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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

arts

TD’s CDs and LPs takes pride in quiet

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“Underground” is a term often used to describe independent artists who make music that flies under the public’s radar, unless it’s used to describe TD’s CDs and LPs. Then it’s literal.

TD’s CDs and LPs sits in the basement of 322 E. Kirkwood Ave. Despite its hidden location, the Bloomington shop has stayed in business for more than a decade of selling vinyl records, cassettes and CDs.

Its main entrance sits in an alley, but customers can also access the shop through the Soma coffee shop or the indoor corridor on the backside of Laughing Planet Cafe, both of which share the building with TD’s.

“It’s kind of a cool thing to claim, being Bloomington’s only underground record store, in parentheses, literally, but with that you don’t really get that much business,” said Sarah Dunevant, one of the shop’s two employees.

On Wednesday afternoon, she said only five customers had come through all day.

Though she said business usually picks up on the weekends, the shop stays pretty quiet for the most part, but that’s the way she and the other workers like it.

Dunevant said TD’s stock is filled with local and underground artists’ music. The shop has specific sections for avant-garde music and worldly music, which comes from a variety of cultures and languages.

TD’s even has a section dedicated to Plan-It-X, a local record label that focuses primarily on punk artists.

“We don’t really just buy things based on what we think people will want,” she said. “We just buy things that we like and that we think are really great, so we’re never going to buy an Adele LP or something like that.”

Even if much of the music it sells only appeals to a niche audience, she said this independent nature is one of the things that separates TD’s from other shops and makes work so enjoyable.

“You get to have a store that you’re proud of,” she said.

This independence is also one of the reasons TD’s opted out of participating in this year’s Record Store Day on April 16, she said.

Each year, the organizers of Record Store Day distribute special pressings of a variety of vinyl releases to all the stores participating in the event.

“It’s not what it used to be,” she said. “It doesn’t really help independent labels or record stores very much.”

Many independent record stores around the world have made a point to boycott Record Store Day altogether.

Since many of the day’s scheduled releases are from big-name artists, big players in the music industry tend to hog all the business of pressing plants. Duvenant said this makes it hard for independent record labels and artists to get their music pressed in the months leading up to the day.

The independent artists TD’s prefers to showcase don’t have a place on the Record Store Day lineup of special releases either, so TD’s avoids buying and selling the big name releases, she said.

Still, she said the shop enjoyed a lucrative April 16 selling its own handpicked LPs, and after restocking, it was back to laid back business as usual.

“You just get to sit and listen to music all day,” she said. “It’s pretty good.”

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