Shady scams and other silly business ideas to take advantage of earnest new vinyl collectors

Has anyone heard of http://vnyl.org/?

I think it was mentioned in a "terrible ideas" thread but it turns out that it is actually a great idea if you want to find a way to trick people into buying $1.50 worth of records for $25.00 (which I believe is the subscription cost).

http://www.stereogum.com/1801049/vnyl-sliding-why-the-netflix-for-vinyl-service-is-such-a-mess/franchises/essay/

Apparently no matter who you indicate as your favorite artists, they'll just send you a random three common 70s thrift shop records and then play dumb if that upsets you.
They don't accept returns.

http://www.recordstoreday.com/

https://twitter.com/themattbates/status/594284588257579008/photo/1

good lord

http://www.shugarecords.com/

http://www.better-records.com/dept.asp?dept_id=14-015-034

http://www.artvinyl.com/

the second hand rack in the one Urban Outfitters store I've browsed was 98% dogshit and sold everything for £6 but I was happy enough with the Heavy Metal Kids LP I got for that price

http://www.artvinyl.com/

― anthony braxton diamond geezer (anagram), Thursday, May 14, 2015 2:56 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the branch of (UK odds'n'ends austerity store) Home Bargains near my house sells 12" frames for £1.99 if anyone fancies displaying some LPs on their wall but isn't a profligate moron who thinks that £39 is good value for such a thing

Seriously, how is this a thing?

Which one?

On my twittefeed I keep getting a "Get xx number of indie singles from new acts each month, pre-chosen for youx" subscription service.

I mean, why would I?

(I'd post the link, but it's not there at the mo)

I dare-say a bunch of you music writers would pay a monthly fee to not receive etc, but.

the second hand rack in the one Urban Outfitters store I've browsed was 98% dogshit and sold everything for £6 but I was happy enough with the Heavy Metal Kids LP I got for that price

― pull blart, maul cops (DJ Mencap), Thursday, May 14, 2015 2:57 PM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If that's the one at Marble Arch, all the second-hand stuff has gone, leaving only the 180g represses..

nah it was in Cardiff and yeah it's just moderately overpriced new stuff now so presumably such is the case with all their stores

This is more silly than scam, I guess, but ...

http://vinylmeplease.com/how-it-works/

"Custom cocktail pairing recipes"

It's...pretty exclusive. Request your invite today.

Wow. This is so depressing.

need that custom youth lagoon record for $27

lol these are all pretty great

the VNYL scam is amazing, the robotic 500 days of summer tone of their con artistry is brilliant

http://www.homebargains.co.uk/products/10407-rock-it-records-12-album-sleeve-frame-case-of-12.aspx

"Our price: £23.88"

(for 12!)

we have those expensive frames in the office, filled with U2 and Bob Marley sleeves.

That girl on the front page of VNYL. So excited! So naive! Such a perfectly sad thing! Ugh

Not to mention the really poorly executed record-face meme thing with the fka twigs. Just.. no.

https://twitter.com/ajakober/status/598701455080431616

wasn't there a thread on ILM started by someone looking into setting up something like this a few months ago ?

had a revival a little after, but to little avail.

yes, there was

What are your thoughts on a new project I'm working on: Wax & Stamp - a vinyl subscription club (UK)

WTF

https://twitter.com/gotvnyl/status/598911277952557057

That is NOT Doug Martsch...

Am I crazy here? Are they trying to trick people into thinking that's Doug Martsch, or did this dude trick them?

maybe that guy's name is also doug martsch

Parody account.

Real one's GETvinyl not got. Still sux.

any evidence that VNYL is actually a successful rip-off, or just a would-be rip-off?

it seems sort of tone-deaf to me.

Maybe it will inadvertently lead to a lounge/easy listening revival in a couple years.

Is there any evidence that anyone's gotten something besides thrift store garbage from VYNL?

Nope. Even with the happy customers.

Which one?

I was replying quickly on my phone earlier, so my initial response was to the first one, but it truly is disheartening to see so many.

What happened to vinyl fans being diggers? I remember when I first got into vinyl, it was just instinctual to hit second hand stores. Has common sense gone out the window in order to make room for this renewed interest in vinyl?

lol crut

Hey, jefferson airplane is not garbage u dummies

What happened to vinyl fans being diggers? I remember when I first got into vinyl, it was just instinctual to hit second hand stores. Has common sense gone out the window in order to make room for this renewed interest in vinyl?

as a new vinyl buyer i will say that i have been to many second-hand shops over the last 5 years and the selections - esp re what i'm looking for - tend to be really really bad. otoh if yr in the market for a jefferson airplane album this is a golden time to be alive.

most of the good vinyl i've gotten have been donations from relatives, finding stuff on ebay, and -- eek - paying full price for some new reissue

Airplane may not suck, but it is an easy, 25¢ thrift store find.

