Isac Walter wears a different t-shirt every day. Because of his unusual hobby and the publicity he began to attract, he was featured in Forbes Magazine back in December of 2011. It was an idea that had legs the way band t-shirts have arms. The music industry’s business model is...
It is often assumed that a band’s success stems solely from the quality of their music. In a perfect world, this would be the case. To believe that an artist is measured by only the quality of their actual music ignores one of the essential aspects of the music industry:...
Many people simply go through life playing the cards they are dealt: their family, their upbringing, their class. The opportunity for choice is rarely if at all, given to these things. This is what makes a person’s musical identity so unique. In music, anybody can choose who they are and...
Have you ever wondered how you can be sure that the Jimi Hendrix signed guitar or John Lennon autograph you saw online or at an auction for a local charity was the real thing? Chances are it wasn’t. Along with the popularity of music memorabilia, now worth billions of dollars...
Music Memorabilia is big business these days. Once there were collectors who sought and paid reasonable sums of money for truly rare items that came to have historical interest but the market was limited. Some of Stephen Foster’s hand-written scores purchased by wealthy private collectors eventually made their way to...
T-shirts are humble garments that have outgrown their beginnings as underwear to become part of the uniform of youth all over the world. Rock t-shirts have become a significant player in the music memorabilia market, especially collectibles, and vintage t-shirts, which fetch high prices and increase in value very quickly...
“ROBBIE WILLIAMS IS SHIT”… and other profound notes from the runout groove. Could James Murphy be losing his edge? Not one to miss an opportunity for a sardonic aside, the LCD Soundsystem mastermind had the words “SEE U IN 5 YEARS” cut into the D-side of the new album American Dream. Sure it’s...
Paul Mawhinney, a former music-store owner in Pittsburgh, spent more than 40 years amassing a collection of some three million LPs and 45s, many of them bargain-bin rejects that had been thoroughly forgotten. The world’s indifference, he believed, made even the most neglected records precious: music that hadn’t been transferred...
Hidden behind a blockade of cardboard boxes and plastered with stickers and posters in the fifth-floor home of Hong Kong’s “vinyl hero,” Paul Au, is a 300-square foot room close to collapsing under the weight of 400,000 records. Au calls it “paradise,” and for vinyl aficionados, it’s hard to disagree....
