A book club for music fans, Album Club is a way to keep up with friends, foster relationships, and show love and support for what matters.
Keep up with friends
Staying in touch with your friends is hard, and gets harder the longer you go in life. Good intentions to stay in touch get overrun by other life stuff and you lose that touch with people you love as they start families, get sucked into work, or sadly leave us behind completely. Many of us don’t see that last one coming and it’s not really something we can prepare for.
Foster relationships
So as well as the relationships with your friends, album club aims to be a place to look after yourself. Really, the first album club could equally have been called feelings club. Traditionally, Irish people are not great with expressing emotions and feelings, and sharing a bond over music has the ability to deepen connections, to each other, and ourselves. Much of the music I love is personal, weird, and not liked by anyone else I know, so would typically avoid playing it in groups unless I needed to clear the space.
Support what matters
Our society often puts no value in to the things that make it better. Tech people get huge wages to destroy the world, while people who create meaningful stuff get shafted. Instead of clapping, imagine we put our hands in our collective pockets and paid people a liveable wage.
How it works?
Album club is a bit like a book club but for music. Small groups meet up in person on the first (Bandcamp) Friday of every month to listen to music, chuck some money at a band and or musician, and eat food.
Our discord is by invitation only. You can get access to this by making a one time purchase of the album for €6, €10.50, or €32 on the Big Cartel shop.
How much does this cost?
Membership is free now, and always will be. There is no obligation to pay each month after the first purchase. This is essentially a framework to hang out with your friends. You are not the product here, the albums are. I am sick of capitalism ruining everything. Social media steals our time, makes us miserable, and divides us. Let’s direct money at stuff we love, make time for people we love, and share music and food we love. This is a place for people who are looking for their people. I won’t tolerate, encourage, or allow assholes. We already have one asshole, so thank you, we are full.
Shoutouts
- Kat Vellos for running the connection club and helping to inspire this idea. If you care about friendship and want to learn from someone who has done the work, this is your first port of call
- Likewise to Clodagh and Niamh for the UX book club. I don’t always attend, but I do love the option of it and knowing that it’s there
- My pal Dan and Mark for inspiring this with the unofficial version at a time I needed it, and for generally being good eggs
- Additional shout out to Christina. She likely won’t see this, defo deserves a shout out for putting up with me, the weird gigs, and endless notions