ABIA

No, I didn’t mean to title this post “ABBA”. The acronym AIBA refers to the “America’s Best Independent Artists,” a pseudo record label run by PCTMusic.

I found out about PCTMusic while cruising the dollar-only bins at my local Target. I was surprised to learn that, among the sponges and spatulas, actuall music CDs were for sale. And not compilations or public-domain works, original music by independent artists. I had to make a purchase.

I eventually bought 3 albums:

The Real Heroes “Greetings from Russia”
Stereosoul “Stereosoul”
Scott McCurry “Like The Sun”

I’ve only listened to the first album so far, but it wasn’t bad. Not particularly earth-shattering either but I’m only out $3. Plus, it was fun to sample some “independent” music outside of the normal ways – getting albums online via recommendation or taking expensive shots in the dark at Best Buy.

Even in the BitTorrent era, I’d still prefer CDs to bits and bytes. These sub-contracted CDs include precious little art or edifice (paper sleeves within cardboard boxes) but if I do end up loving one of these artists, I’ll buy the full CD. I’m betting just the blog mentions of them is worth what I paid. Only time will tell if they make the jump from CD to iTunes to iPod.

By the way, good luck to all of these artists. In the 21st century this is one more way to get people interested in your music. I hope you find what you’re looking for.

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