volume 68, Number 14 of The Uniter (December 4, 2013)