“Into The Music opened on July 17th, 1987 at 801 Corydon Avenue (now Selim’s Antiques). Six hundred square feet held my own record collection of about 2000 LPs and maybe 100 cassettes. I had a beautiful antique showcase and unpainted record bins made by a cabinet builder friend Gary Dehls (listen to “Loose” Fridays from 10am to 11). CDs had only just been introduced a couple years prior and vinyl was still king.
Even then we were rethinking the role of a purely second hand record store. We were clean and organized, with a compact selection of stock short on junk (who wants to look at it) and long on gems. We sported the first listening stations and soon, the first used CDs in town too. We even served a coffee and tea, a sort of pre-coffee bar hang out and for a time, while the store was half empty, we leased a wall of space to a used book seller who specialized in literature, philosophy and religion.
By the summer of 1990 we outgrew Corydon and found a much larger space at the ghetto end of the Osborne Village. 167 Osborne Street was our home for 13 years and this was when the store really started to grow and gain in reputation. CDs began to grow into the largest part of our business. We started to bring in good quantities of deletes from The USA, and also started to bring in new releases, mostly imported rock, punk, blues and jazz. New vinyl releases were at a low point and the fear was they would disappear altogether (along with turntables, stylus’s, turntable repairs etc). Incredibly, people started dumping their LP collections and in many ways the early to mid 90s were the best time ever for used stock coming in. In 1999, we were nominated and won the Best Retail Store for the prairie provinces during the Prairie Music Awards.
In 2003 we were not able to agree on a new lease at Osborne and we eventually found our present location. With the new Red River Campus three blocks away and about to open, the buildings around us filling up with new and established businesses and better prospects for parking than our Osborne location we were off to the races. With a bit of luck we were able to hire Andy Morton (formally of HMV, Musicplexx and Records On Wheels) and Barb Stewart (CKUW DJ and music writer) for the opening of our McDermot location on November 11th, 2003. For the store re-opening I reinvested my home record and CD collections along with a number of other sizable record purchases. With new staff and lots of incredible stock this was definitely a time of rebirth.
Early summer of 2008 sees the introduction of our new website and a refocusing on what makes us a great shopping experience: moving toward expanding our new Vinyl selection, the introduction of our own list of CD “Collection Cornerstones” (and yes, we stock ‘em too) and moving towards doing more business online.
—Greg Tonn”
