Last week, Steve Westman had me on his YouTube channel alongside five illustrious guests. Our task was to pick five (or more) budget audiophile releases. Since the other guests are all vinyl-philes, it was up to me to suggest some audiophile-worthy bargain-bin CDs.
What do you think of my selections?
A few of my first Club TBVO posts dealt with how to be an ethical music fan in the age of streaming. In the second of those articles, I concluded that ethical music consumers should purchase in-print media, but that the ethics are a bit murkier when the release in question in out-of-print. In this Club TBVO entry, I'd like to lay out how I research my TBVO columns and how I acquire all of the necessary releases in light of these rough ethical guidelines.
My research always begins at
As those of you who bought a TBVO shirt know, I've gotten into t-shirt design during the pandemic. I started drawing shirts because I'm a music t-shirt fanatic, and I had ideas for shirts that I wanted to wear but couldn't find, such as my Judee Sill shirt.
Many of my favorite music t-shirts come from Austin's Feels So Good. In particular, they have a great collection of oddball Steely Dan shirts. Given that, I'm delighted to say that FSG is printing and selling "Silver Springs" Flee
In this first part of this two-part blog post, I looked at the difficult economics facing all but the biggest stars in the streaming era. Flatting some nuance, that post concluded that purchasing merchandise directly from artists is often the best way to make sure your dollars are reaching them. It also outlined other important actions that fans can take, such as selecting a streaming service that pays artists the highest rates per stream and advocating for models of divvying up streaming revenu
Being an ethical music lover in the age of streaming can feel bewildering. We have almost all of the music ever recorded (though not necessarily the best-sounding versions of it) at our fingertips all of the time. But we have no idea how much, if at all, our clicking “play” will benefit the people who created it.
It’s a well-known fact that musicians, even seemingly popular ones, make very little from streaming. That’s not because there’s no money in streaming. It’s because that mo