News

Happy Audiophile Day, everyone! To celebrate this most hallowed of days, we’re pleased to share that Discogs has just announced the launch of what they’re calling Dis/Connect, “a global day to unplug from digital distractions and reconnect with the joy of listening to music,” for Saturday, October 18, 2025. Read on to see how you can get involved with and participate in the quite important, analog-centric Dis/Connect event. . .

Ozzy Osbourne passed away earlier today, July 22, 2025, at age 76, just a few scant weeks removed from the triumphant Back to the Beginning celebration of Ozzy and Black Sabbath’s storied and eternally influential respective legacies at the already legendary all-day event that took place at Villa Park on July 5, 2025, in their hometown of Birmingham, England. Read on to see our in-the-moment appreciation of his long and storied legacy on vinyl . . .

Herb Belkin was one of a kind. A lifetime record executive who was instrumental in taking a onetime field-recording audio company known as Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (a.k.a. MFSL) to the next, audiophile-grade level in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Belkin (1939-2001) also amassed quite the robust collection of vinyl, CDs, LDs, and other music-related memorabilia over the course of his rich life. A good amount of Belkin’s personal archive from the MFSL universe (and beyond!) is coming up for auction at 11 a.m. EDT on June 29, 2025, through Thomaston Place Auction Galleries on Day 3 of their Summer Splendor auction series. Read Mike Mettler and Mark Smotroff’s combo report to see what rare items from Belkin’s vinyl collection are going up for this auction — and also find out what gear he listened to all of it on back in the day. . .

In an official press statement, Musical Surroundings has just announced that Chris Thompson has joined the company as their Service and Product Manager. Read on to learn more about Chris’ background, and his new duties with the company. . .

There are landmark LPs, and then there is Kind of Blue, Miles Davis’ indisputable August 1959 masterpiece on Columbia. As much as we truly love and can’t live without that historical album, we are beyond thrilled to hear that Analogue Productions is set to release Birth of the Blue — a 180g 1LP collection documenting the transformative first session held in 1958 by the same band that would go on to record Kind of Blue the following year — on December 13, 2024. Read on to see more about the new BotB LP and when/where you may be able to hear it firsthand before its official release. . .

In our ever-expanding search across this ever-spinning globe of ours for all things of analog-oriented interest, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to drop this one on the AP faithful: Bay Area alt-punk progenitors Green Day have gone all-out punk personified with their Dookie Demastered project, billed as “the way it was never meant to be heard.” Dookie Demastered features 15 truly alternative format options if ever there were, including wax cylinder, X-ray LP, 8-track, music box, piano roll, and more. Read on to see why you should plop down an entry into the Dookie Demastered pool to get one (or more!) of them in hand for your own collection. . .

Lou Reed was — and still is, really — one of rock & roll’s most transformative and influential songwriters and performers. Before he made an indelible mark with The Velvet Underground and then as a solo artist over his five-decade career, Reed honed his craft by penning many a song for other artists as a staff writer for a legendary label during the early rock era. To celebrate that important early chapter of Reed’s history, Light in the Attic, in cooperation with Laurie Anderson and the Lou Reed Archive, has just announced a new 2LP set covering that era, Why Don’t You Smile Now: Lou Reed at Pickwick Records 1964-65, will be released on October 4, 2024. Read on to see all the tracks written by Reed that are included on this important release. . .