There was a time when I only used to buy music through one source. A time when I didn’t have websites to check to see what was going on in the scene. All I had was a list of new and notable albums and singles divided into multiple genres from pop, rock, electronic, hip hop and more.
This was a dark time for me in music because with just that one source I was missing out on a ton of music that I didn’t know existed. Also, many genres that I didn’t know of and musicians who were evolving electronic music.
Before the start of 2021, I started to use Twitter again which was a site I didn’t use since they first came out. I remember when everyone was starting to talk about who tweeted this or who tweeted that. Twitter quickly became the new social media of the next generation with a little blue bird as their logo.
While the lockdown was forcing us to stay home, I’ll never forget the day I spent time searching for new music on iTunes. During the lockdown, I had time to look through various genres and not just pick up the new and current thing. I came across a lot of interesting musicians and ultimately purchased the deluxe edition of Magic Sword’s Volume 1 album.
Magic Sword was a band I never heard of, and I decided to listen. This brought back a lot of what I felt was missing in music. There seemed to be more to electronic music than what I was used to. Down the rabbit hole I went. One of my first tweets while back on the bird app was mentioning how I would listen to Magic Sword while creating art, either by hand or digitally. This immediately threw me into a circle of really cool musicians and artists.
A few months after that I kept hearing about Bandcamp and what they were offering as a website. I tried to stay loyal to iTunes, which I still do as they house over 1,000 titles of my music collection since 2007. But slowly, I started to sway away and became more involved with Bandcamp.
Then, I found out about their first Friday of the month specials and thought it was great what they did for artists. I wanted to find more musicians that made what I like so I started to post about it on Twitter. Then I came up with a design to use for my posts and wanted all musicians to be able to shamelessly promote their creations on my thread.
What a thrill ride that started as every first Friday of the month I was able to find a ton of great music and help artists get the word out.
I really hope to see Bandcamp Friday back in 2022 because I can see how they have helped musicians. But, earlier, I announced that if they don’t continue then I will host something similar right here on the website and socials. Let’s continue the trend and keep it going. This has not only helped out sales and streaming numbers, but it has also helped build a community which is what my idea of Pop Art Ave is all about. An online “neighborhood” community where we can all escape to and hear music we may never have heard before as well as meet new people. Let’s all escape the craziness that life throws at us every day and know there is still a place we can go to find unity.
I hope everyone has a happy holiday season with your loved ones. Let’s keep pushing forward in 2022 and put these hard years behind.
Stay tuned for more artists, interviews, reviews, music videos and a monthly new release page. Also, some new members will be on the Pop Art Ave team in 2022!
Thank you all for reading, following, commenting and supporting. I wouldn’t be doing this without you.
- Michael Anthony
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