Annual Record Sale

A couple saturdays ago on August 24th, Dusty Groove Record shop in Chicago located on Ashland a block south of the intersection of Milwaukee, Division and Ashland had their annual street sale. Any vinyl record, CD or 45 that was outside was at an extreme bargain price of 50 cents each. The only reason I had heard about this was through a friend of mine who sent me a link via Facebook. The sale was one day only and started at 10am. It was already fully crowded when I arrived at 10:30am. I was able to find a great amount of records and random CD's at this sale and spent no more than ten dollars and got about 15 records and 5 cd's. Most of the records I got I had never heard before and got them mainly based off of the covert art. Being able to look through physical copies of hundreds of albums of music I never knew existed and finding 2 or 3 albums I had been looking for made the trip worthwhile. After I left i realized this event was a great opportunity for Dusty Groove as a physical music distributor to attract a specific type of crowd that would definitely be buying records when they arrived and not just browsing. Plus, you would have to be really into music or collecting records to wake up real early on a saturday. Below is a photo of the items I came across at the sale.

Singles

For those who don't know or haven't heard, Adult Swim is a segment of offbeat TV shows on Cartoon Network in the evening. When it was originally created in 2001, it only was aired on weekends after about 11pm. It has now grown into a huge entity know for it's weirdness and offbeat music choices. This summer Adult Swim has a digital promotion plan known as the "Adult Swim Singles Program" where every week this summer, they have released new music from various underground Hip-hop artists and a lot of under the mainstream radar artists in genres from electronica to rock. I like this idea because it gives people who like shows on Adult Swim a chance to broaden their musical taste and hear music they may have never known existed otherwise.On top of this these singles have all been available for free download from Adult Swim's website. It seems these days the general public likes to stream singles and download music instead of listening to whole albums of one artist. They made a smart marketing decision when it comes to appealing to that market. Here is one of the singles that I really enjoy, mainly because it has one of my favorite artists on it (MF Doom) and also because the beat just sounds sinister, which is how I like my hip-hop.

Music selection

An example of the style of music i would create. take a listen

Hard to Find.

One thing that's great about the internet is that it's so much easier to find old music, especially rare records that probably weren't even in major stores for long if at all. Chances are if you're searching for some rare, obscure record there was someone else in the world doing the same thing at one point. Youtube is a great example of this. I've heard so many great records from other countries and rare hip-hop albums that people (probably collectors) have added so others can hear the music. UGHH (Underground Hip-Hop site) is great for this too in terms of hard to find hip-hop records. Since discovering this site a few years ago, I have been able to locate hard copies of my favorite local Chicago hip-hop collective, the Molemen. Of course many of these aren't currently in stock since they are older and harder to find. You can still get email notifications to when they may re-stock or even get them to special order it for you. Some instrumental albums from them I had never even heard of since they aren't on any major label. I could hear snippets of the product to know what I'm getting before i actually try to buy it from their site. Just knowing that I can buy a hard copy of such good local music from a website not located in Chicago is great for a fan such as myself. There aren't many people still out there that are willing to dig (digitally or physically) for albums they can't just download off of iTunes. To me it seems like a hunt, and the end reward could be something to take home with you. Here is an album from one of the three beat makers in The Molemen, PNS. Besides working with local underground Chicago artists he has produced beats for well known underground hip-hop artists such as MF Doom and Slug of Atmosphere. Here is an instrumental album released of his from 2000 titled "12 Bit Soul".

http://ughh.com/pns-12-bit-soul/MOLE04CD/#.Ue1O_3-LO9Y.blogger

Digital Distribution

Let's face it, today we live our lives much differently than we did 30 years ago. Our daily activities can be determined based simply on what's in our hand (which is usually a smart phone of some form). I'm speaking solely based off observation here, since I don't have a one myself.
My point being, most of our daily activity can be viewed online on some social media source. When it comes to listening and buying music the majority of people are doing it on an online source. So does this mean that there is no market for hard copy distribution anymore? Luckily this isn't the case.
One of my favorite places to look for tangible copies of music is the website Underground Hip-Hop Site or ughh.com. An example of their merchandise is an upcoming LP by Killer Mike & El-P. It has already been released other places as a digital download but ughh.com will be offering it in physical form as a vinyl and CD release September 17th. Here's a link to the page for better viewing:

"http://ughh.com/run-the-jewels-run-the-jewels/FGRRTJLP/"

And to get a sense of the style of music on this LP, here's one of my favorite tracks:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/nnXP1D1UGD8