Why You Need a Curator of Music & Sound
Some of the most amazing music ever recorded remains hidden. It lives on shellac discs in private collections, tapes on the shelves of institutions and archives, and on websites that most people will never visit. Without someone to find it, restore it, and bring it forward, that is exactly where it stays. In a world where algorithms decide what you hear next, Dust-to-Digital exists to present something different — seeking out the recordings that have fallen through the cracks and making sure they are heard, understood, and preserved for everyone.
For the past 20 plus years, we have released 75 albums, films, books, and box sets. The Dust-to-Digital Foundation has digitized more than 50,000 audio recordings, and our social media pages have shared thousands of live musical performances.
Substack is where we expand.
What You’ll Find Here
We started Dust-to-Digital to create access to music that was hard-to-find and we felt needed to be heard — not as a curiosity, but as a living part of the human story. Here, we share what happens behind that work: the recordings we are restoring, the stories that we uncover, and the context that makes this music relevant.
Free subscribers receive our regular posts, including but not limited to music history, artist profiles, and stories from the archive.
Paid subscribers go further: exclusive archival audio, extended liner notes, early looks at upcoming projects, a monthly radio guide, and a member-only space to discuss and connect with others who care about this music as much as we do.
Founding members receive all of the above, plus surprise physical mailings from Dust-to-Digital.
If you are a collector, a music historian, an adventurous listener, or simply someone who believes music is a universal language — this is for you!
A Note from Dust-to-Digital co-founder Lance Ledbetter:
Growing up in rural Georgia before the internet, the only way I could connect with the independent labels I loved was to sign up for their mailing lists or to call them on the phone. That directness — a real person, not an algorithm — was everything to me.
That is exactly what I wanted Dust-to-Digital to be for our listeners.
Over the past twenty-plus years, April and I have been driven by a single question: why isn’t this amazing music accessible?
The work has been recognized with multiple Grammy Awards. But what matters most to us is the music itself — the recordings that, without this work, would be gone, and the artists that created it forgotten.
This Substack is the direct line I always wished existed. I’m glad this platform exists and that you are here.
— Lance Ledbetter, Co-Founder, Dust-to-Digital
11x Grammy Award Nominee · 2x Winner, Best Historical Album Producer
A Note from Dust-to-Digital co-founder April Ledbetter:
I’ve been building this with Lance since before we even had a name for it. Our first release — Goodbye, Babylon — was a five-year project that we hand-assembled and shipped ourselves, one box at a time.
Twenty-plus years later, we’re still working in Atlanta. Still independent. Still doing it because the music demands it.
What I’ve always wanted to share is everything that happens around the records — the people we’ve met, the collections we’ve discovered, the decisions that go into bringing a forgotten recording back to life. That’s what this space is for.
Our non-profit organization, the Dust-to-Digital Foundation, has preserved some of the most significant 78rpm and 45rpm collections in North America. What we find there — the music, the stories, the history — belongs to everyone. We’ll be sharing it here.
— April Ledbetter, Co-Founder, Dust-to-Digital
6x Grammy Award Nominee · 1x Winner, Best Historical Album Producer
About Dust-to-Digital
Dust-to-Digital is a record label, book publisher and online community. Founded in 1999 by Lance and April Ledbetter, the company became widely recognized as the gold standard for archival music releases. With over 70 productions spanning gospel, blues, folk, field recordings, and music from every corner of the world, the label has earned multiple Grammy Awards and dozens of nominations — including multiple wins for Best Historical Album and Best Liner Notes.
Dust-to-Digital’s social media channels have grown into one of the most engaged music communities online, reaching over 3 million followers across platforms with posts that memorialize past musical greats, feature little-known artists, and bring rare performances to new audiences.
Your Substack subscription directly supports Dust-to-Digital and allows us to continue this work.
About the Dust-to-Digital Foundation
Founded in 2012 by Lance and April Ledbetter, the Dust-to-Digital Foundation is dedicated to the preservation and continued availability of historic and traditional American and international musical sound recordings.
Through careful digitization of analog recordings, scanning of related publications and images, and partnerships with the University of California, Santa Barbara, we are building a permanent public archive accessible to students, researchers, and listeners around the world.
The Foundation also launched Dust-to-Digital Radio bringing the archive to anyone, anywhere, at any time available online and through the app.
But the Foundation’s mission goes beyond preservation. It is about education — cultivating public awareness of and genuine interest in the historic and traditional music of communities whose stories have too often gone untold.
Your Substack subscription directly supports Dust-to-Digital. If you would like to contribute to the ongoing preservation and restoration efforts of the DTD Foundation, please consider giving via our Donorbox, Paypal, or Venmo.
