The eBay Connection: Buying and Selling Music Online

Posted by Daniel Stout on Tue 7 Aug 2007 at 10:31 PM

I’ve been digging around eBay.com and Half.eBay.com lately, and it’s a veritable treasure trove of obscure but great music for stunningly low prices. I mean, if you want to collect items by the Cure, you’re going to pay more. But seeing as a lot of bands I really liked in the late ’80s and early ’90s were pretty unknown, it suddenly becomes much easier and much less expensive to track them down. I worked in the local mall music store in high school, and in college I worked as music director at the college station. So I got exposed to a lot of music I wouldn’t otherwise have been had I not been in those positions. And the strange and somewhat sad thing about this is that I know of so much good music that was released with little fanfare on independent labels that maybe got some play on college radio stations but never sold many copies. And that’s a damn shame. I’ve been listening to Crushing a Flood by East Ash. I forgot how incredible that CD is. It came out in 1990, and it’s really amazing. I found it for under $5 on Half.eBay.com.

So I’m selling my first item on eBay right now. I thought I’d give it a go. I opted for the search listings thumbnail image and a 10-day auction. I hope somebody bids, and that I don’t lose out the $0.95 it cost me to list the item. But eBay remains a great place to find those rare, obscure albums that tickled my ear back in college. eBay also has a nice selection of used vinyl if you’re going that route. Vinyl can be searched for with a variety of variables, such as size of disc (e.g. 12”) or speed (e.g. 33-1/3 or 45 RPM).

While I’m on the subject of East Ash, one of my favorite record labels of that era was a tiny one-man label out of Louisiana called C’est La Mort. They carried both East Ash albums, Area, Heavenly Bodies, M-1 Alternative, and specialized in dreamy, ethereal stuff, although East Ash are very bass-driven. Anyway, I stumbled across this site that has a pretty complete discography of all the albums and singles that C’est La Mort released over their 9 or 10 year existence. Check out some of the Doctor Death compilations for a sampling of tracks from the various artists on the label. I’m amazed by how many C’est La Mort CDs and vinyl albums I still have in my collection. This is some good music.

One accomplishment I was proud of from my days as music director of KWLC was vastly expanding the number of small independent labels that sent us stuff. I sent many letters and made many phone calls towards that end. Labels want their music heard regardless of whether they are a major label or an independent. Independents didn’t always have the budgets to send stuff out in those days to many radio stations. So a small independent taking you on was a sign of trust and I promoted those discs to the DJs. That work brought a lot of interesting music into that tiny Iowa town, and hopefully it turned on some other people – either listeners or DJs to what was out there beyond major label fare. Of course that whole equation has completely changed with the advent of Internet distribution of music. It definitely levels the playing field for independents. Even bands without contracts are getting notice, but that’s a blog post for another evening.

Tags: c'est la mort · crushing a flood · east ash · ebay · independent labels · kwlc · music

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