The end of End Hits
photo by Vanessa Burguete
End of the line: Dalhousie Street record store End Hits closes its doors.
Local record store goes down
THIS MARCH 13 marks the end of yet another record store in Ottawa’s downtown core. In a few weeks, Dalhousie Street’s independent, alternative music store End Hits will be closing its doors only two days after its fourth anniversary. The store, which has come to be an institution in local music promotion, has fallen victim to the repercussions of the technological age; but despite consistent popularity with local musicians and music lovers over the years, owner Mike Ward is not surprised to witness the death of his shop so soon.
From the top
End Hits opened in the wake of the 2006 closure of Record Runner, another alternative music store. When Record Runner’s owner couldn’t find another location that met his needs after his Rideau Street store was closed to build apartments, former employee Dave Ward and local concert promoter Shawn Scallen acted on their idea to open a smaller store to fill the niche.
Now the owner of End Hits, Ward describes the initial decision to open the store in an email to the Fulcrum.
“Once I knew that Record Runner wasn’t going to open another store downtown, it just sort of made sense for us to give it a shot,” he wrote. “It’s something I’ve always wanted to do and at the time it still seemed viable.”
The decision to sell tickets to shows was also part of the original idea for the start-up.
“We ran a company called Revolution Rock as well that did a large percentage of live music events in the city, and we saw how many tickets Record Runner sold. Once that location was gone, people were going to have to get tickets somewhere and it was a perfect way to get people into the store,” Ward explained.
Once Ward and Scallen found their Dalhousie Street space, with its locally infamous basement concert venue, a whole new opportunity opened up for them.
“When we looked into this location we saw the basement and were immediately into the idea of having shows,” Ward said. “It was just something we were both into, and it made the store different from all the others.”
With the venue set up, End Hits quickly became the favourite record store in Ottawa, winning the award for best record store in the Xpress’ annual readers’ poll. End Hits first won that distinction the year it opened, and maintains it to this day.
The end
Considering End Hits is the seventh record store to close in Ottawa in four years, it’s clear independent music stores can no longer survive as lucrative businesses. Ward explained the decision to bring End Hits to an end didn’t come as a surprise.
“From the day we opened [End Hits] we knew it had a limited lifespan,” he said. “[This has] been a dying industry for a while now, and we were always aware of that.”
In response to news of the closure, dedicated customers and disappointed fans have reacted on the End Hits MySpace page with angry critiques of the product prices and impersonal experience of buying from web retailers like Amazon.com and iTunes.
When Music World closed a little over a year ago, larger stores like Best Buy were held responsible. The same accusations flew when Record Runner and CD Exchange closed up shop downtown, and are being revisited again in relation to End Hits.
“I think Best Buy and HMV, and those [types] of big box stores, have shifted the way [that] they sell music—or more so the type of music they sell. When we opened, they weren’t much of a factor because they didn’t really sell or focus on what we were specializing in,” explained Ward.
“Now they have albums by bands like Spoon, The xx, and High On Fire for dirt cheap and it forces us to either lose sales to them or lose any profits we would make off of those titles just to keep up the appearance of being able to compete.”
As a result of these combined forces, Ward and Scallen are giving in to the inevitable and closing up shop.
Moving on
Despite the store’s closing, Ward remains optimistic about Ottawa’s music scene.
“The music scene is great in Ottawa. I don’t think the store closing is any indication of the music scene here; [it’s] just more an indication of how the way people buy music is changing.”
As for his future plans, Ward is still in the process of finding a new direction. Both he and Scallen are still involved with running businesses that work to bring more shows to Ottawa and highlight the local music scene. Scallen is also still running punkottawa.com, a website that lists shows, regular venues, and bands, in addition to keeping active discussion boards and updating fans often with local music news.
Still, being the latest in a long line of record stores that have closed in the city in a short span of time, End Hits represents another significant loss for the local music scene.
“In the past [four] years, it has been a hub of local and underground music for the city of Ottawa,” reads a blog post on the store’s MySpace page.
On March 13, the city will watch as another one bites the dust.
