I’m listening to Deadtime Stories by the Lovelorn Dolls

a maybe slightly obscure Darkwave band that grabbed my attention via Alfa Matrix, a Belgian label.

Being Belgian, direct shipping into the UK is a bit pricey (bringing total price up to £27), especially since the collective mind-loss of 2016, so while the album was launched in May, and turned up on Amazon soon after, the price was shocking (currently over £24). I’d hoped for proper UK Amazon stock, but it hasn’t happened yet.

I could have bought the digital download: Bandcamp offers digital download (that you can re-download) in FLAC, and I’ve used that at times, but I like to have CDs.

Eventually, Ebay turned up a new copy for £13! I don’t know what the path to me was, but it was a UK seller. Goes to show that while Amazon is convenient, it’s not always cheapest.

The CD arrived, and, somewhat perversely, the first thing is to get it ripped: FLACs for phone and house, MP3 for car.

This is where buying less well-known music creates a bit more work: There are online databases of music that catalogue both digital downloads and CDs- Musicbrainz being the best these days, largely replacing freedb, but they didn’t hold a record for the CD, which is why I found myself (again) creating records in Musicbrainz, using the digital download metadata for some bits, scanning the CD covers, and submitting the CD ID and uploading images so I could then rip and have the track titles: the side benefit being now if others rip the CD, they don’t have to, because I did it :-). Co-operatively, we all win. I could have just typed the tracks in and uploaded the image, but for a tiny bit more work. others benefit too. This experience of missing data is probably a symptom of the music being a bit more niche, and that CD is less popular these days.

So, what of the music? It’s Darkwave, so like an 80s/Synth/Goth mashup. If that sound like your thing, all good.