And yeah, genuinely *GREAT* stuff is not going to be found in thrift stores. But when everything's a quarter, you have to expect Cat Stevens, not Velvet Underground.

I guess burning n00bs will never get old.

dying at the stereogum VNYL story, had not heard of this amazing scam. i'm imagining someone having some kind of account difficulty, they can't turn it off, lost password, and every month three more England Dan & John Ford Coley LPs show up, with "#LazySunday" stickers on the front, because of their interest in Sleater-Kinney, Meat Beat Manifesto and Sun Ra. they run out of places to put them, local stores have them on the blacklist, city sanitation crews rip them out of the trash and hurl them back under their doors. and yet they keep coming. endless England Dan & John Ford Coley. eventually a fire starts and they die of poisonous vinyl fumes. all for only $25 a month --- thanks, kickstarter and #VYNL!

i've always wanted to buy a dog eared copies of Sesame Street's The Muppet Musicians of Bremen and a Perry Como compilation for 25 bucks

the best part of the kickstarter economy part of the story is that nobody bothered to see if pay-for-records is legal, so it's now technically pay-for-whatever

the fact that they have no actual curation and it's just backstock and secondhand garbage is icing

Quoting the owner:

“It fucking sucks when we disappoint our members. We honestly feel incredibly sad when a member doesn’t like what we sent. That sucks for them and also for us. It’s like you just spent all this time planning out what you think is an awesome surprise gift idea for someone and then they can’t mask the look of disappointment when they open it up right in front of you. It’s completely deflating. Unfortunately, this comes with the territory of being a human curated service."

I imagine in the back of his mind he's thinking: "Nailed it! Just got to stay in character, then nobody can call us out! It's all subjective, I'll say. As long as enough r/vinyl or Urban Outfitters type kids keep subscribing we should be just fine."

If this was mine I'd just buy the contents of a record store that is going out of business with the kickstarter money and pay someone to put four random records that aren't too beat up in an envelope monthly

that'd be like a half-dozen kids working minimum wage for a couple days per month maximum right?

https://media.wnyc.org/media/photologue/images/a7/yourfavoritexmas3_firestone722.jpg

My #XmasVibes arrived! Nice clean copy. No flood damage!

^
Might be U.S.-centric

$30!

Thrift stores are vinyl grift stores now. My local has all their LPs at $4.99 -- it's the cheapest in the area. But it's all dollar bin fodder.

$30!!! I had to zip my lip

That's an actual crime being committed

onfg

sorry OMFG

Sealed early pressing, I hope.

you guys haven't heard Grease? proto-punk band from Milwaukee, only released one record privately in '76, $30 is a steal!

For $30 I'd want a hot stamper so hot the vinyl's melting on my turntable and running into the mechanism.

It's electrifyin'

i'm in a 'thrift scored records' group on FB where the rule is you can only post reccords you found in a thrift store and so many people complain their goodwills and thrifts have started jacking prices on albums to insane prices. Lots of $80 beatles records in terrible condition in locked up cases.

have often found stuff on my wantlist on Vinyl Pimp's discogs account but the whole thing of "spend £300 and stay in my hotel for free" they blurb under every entry squicked me out.

good setting for a murder mystery imo

like Clue but all the murder weapons are things like "unstable Ikea Kallax"

Speaking of Goodwill getting in on the grift, have you ever checked out shopgoodwill.com? Some Goodwill stores sell stuff that never even makes it to the record bins if they think it will command a higher price on the internet. Nothing is graded, so it's a bit of a gamble.

I've tried it a couple of times with mixed results. One time I bought a lot of funk/r&b records that included a decent copy of Innervisions, but a Sly and the Family Stone's Greatest Hits that had huge skips all over side B. Another time though, I found a sealed copy of the first Warpaint EP that turned out to be a rare, colored pressing.

https://shopgoodwill.com/categories/records-8-track?p=1

dang i had no idea -- this is kind of blowing my mind!

they do it with books as well

A 2013 article on Watchdog.org reported that Goodwill's tax returns showed that more than 100 Goodwills pay less than minimum wage while simultaneously paying more than $53.7 million in total compensation to top executives.[41]

yah they suck

i figure everybody knows, but yeah. still better than Savers!

what's worse -- Salvation Army or Goodwill?

i think SA bc iirc they are openly homophobic as well as being stingy w workers
Goodwill sounds simply stingy?

and greedy!!

yeah SA def worse

Down by the riverside is NOT bound to be a better ride than what you got planned.

