Betting on the black circle

Local stores talk the resurgence of vinyl

It’s a good time for Guelph record collectors.

Royal Cat Records has a new storefront downtown, The Beat Goes On now sells both new and used vinyl, and Sunrise Records features a prominent vinyl display. We asked Steve De Taeye of The Beat Goes On and Amber Stevens of Royal Cat Records about the vinyl renaissance and why their stores are taking the plunge.

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Steve De Taeye: “The initial jumping off point was me buying this giant collection of used records and distributing them among three of the 10 [Beat Goes On] stores as a trial run. Within the first week it spilled into all 10 stores. Everything just took off so well.”

Amber Stevens: “People of all ages are getting into it. People who collected for years, gave it up. A lot of younger people maybe didn’t have that experience of having music as a tactile thing.”

SDT: “People our parents’ age that collected records in the ’70s and ’80s — I’m saying this in a joking way — got duped. ‘Records are done, CDs are the future.’ They parted ways with their records, sold them at yard sales, donated them to Goodwills. And now a lot of those people are buying a turntable again.”

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AS: “A lot of the new vinyl is pressed a lot thicker. Generally, it’s better quality. But I really like vintage vinyl. There’s something about holding the album that came out then, imagining the journey it went through to get into your hands.”

SDT: “It’s not like record shops closed at one point in time and just reopened all of a sudden. Some shops in Toronto, for example — Sonic Boom, Rotate This — have been going for 30 plus years. They went through the ’90s recession selling records.”

AS: “I like to think it’s something that’s going to last. There are die-hard collectors that have never ever given it up. Maybe this newer generation will create a whole bunch more.”

Photo by Gennelle Cruz