One of the reasons I think I have developed such an appreciation for collecting physical music is because I grew up around people who have been doing it for years. Long before streaming services became the dominant way people listened to music, buying albums was simply how you experienced new releases. If you wanted to hear your favorite artist whenever you wanted, you bought the album. That mindset has never really disappeared in my family, and looking back, I think it quietly influenced my own interest in building a collection. These days, almost any song you can think of is available through a streaming service. That convenience is incredible, and I use it all the time. But there is still something special about walking over to a shelf filled with CDs, picking out an album, and knowing it is part of your family's collection. It feels personal in a way that scrolling through a digital library sometimes does not. My family has accumulated quite a collection over the years. It w...

 Music has always been one of the most important forms of art in my life. It has been there during moments of happiness, times of stress, creative breakthroughs, long drives, quiet evenings, and everything in between. Some songs instantly bring back memories from years ago, while others become the soundtrack to entirely new chapters of life. That is one of the things I find most fascinating about music. It has an incredible ability to stay with us, even as everything else around us changes. Like most people today, I stream a lot of music. It is hard to deny just how convenient streaming has become. With just a few taps or clicks, I can listen to millions of songs from artists all over the world. If I suddenly remember a band I have not heard in years, chances are I can find them almost instantly. Streaming has made discovering new artists easier than ever before, and I am grateful for that. At the same time, though, I have found myself becoming more interested in something that h...

 There are certain stories that a music blog doesn't want to write about, not because they aren't newsworthy, but because they sit so far outside the realm of album reviews and tour announcements that it feels strange to even type the words. The ongoing case against David Anthony Burke, known to millions of fans as D4VD, is one of those stories. It is not a story about a new single or a surprise deluxe edition. It is a story about a teenage girl named Celeste Rivas Hernandez, about a preliminary hearing unfolding in a Los Angeles courtroom, and about an industry, a fanbase, and a public that are all trying to figure out how to process something this heavy while the legal process is still very much in motion. We are writing about this because it would be strange not to. D4VD built a real career, a genuine one, off of songs that resonated with a young, emotionally raw, and largely online audience. He wasn't a manufactured pop product pushed by a label machine, he was a bedro...

 When people think about creating music, they often picture expensive studios, professional instruments, and years of formal musical training. While there is certainly nothing wrong with that approach, it isn't how Lotsa Tones came to be. Instead, this song began with something much simpler. Curiosity. I've always believed that creativity starts by asking one simple question: What happens if I try this? That question has led me to write novels, poetry, short stories, blog posts, podcast episodes, and now, my first piece of music. Every creative journey I've taken has started the same way. Not because I already knew exactly what I was doing, but because I wanted to learn. That mindset is exactly what led to Lotsa Tones . For this project, I wasn't trying to create the next chart-topping hit. I wasn't trying to perfectly imitate another artist or fit neatly into an existing genre. Instead, I wanted to experiment with sound itself. The tool that made this possible was...

 There are certain songs that become attached to a specific chapter of your life. They are more than just tracks on a playlist. They become memories, emotions, and time capsules. Whenever they come on, you are instantly transported back to another version of yourself. Sometimes that version is happier. Sometimes they are struggling. Sometimes they are simply younger, trying to figure out who they are. For me, one of those songs is "Terrified" by Story of the Year. Story of the Year has never been my absolute favorite band. That title belongs elsewhere. But they are absolutely one of my top ten favorite bands of all time. I have always felt they deserved much more recognition than they received. They found success during the 2000s post-hardcore and alternative rock explosion, but I have always believed they should have been even bigger. They possessed incredible musicianship, emotional songwriting, memorable choruses, and enough energy to compete with nearly anyone from that...

  Where to Actually Find Physical Media (And How to Not Overpay for It) So after that last post about starting my CD collection, I got a handful of messages and comments asking some version of the same question, which was basically, okay, that's cool, but where do you even find this stuff anymore. And it's a fair question, honestly. We've spent the last decade or so watching physical media sections shrink in stores, watching entire chains disappear, watching the culture around browsing shelves for music or games or movies fade into something a lot of younger folks never even experienced firsthand. So I get why the question comes up. If you didn't grow up in the era of physical media being the default, it's not obvious where you'd even start looking. So I wanted to put together a follow up post specifically about that, about how to actually find physical media in a world that's mostly moved on from it. I'm going to be talking about this mostly through th...

 So a few weeks back I made a post on my Instagram that I honestly didn't think would get the reaction it did, which was basically me announcing, somewhat sheepishly, that I've started a CD collection. And I know how that sounds. In a world where literally everything is streaming, where you can pull up any song ever recorded in about four seconds flat, where your phone holds more music than any physical shelf ever could, here I am going out of my way to buy little plastic discs. It's wild, honestly, even to me, and I laughed a little writing that caption because I could already picture people reading it and going "wait, CDs? like, actual CDs?" Yes. Actual CDs. And I wanted to take some time here, since this is my music blog after all, to actually sit with why I'm doing this, because it's not a decision I made lightly or randomly. It's been building for a while, and I think it says something bigger about where I'm at with music, with ownership, and ...