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Criminal Records to Close Up Shop in July
In the same week we learned that the Annex’s musical beacon, Sonic Boom records, would be forced out of its current location to move around the corner into a street-level space in Honest Eds’ sprawling monster location, Toronto just lost another of its independent music retailers—only this time, there’s no happy ending.
Criminal Records (493 Queen Street West) announced today via Twitter and Myspace that they would be closing their doors next month. Their full note:
To our dear friends and customers,
Due to failed negotiations and reasons of a very personal nature, Criminal Records will be canceling our plans to renovate and instead will be closing our doors.
We hope you all understand that this has nothing to do with poor business, as we have enjoyed record sales that have gone up every single year. In our dreams, we could have never anticipated that we would be selling this much music in 2011.
What makes this so hard is losing the relationships we have forged. Many of you have become far more than customers; you have become our friends and family. Toronto is blessed with one of the best music scenes in the world. We hope all of you will continue to record shop in our city’s amazing music stores, and we will no doubt see you as we both flip through the racks in great stores like Soundscapes, Sonic Boom, Rotate This, Hits & Misses, etc…
We intend to close our doors for good by the end of July and will be liquidating our stock until then. We hope you will all come by to say your goodbyes and take part in some amazing record sales. As they say, “everything must go!” and “all good things must come to an end”.
Yours in music,
Criminal Records.
And thanks to you too, Criminal. Your enviable T-shirt displays (and general greatness) will be missed.
