So there I was, getting excited about finding a new artist to curate for our radio channel. Some of you may know that CHILLFILTR® has a budget every month to bring in new tracks for the Internet radio channel and my weekly show on KSKQ. Someone had reached out to me on Instagram, to verify that I had written the piece they had found about Mike Viola, The American Egypt. I love when people reach out to me about that kind of stuff, and I was happy to confirm that I was, indeed, the writer of that piece. A short discussion ensued about how much great music is out there that feels under-celebrated, and eventually, this individual got around to suggesting I listen to a slightly obscure release from a band that is no longer together, called The Bell Brigade. For those that like to pay attention to this stuff, their original self-titled debut is relatively easy to locate, but the follow up release called "Just Because," is pretty hard to find. It's not available from most streaming channels, because, for whatever reason, their label ATO just didn't put that second release out there. That forced me to attempt to buy it from their website, at which point it became clear that their collaboration with a service called "MUSICTODAY" is yet another great example of piss-poor cloud retail execution.

The thing about supporting digital downloads is that it's a complexity level of 1 out of 10. It is the low hanging fruit of all digital customer interactions. Process the payment, provide the download link. End of story. There is absolutely no excuse for the fact that one week later, I have neither a refund, nor the ability to download the MP3s I paid for. Thankfully, I'm only out just under $8, and I guess I'll just have to write that off as the cost of doing business. But I will be very reticent, if not completely unwilling, to ever purchase from ATO Records again, and to anyone who is considering a partnership with this badly-supported, dare I say reviled brand, please consider working with someone better.

But I suppose the good news is that due to this unprofessional and deeply unsatisfying interaction that I've had with MUSICTODAY, I stumbled onto the market of secondhand CDs that are available from eBay. This is the way, my friends. Not only does your support of the secondhand market help prop up local libraries from around the country that are offloading some of their b-stock, you have the ability to access a lot of 'long tail' releases that offer a nice mix of discovery and surprise. I've always been a fan of odd little compilation CDs, either from label promotions, or retail collaborations, because often they will feature tracks from popular artists that are not available anywhere else. They also, often enough, include rare collaborations between artists that can yield some great results. These types of releases typically don't get pushed to the streaming services, because the original licensing deal won't account for that. So they get lost in secondhand limbo. I also like movie soundtrack releases for the same reason. Let's hope I catch a couple gems in my most recent collection of Ebay finds.

Cover Image sourced from the Public Domain Image Archive / U.S. National Archives