Taz Records

Taz Records at 1521 Grafton Street is Halifax's vinyl flagship, an independent record store founded in 1983 that has spent four decades as the city's premiere destination for new and used records. The Coast's Best of Halifax readers' poll has handed Taz the gold medal for Best Record Store year after year, culminating in induction to the poll's Hall of Fame in 2022, and its flagship carries a 4.6-star average across more than 600 Google reviews, the deepest review base of any record shop in the city. The Dalhousie Gazette once described its inventory as mountains of undiscovered treasure, and that is still the pitch: you go in for one record and leave with four. For more of what the city offers indoors, see our Halifax Local Guide.

Forty-Plus Years on Grafton Street

Taz was founded in 1983 by Bob Switzer, a name that still rings out in Halifax music circles. The current owner-operator, Jimmy Donnelly, got involved in 2010 after finishing university; as he tells it, the choice was between getting "a real job" or managing a record store, and he chose to sling wax. Record retail is the family trade, quite in the blood: his father managed a Sam the Record Man back when record stores were everywhere, and Donnelly's own collecting started with Elvis Presley records his dad handed down at age five or six.

Under his watch the business has grown into a small Atlantic Canadian empire. There is the downtown Halifax flagship on Grafton Street, a Bedford location he calls "the prettiest one," and a Dartmouth branch, plus Backstreet Records, the storied New Brunswick chain's two stores in Saint John and Fredericton, acquired in 2024 when its longtime owner retired after 44 years. The CBC's coverage of that acquisition noted Taz's own history dating back to 1983 and its three greater-Halifax stores. Through it all, the Grafton Street room remains the mothership: narrow, deep, and stacked floor to ceiling with the kind of inventory that rewards an hour of digging.

What's in the Crates

The stock is new and used records, CDs, movies, and merchandise, with hundreds of new arrivals every week according to the store's own channels. The genre walls run from rock, pop, and soul through hip hop, electronic, metal, and punk, with a dedicated Local / East Coast section that doubles as a regional archive: Nova Scotia music from floor-stompers to reissued deep cuts. Used collection buying is done largely by Donnelly himself, and he calls it the best part of the job: buying estates and collections and finding the hidden gems inside. That supply line is why the used bins here stay genuinely interesting while many shops resurface the same picked-over classics.

The clientele has changed with the format's revival. Donnelly notes that the biggest shift since 2010 is who is buying: "so many more young people," selling whatever the current pop smash is, which was not the case a decade ago. The availability of new pressings has exploded ("everything noteworthy is on press now"), while the real scarcity has moved to quality used vinyl, which everyone scoops up fast. For a visitor, that means the new-release walls are reliably stocked with current pressings, and the used crates are where the treasure, and the urgency, live.

Record Store Day is the store's high holiday. When CTV News covered Record Store Day 2026 in Halifax, the footage was of the Taz lineup: collectors waiting outside for hours, well before sunrise, for the 9 a.m. door. The store maps out the RSD stock layout in advance and posts it to its ten-thousand-follower Instagram, and the good limited pressings are gone within minutes of opening. If you are visiting in April and want the rarities, you queue with the faithful; if you want the store to yourself, any quiet Tuesday afternoon will do.

The Store That Presses Its Own Records

What separates Taz from most Canadian independents is that it does more than sell vinyl; it manufactures it. Donnelly represses out-of-print Atlantic Canadian albums on his own label, working directly with artists who own their masters. The marquee project is Joel Plaskett: when the Halifax hero's back catalogue sold out on vinyl, Donnelly kept asking about represses until Plaskett told him to do it himself. He has repressed four Plaskett albums so far (Ashtray Rock among them) with a fifth in progress. His first repress ever was King George's Life of a Kingpin, a Halifax underground rap classic; Donnelly tracked down the master's owner, struck a deal, and put the album back on wax. The store also supports the local scene with in-store displays, event sponsorships, and live sets tied to the Nowadays Festival.

This is the quiet argument for shopping here rather than ordering online: the buying decisions are made by a person who cares enough to remanufacture the region's musical history, and the money recirculates into Nova Scotia artists pressing their own records.

Mailorder Friction, In-Store Gold

The candid footnote: Taz's online reputation does not match its in-store one. The Yelp rating for mailorder sits around 2.9 stars from a few dozen reviews, with complaints about slow shipments and wrong-address deliveries; one California buyer wrote that a record "was sent to Newfoundland instead of California," a sentence only a Maritime shop could produce. The in-store experience is a different universe: 4.6 stars across 617 Google reviews, decades of Best of Halifax gold, and a staff that answers genre questions faster than any search engine. The practical advice is simple: buy in person at Grafton Street, inspect used copies before paying, and treat the online store (free shipping within Canada over $175) as a convenience rather than the main event. On Record Store Day exclusives, in person is the only reliable way.

The Practical Details: Location, Hours & Essentials

Address & Location
1521 Grafton Street, Halifax, NS B3J 2B9. Downtown, one block from Spring Garden Road's shopping strip and a short walk from the Halifax waterfront and the Citadel. Sister stores: Bedford (1239 Bedford Highway) and Dartmouth.

Hours of Operation
Monday to Friday 10 a.m.–7 p.m., Saturday 10:30 a.m.–7 p.m., Sunday noon–5 p.m. Record Store Day doors typically open at 9 a.m.

Price Range
New LPs generally run the standard Canadian retail band; used bins start low enough to fill a bag for pocket change. Cash, cards, and Apple Pay accepted.

Reservations
None needed; browse freely. For used-collection sales, call ahead: (902) 422-5976.

Parking
Metered street parking on Grafton and the surrounding downtown blocks; the Spring Garden Road parkade is a five-minute walk.

Pair a trip with the rest of the neighbourhood: our Indoor Things to Do in Halifax guide covers rainy-day routing, and crate-digging pairs naturally with the coffee shops of Spring Garden Road. Vinyl hunting in Halifax does not require a map: it requires an afternoon, and Taz is where that afternoon starts.