Customers walking around inside Tonality Records would be forgiven for looking at Julian Seth-Wong and assuming he’s a high school student working there part time.

The baby face and youthful haircut could send them searching for the manager.

They wouldn’t have to look far. Seth-Wong in fact owns this west-end Toronto record store that specializes in independent labels and vinyl.

Just over a year ago, the 19-year-old launched Tonality Records, a short while after he’d given up pursuing a career as a classical pianist.

He operates his store out of a well-lit, 1,000-square-foot space near Dundas W. and Roncesvalles Ave., offering vinyl records by bands like Lemon Jelly and Tame Impala, and DJ Slow Magic. He’s also got a wall full of nifty-looking electric guitars, and his store has vintage-style amplifiers and record players, all in great condition and for sale — items on a true audiophile’s wish list.

The store carries about 3,000 record titles, and since launching in late 2014 has sold up to 15,000 records.

Seth-Wong says he does hear comments — “from amazement to cynicism” — from people that he’s young to be operating a business of this magnitude, but most people are supportive. “My passion for what I do and my commitment to the store really shows and dispels any idea that I’m only messing around.”

And he’s being taken seriously by businesses he deals with.

Gregory Van Bastelaar, a manager with Last Gang Records, a well-known indie label in Toronto that has sold millions of records, credits Seth-Wong for his enthusiasm and business savvy.

“Working with Tonality Records has been fantastic,” Van Bastelaar says. “Julian owns and operates a totally unique shop, featuring vinyl racks intensely curated by Julian himself.” Last Gang is one of the indie labels Seth-Wong’s store carries.

“Julian is doing his part to make the purchasing of physical music fun again.”

Seth-Wong is capitalizing on a resurgence of interest in vinyl.

Once an item that had virtually died out when compact discs were introduced, vinyl records saw sales jump 18 per cent in 2012, 32 per cent in 2013 and 52 per cent in 2014 in the U.S., according to Forbes magazine. That’s 9.2 million units, about 4 per cent of the market. In Canada last year, 400,000 vinyl albums were sold, about 1.4 per cent of album sales.

Why the renewed interest? Some suggest nostalgia, while others point to a perceived warmer sound produced by vinyl records.

Catherine Moore, an Ontario-born professor of music business at New York University, says vinyl just looks “cool” in a retro kind of way. Also, the size of vinyl records offers great graphic design possibilities, on the discs and the album covers.

Moore says an urge to collect tangible music is also fuelling the resurgence.

“University-aged kids tell me they buy vinyl just to collect albums,” she says in a phone interview. “They keep the albums in their sleeves and don’t even own turntables.”

From his childhood until his early teens, Seth-Wong performed classical music on piano, training with the Royal Conservatory of Music. That route would have taken him to university and a degree in music, and likely a career as a pianist.

But he found that genre too confining, dropping it before his Grade 10 exam with the Conservatory. Deciding instead to pursue his love for vinyl, he opted to forgo seeking a student loan to go to university, and instead secured a bank loan to start his business. (He doesn’t want to divulge the dollar amount.)

His father co-signed the loan for the store, but Seth-Wong says he didn’t seek a lot of financial help from his parents to get started.

“I wanted to do as much as I could on my own.”

He clearly remembers his feelings when he opened the store that first day.

“I was definitely very anxious. There was a rush, a thrill of opening the door and stepping forward into this new life. I had absolutely no idea how things were going to go.”

About four hours in: a customer.

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“I remember her coming in and asking for a Radiohead record,” coincidentally Seth-Wong’s favourite band.

Although his only staffer, Sinéad Bermingham, helps him run the store, the hours can be long, especially Fridays when it’s open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. The store is closed Monday. Seth-Wong is mostly either at the store or travelling around the city or out of town, looking for new equipment.

The business takes up a lot of time, which makes for a challenge fitting in friends and family. But Seth-Wong is reaping enormous personal rewards.

“The business is invigorating,” he says. “I love being able to connect with people, and I love being able to share my favourite music and new music that I’m discovering.

“And vinyl is timeless.”

Five key moments for Julian Seth-Wong and his business

In utero exposure:

Julian’s mom says the drum riff from James Brown’s classic The Funky Drummer was the drumbeat Julian’s father playfully tapped on her stomach while she was pregnant with Julian. The beat, originally performed by Clyde Stubblefield and recorded in 1969, is one of the most famous beats ever recorded, and has been sampled in numerous pop and hip hop records.

His own compositions:

Classical music played a huge role in his introduction to music. Seth-Wong started taking piano lessons at around age 4, and a year later performed in his first recital. He moved through the Royal Conservatory of Music system, reaching Grade 10. He performed in several competitions both in the city and provincially. He also wrote his own compositions, including the unfinished piece “Untitled in E Minor,” which he wrote in 2010.

Leaving classical music behind:

By age 16 or 17, Seth-Wong became restless with classical music. Composing or performing classical music just wasn’t the kind of thing he wanted to pursue, he says. While a huge fan of the masters to this day — Mozart, Chopin, Beethoven, etc. — Seth-Wong found classical music and that community too rigid and conformist, so he walked away. Through his parents and Canadian FM radio he discovered jazz giants like Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Dave Brubeck. “It was really nice to kind of have that fresh look on things.”

A love for vinyl blossoms:

Still in his late teens, Seth-Wong became interested in more obscure vinyl records. His first vinyl album was Penny Sparkle by the band Blonde Redhead, which he bought on Craigslist for $5. At this time he was frequenting record stores in Toronto, like Sonic Boom and Grasshopper Records. Lots of current bands were pressing vinyl at the time, but some titles he wanted weren’t as widely available as he thought they’d be. He went online to sites such as to Discogs.com and eBay and resorted to purchasing directly from labels. That’s where he came up with the idea of having his own store.

Rarest of the rare:

Seth-Wong is especially proud of his rarest albums, titles such as Lemon Jelly’s Lost Horizons, Demon Days by Gorillaz, Tame Impala’s album Currents, and Triangle by the DJ Slow Magic. “I realized there was a market for the type of records I was looking for (obscure indie) records not widely available, not commercially pushed,” he says. “A lot of really good music, a lot of small labels in the U.S. and U.K. that don’t expose their stuff, just rely on word of mouth and band members’ friends picking up their music.”