Music to hold on to.
Ditch the digital algorithm and stay real with physical albums. The new pico disc format makes it easy and affordable.
Zero screen time.
The convenience of streaming is great. But so is picking up a real album off the shelf and holding it in your hands. Opening the liner notes, reading the lyrics, seeing the band photos. Getting lost in the music, instead of drowning in distractions. Every year, more people turn to physical music because putting on a real album not only sounds better, it hits different. The pico disc lets you bring that experience anywhere.
Hear the full story
Streaming apps train us to skip around and chase singles for hours. Physical media nudges you to sit with a full album and hear it the way the artist intended.
Own your music
With streaming, you’re renting access to songs. The minute you go offline without downloading them, they’re gone. Buy a physical album, and it’s yours forever.
Support the band
Streaming royalties pay a tiny fraction of a cent per play. A physical purchase puts real money in the artist’s pocket—more than thousands of streams would.
The truth about sound quality.
Every song you stream—even so-called “lossless” audio—has been compressed to make it streamable. Not so with physical music. But how much difference you can hear depends on which format you choose, and what gear you listen on.
Vinyl record
Analog vinyl has a warm saturated sound made possible by special mastering to adjust the equalization. It also has that vintage crackle and pop. Let’s face it: the debate between vinyl disciples and digital purists will never be settled.
Compact disc
For decades, CDs were the gold standard for pure digital sound quality. But music in the ’80s was digitized at lower resolution, and that’s all that CDs can handle. Modern recordings use a higher resolution that has to be downsampled for CDs.
Hi-Res download
It’s not physical, but a lot of bands post Hi-Res masters for download on Subvert and Bandcamp. To hear them in Hi-Res, though, you’ll need a high-end digital audio player or a DAC dongle, since most phones lower the resolution on playback.
Pico disc
The pico disc is the only physical format where the original Hi-Res masters go straight from the studio into your headphones. There’s no pre-mastering, no compression, and no downsampling. You hear it exactly the way it was recorded.
Earth-friendly, by design.
Unlike old records or compact discs, used pico discs can be returned and remade into brand new albums. It costs less than making new ones, and keeps them from piling up in landfill like other media. Pico discs are purposely designed for circular manufacturing.
