Back in 2014, I was thinking a lot about how streaming had taken over the world of music, and no one bought a record and sat and listened to it over and over again the way we did when we were younger. I thought doing a podcast in which Adam and I talked about one new album at a time would be a way to force both of us to really spend time with a new album, in order to come up with interesting things to say about it. It was also something fun and creative that we could do together. It just so happened that there was a community radio station that started up at about the same time we came up with this idea, and they started running our podcast as a show, which forced us to stick to a twice-a-month cadence so that we had a new show recorded in time to run in our time slot. It also kept us to a disciplined 30-minute run time.

I always had new albums to consider, because ferreting out new music has always been one of my big hobbies. I had many friends with whom I’d share recommendations and discuss new artists. Adam and I went to South by Southwest for music every year, and I always had new discoveries I wanted to talk about. We did the podcast because we enjoyed making it together – it was a way to make something creative despite (my) not having any artistic talent! – and I never really expected anyone to listen to it beyond people I knew personally.

Now, 12 years later, most of the friends I used to discuss new music with are either gone, or had kids, or stopped being interested in discovering new artists. South by Southwest got sort of massacred by the pandemic, and although we went back in 2022 and 2023 after it returned, it’s been downsized and moved to be held at the same time as the “tech” portion, which makes it much less desirable for multiple reasons. There were also some fundamental changes to Austin that made it harder and harder to hold in its longtime format.

The end result is that it’s become increasingly tougher for me to find new albums to propose for discussion, and the twice-a-month schedule has become more and more stressful to maintain (I do all the selection and editing work, Adam just shows up to talk). When we got to 200 episodes, we thought about making #200 our last episode, but ultimately decided to continue. Now that we’re on episode #248, we’ve decided to make #250 the last one.

I’ll miss doing it, but it will also be a relief. I feel like I have less time to listen to new music these days, and being forced to spend a big chunk of my listening time focused on one particular record made it hard to explore much else. I’m now a VP leading a legal team, and much of my day is spent in meetings rather than working independently while listening to music. So I suppose the problem I was originally trying to solve – how to force myself to spend a lot of time with one particular album – is a problem I stopped wanting to solve. On the other hand, my listening habits have really been shaped by the podcast, and I’m a more thoughtful and attentive listener than I used to be. I notice things in music I didn’t notice before, and I think I do a better job of connecting new albums to the context in which they’re recorded. Overall, I find I’m able to discuss them in a more thoughtful way. So maybe the problem I was trying to solve became a problem I didn’t actually need to solve anymore.

I’ve also started working on some other creative projects, including an ice cream cookbook, and I want the opportunity to focus my time and energy on something else.

At any rate, Adam and I will always have that archive of 250 episodes living out there in the ether. You can find the whole list here. I prefer people not be able to link my various projects like this back to my real name, so I won’t link to the podcast homepage here, but it’s not hard to find if you want to try and search for it using the list.

250 episodes is a pretty good run! And who knows, maybe we’ll start up some other sort of music discussion podcast down the line, and keep it on our own schedule. I have a hard time shutting up about new artists I like!