Dublin: Road Records on Fade Street is in a struggle to survive. A terrible shame if they go as it’s a great independent record store with good taste in music. It’s where I first bought a Sigur Ros album, and where I saw Carly Sings sing one lunchtime. (If you haven’t heard her album, you might enjoy it.) Who cares if the big stores die along with the record labels, but I thought there would always be room for a class act like Road Records. After hearing my album on Pearl’s wonderful show on Phantom FM a blogger sniffily opined that he was far too worldly and knowing to spend $17 (on CD Baby) on any album. And this when it was worth about 12 euro. If everybody is working for free now, count me in. If not, I’m going to charge for my albums, thanks very much. It’s still costly to make a good sounding acoustic music album. Some are now “leasing†music by paying for streaming on sites like Rhapsody. I understand that you can run out of room for albums in your house and probably there’s plenty to be said for it but from an artist’s point of view it takes hundreds of plays before you can buy a cup of coffee. And as someone who uses their own artwork/photography I love having the physical album. Incidentally I’m having the Half Moon Bay CD reformatted, all slim and with no plastic.