i am pleased that i only hear the Bangles version of that song in my head

yeah when i worked at goodwill some years back, i was always the first one to go through records, pick out the good stuff, and send it off to shop (which was our shorthand for the shop goodwill processing facility). they track which stuff comes from which donation sites and the places who consistently send in stuff that sells get paycheck bonuses; only ever about $30 every six months, but hey!

this also explains why you'll hardly ever find anything of any interest in the record bins in the stores.

protip: if you're into jewelry, shop goodwill could be a literal goldmine.

also yeah: i am definitely a disgruntled former employee

So, I guess my days of donating to Goodwill are over now

sidebar attesting to gw's overall shittiness:
the local chapter here was found intentionally making payroll mistakes only on the checks for employees with developmental disabilities. it was never said out loud, but the implication was that they targeted these employees because they were less likely to notice.

it amounted to several years worth of this practice and over a million dollars in stolen wages.

I went to the Goodwill nearest me only a couple of times, they carry probably about 20 records at any moment and it's basically all along the lines of completely trashed copies of stuff like flower drum song or Eddie rabbitt's greatest Hits Volume 2, definitely not priced to move.

I like to donate actually decent stuff to independent thrift shops (like one for the SPCA) and scads of questionable shit to Value Village (aka Savers). They manage to sell, like, coax cable. At least there's always a steady supply of it on the wall.

this thrift “chain” in my area is pretty cool, 100% of profits go to HIV prevention

https://outofthecloset.org/

I don’t know about vinyl, though, never found any cool discs digging thrift stores, possibly born too late

yeah we have St. Vincent De Paul for a good local org

my best thrift score in recent memory (i.e maybe 5 years ago) was a Mothers Of Invention album, the Buckingham/Nicks S/T, Miles Davis Quiet Nights, and T Rex Electric Warrior all together.

we have a local SVDP too, actually two. i agree that it's good people. also the scores there are way better across categories

yes that score above was at SVDP, also the time I found a stash of like half a dozen mint Brazilian 45s from 1970-72, Veloso etc

Not quite getting what this is, exactly, but it probably belongs here: http://repress.qrates.com

― a full playlist of presidential sex jams (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, August 15, 2016 5:11 PM (seven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Not quite getting what this is, exactly, but it probably belongs here: http://repress.qrates.com

if i'm reading this right they'll straight up bootleg anything?! wtf

― andrew m., Wednesday, November 2, 2016 4:20 PM (seven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

"QRATES gives artists, labels and brands the tools..."

It's aimed at artists and labels, not just random people. How much checking they do is open to question though.

― koogs, Thursday, November 3, 2016 4:46 AM (seven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

not going qreat...

https://www.reddit.com/r/vinyl/s/inBLbNHOsx

https://www.reddit.com/r/VinylReleases/comments/18lkvuz/just_a_reminder_do_not_buy_from_qrates/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CzkCDvkveh0/

original url doesn't work so i'm having trouble understanding what this is

It was service that pressed to vinyl anything you sent in to them (copyright be damned).

sending in carrots

i thought this was an interesting comment in the first reddit thread:

Qrates uses GZ Media as their pressing plant. GZ was known for being a “safe” plant for sample-based music. Lots of vaporwave artists got their stuff pressed there, for instance. Around June of this year, GZ started using AI technology to identify samples and require clearance documentation. A LOT of Qrates’ projects were sample-based music, and around the middle of this year, a lot of projects had to be mass-refunded. This is my speculation. Qrates ran out of money to get anything pressed because GZ Media started cracking down on samples, and they had to mass refund a bunch of projects and ran out of cash.

the sad thing about those reddit threads is just how many comments were basically, "whaaa! we should be able to press any sample we want, this is bullshit".

original url doesn't work so i'm having trouble understanding what this is

― budo jeru, Tuesday, December 19, 2023 2:59 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ah I didn't realize that, here: https://qrates.com

i have only ever made records by physically going somewhere and having lacquers cut, which you then would mail off to be plated. it always seemed to me like the places where you sent files w/ music and art were weird because surely you'd end up with a disappointing product? or maybe i'm just too cynical about the QC at these kinds of places, although this story . . .

iirc, CZ does direct metal masters

i'm not saying it's not legit, nor do i think my caveman process is the only way. but i've only ever been able to make it happen by doing as much as i possibly could myself

plus it's more fun that way

I won't go as far as calling it a shady scam, but I can't image why anyone would want to listen to Feldman's String Quartet II, an extremely long and quiet piece, on vinyl. Any tiny flaw, pop, or crackle will likely be louder than the music, and you have to switch sides every 25 minutes. Oh, and the label only offers this recording on vinyl - no CD, download, or streaming. (Luckily there are two other recordings of the piece out there).

https://www.discogs.com/release/14771547-Morton-Feldman-Pellegrini-Quartet-String-Quartet-II