{"id":705710,"date":"2026-05-31T11:43:30","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T11:43:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/705710\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T11:43:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T11:43:30","slug":"rising-rents-reshaped-montreals-music-scene-but-a-mile-end-holdout-survives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/705710\/","title":{"rendered":"Rising rents reshaped Montreal’s music scene, but a Mile End holdout survives"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is Part 3 of the Gazette series Renting Montreal. Read Part 1<\/a> and Part 2<\/a> here. <\/p>\n

When musician Andrew Woods arrived in Montreal from Prince Edward Island around 2010, he and his bandmates were paying $300 each in rent and he was washing dishes to survive.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved it because I could just disappear into the back kitchen and play whatever music I wanted,\u201d recalled Woods, 42, who\u2019s also now recording engineer from his studio above the bar Ping Pong Club in Mile End. \u201cBut it destroyed my body.\u201d<\/p>\n

The building, an unassuming walk-up on Bernard St where bass can rattle right up until three in the morning on weekends, has become part of Montreal music folklore. Arcade Fire came. Stars and Operators, too. And for over a decade now, Woods has been recording in the walls.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou would not want to live here,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s perfect for making records.\u201d<\/p>\n

That stretch of turf specifically, along with other neighbourhoods in the city, made a music career in Montreal feel possible, he said. Cheap apartments and flexible restaurant jobs drew young musicians who could survive long enough to experiment, tour badly paid gigs and give enough time to manage a breakthrough.<\/p>\n

But that bargain has frayed. <\/p>\n

The average asking residential rent in Montreal has jumped about 70 per cent in the last seven years, according to Statistics Canada. A two-bedroom apartment, for example, has climbed from about $1,100 to more than $1,900. In just 2025, rents rose another 7.2 per cent, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation data.<\/p>\n

Streaming, meanwhile, has displaced much of the radio income and album sales many artists once relied on. The economics of making it in the city have shifted.<\/p>\n

And yet, Woods said, musicians keep arriving.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople say Mile End is dead because their version of Mile End is dead,\u201d he said. \u201cBut musicians are still moving here. That hasn\u2019t stopped.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s Picks\t<\/p>\n

He arrived at an awkward moment for the music industry, just as the old economics of independent music were beginning to change.<\/p>\n

His indie rock band at the time, Boxer the Horse, was finding some success on Canada\u2019s East Coast \u2014 one of their songs was repeatedly picked up by a SiriusXM DJ, generating meaningful income, Woods said. In 2010, they were named the best new band in Canada by CBC Radio 3 at the annual Bucky Awards after their debut album Would You Please.<\/p>\n

However, Montreal proved more challenging.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to hustle for everything,\u201d he said on arriving in the city. \u201cIf you want a show, you put it on yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, in 2014, he met the musician who would change the course of his life.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s from Toronto,\u201d he said. \u201cI served her at the restaurant.\u201d<\/p>\n

That musician is the folk singer Basia Bulat. They began playing in each other\u2019s bands almost immediately, he explained. Today, they are married with two children, balancing family life with the rhythm of working musicians.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen she puts out a record, we\u2019ll do a U.S. tour, then all across Canada, then Sweden, Germany, Poland, Spain,\u201d Woods said. \u201cYou have to keep going back if you want to build it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Touring with Bulat gave him his first real version of full-time music work.<\/p>\n

But he still wanted something of his own. <\/p>\n

So he also slowly built a recording studio inside the old Mile End building, inviting bands in after shows, drinking beers and listening to demos late into the night. Then one band asked him to make a record.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s go,\u201d he remembered telling them.<\/p>\n

The studio expanded piece by piece: a better microphone, then a compressor, then more instruments and software.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou literally figured it out as the demands came,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The technology around him was changing too.<\/p>\n

When Woods recorded with his band in the early 2010s, the cost of three days in a professional studio amounted to roughly two months\u2019 rent each, he said. Whereas a teenager can begin recording with a laptop, GarageBand and a cheap microphone. <\/p>\n

That democratization has lowered barriers for young artists.<\/p>\n

\"ManAndrew Woods, musician and recording engineer, in his Montreal studio on Thursday, May 14, 2026. Allen McInnis \/ Montreal Gazette<\/p>\n

Still, the infrastructure that supports independent musicians has come under pressure, too.<\/p>\n

The 2024 closure of the historic Montreal venue La Tulipe, along with similar shutdowns across Canada, hurt many artists who rely on small venues to build audiences.<\/p>\n

According to a statistical profile commissioned by the Conseil des arts de Montr\u00e9al, the median income for artists in the city is about $17,400 a year, though that does not include additional credits given by the government.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Woods believes Quebec\u2019s tighter rent protections have helped preserve parts of Montreal\u2019s artistic ecosystem. Without them, he suspects, many musicians, rehearsal spaces and studios would already be gone.<\/p>\n

Even so, he worries about losing his own space.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knock on wood every year,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause this took years to build.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recently, two younger musicians who had moved to Montreal only a few years earlier stopped by to look around. <\/p>\n

It was the kind of visit Woods said he sees often: proof, in his view, that Mile End\u2019s pull is intact even as its economics have shifted.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty hard to deny that rent was cheaper, groceries were cheaper,\u201d he said. \u201cBut the hustle is still there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite everything, he still talks like someone convinced the next big hit could arrive tomorrow.<\/p>\n

\u201cI still believe,\u201d he said, \u201cthat I could put out a song that gets another radio DJ\u2019s attention.\u201d<\/p>\n

Do you have a story tip? Write to me at hnorth@postmedia.com<\/p>\n

Part 4 of Renting Montreal will publish on Sunday, June 5. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Profile<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tI\u2019ve been writing for the Montreal Gazette since 2023. My favourite stories are ones that make you think and I’m always looking for new ways to tell them. At McGill, I studied economics and computer science. Now I live in the city\u2019s Plateau, where I wear Doc Martens to try and blend in among the hipsters. Got a story? Email me.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\thnorth@postmedia.com
\n\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is Part 3 of the Gazette series Renting Montreal. Read Part 1 and Part 2 here. When…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":705711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338,248683],"class_list":["post-705710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal","tag-renting-montreal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/705711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}