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

i have a vacuum cleaner and results are extremely variable.

what model/brand, stir?

10 minutes to clean one record is a dealbreaker imo - my SpinClean experience is labor-intensive but wayyy faster, and anyway i enjoy the meditation of hanging out for a while and listening to stuff whilst cleaning. but i dunno how this compares to other cleaning machines.

it is a Moth, sleeve. it was definitely worth purchasing as it made a huge number of unplayable records playable but a lot of times it would also make very little difference. Hard to predict what the outcome will be. Also, it is extremely loud and if doing a bulk session one would really need ear protection. Still glad i bought it and it has long since paid for itself.

thank you! never heard of that one.

all depends on what's on the record - they do really well removing dust, mold, and dirt, particularly stuff the traditional brushes just sort of push around. but they won't do much for the scratches. I've heard the wood glue technique can work wonders there but I've never tried it myself.

im a big wood glue fan but at the end of the day in my experience glue, vacuums, washing devices, etc, all seem to have roughly the same success rate when done right, its just a matter of whether the issue is foreign material in the grooves vs scratches or actual damage to the grooves, which cant be fixed

yes, a scratch is a scratch of course, as is damage to the grooves, but sometimes it is dirt that is just not going to get removed no matter what one tries to throw at it. Grease / sweat that has got mixed in with dust and dirt and got deep into the grooves can be the particularly hard to ever remove, imo.

I’ve gotten rid of so many records that probably would have sounded fine if they had just been cleaned properly. Scratches are obviously irreversible.

I just came across this description on a discogs listing for a splatter-pattern colored vinyl pressing:

This item is a mispress. When they were making the fun pattern, only on A1 they didn't quite press hard enough into one of the yellow splotches and it makes a fun little bouncing noise every time it hits it. Lasts about one minute. Rest of the record sound near mint.

omg

link plz

The link is in the post.

oops sorry, my bad

Have we talked about this?

https://www.dwhome.com/collections/wood-masculine/products/record-store

The familiar scent of pressed vinyl and warm woods fills the air, accented by notes of sweet blossoms, hints of amber and soft fruit.

what, no b.o. and pot smoke nodes?

Apparently no aromas of plastic, old cardboard, or cat piss either.

would rather have a candle that smells like an old video rental store

Nothing quite like the smell of old tape head cleaner.

A triple pack consisting of three differently coloured copies of the exact same record, and some other shit.

https://webstore.earache.com/buckcherry/buckcherry-hellbound-all-3-vinyl-inc-purple

oh man that's a really good one! jesus christ.

also it's Buckcherry, lol at anybody buying 3 Buckcherry vinyl records, even more LOL when they're all the same one with diff designs.

I would literally drive 2 hours to laugh at anybody who bought this.

https://webstore.earache.com/image/cache/data/New%20Releases/Buckcherry/BuckcherrySigning-1200x1200.jpg

Earache is carrying Buckcherry records? How far they have fallen…

it has a MOSH catalog number, so not just distributing, they’re putting this one out! oof

Dying:

Frontman Josh Todd said: “Buckcherry is unique, complex, simple, passionate, explosive, original and always a good time. BC has been my love, my pain, my passion and I’m so proud of what we have accomplished. Our ninth record Hellbound marks 22 years since our debut self-titled release and what an amazing rollercoaster we have been on. From hit songs to platinum and gold records and millions of fans worldwide – all during a time period when traditional sounding hard rock bands didn’t exist – except for Buckcherry. We beat the odds and built our reputation on the live shows, and our one-of-a-kind approach to every opportunity”

lmao - even fucking JACKYL still kept releasing records while Buckcherry was still around, what a fuckin choad

hOw MaNy CrAzY bItChEs We GoT oUt HeRe¿?

WARNING: DO NOT CLICK THAT

so weird for me to think of Buckcherry as representing a nine-album, 22-year career for its members and other protagonists. i remember a week or two when i thought "Lit Up" rocked pretty hard.

They had one of those weird arcs where they did a couple albums, broke up, reformed with mostly different guys, and then had their biggest hits in the late '00s ("Crazy Bitch" & "Sorry").

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuck_(EP)

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/224133002870

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/k2wAAOSwJ5VfRSmy/s-l1600.jpg

"RECORD STARTER COLLECTION 9 X 12” VINYL MIXTURE Rock, Jazz ,classical music Mix Vinyl Records
WILL RANDOMLY PIC OUT 9 RECORDS FOR EACH BATCH
all used"

From the feedback, buyer with a winning bid of £25.58:

Not rock or jazz, awful selection of awful albums in awful condition, avoid.

I think the phrase 'caveat emptor' applies here.

‘Genre: Dance and Electronica’

Genre: Shit I got at the thrift store when they dumped their unsellable crap.

vnyl tactics.

A new one of those subscription “clubs”: https://vinylmoon.co/

Plans from $31 A Month!

Sounds like a massive waste of wax to rival even the RSD reissue of the "Coneheads" movie OST.

When artists who could really benefit from having their music on vinyl are having to wait months or years for pressings because of this BS and endless classic rock reissues...

It's terribly sad that the punk/indie/dance labels and artists who were responsible for vinyl not dying out completely are being squeezed out by this claptrap.

Also their logo kind of somehow looks like "Vinyl Mom" when you first glance at it

haha it does.

They've been around a while. I noticed some YouTubes about them. Kind of fascinating for being completely about the vinyl art/presentation. All of the releases are on Discogs, 74 so far. I wonder if bands pay to be on these things.

if they are, they're sponsoring what looks like a lot of talented MFA grads. at least i hope the visual artists are well compensated in this scheme since their work seems to be 95% of the appeal. anyway i prefer that scenario to Dan Aykroyd or whoever getting a few extra Conehead bucks.

I didn’t recognise any of the bands. indie landfill it looks like.

The only one I recognized was King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. They have a pretty significant following and they are already known for their prolific, but limited iirc, vinyl releases. I'm not too familiar with them (have not been able to appreciate their music that so many others do) but it seems weird that they would be the most prominent "name" band on this sketchy compilation label. They seem to have a pretty robust vinyl distribution arm on their own.

Some or all of the compilations are on Spotify. Looks like one or two tracks with loads of plays and the rest in the low thousands. Bringing in a ringer for each? I know King Giz but not the other "big" ones I'm seeing.

yeah I'll give it to them the designs look really neat but the fact that you have to click several times to find out which artists are on it is not an encouraging sign. clicking around on the Spotify lists the music seems okay but they really are just compilations of unrelated tracks from unknown artists, its like they're not really meant to be played

to Chinchilla's point I've lately been getting a bunch of ads for this:

https://www.vinylmeplease.com/products/adam-sandler-eight-crazy-nights

it would be one thing if it contained fairly well-known tracks from 2002 but it's literally all original soundtrack material from a movie that nobody remembers shit about. such bottom of the barrel stuff and it sucks because I know there's so much stuff waiting to get pressed right now

that said I guess this stuff hasn't been all bad, the vinyl resurgence has caused a lot of things I never thought I'd get my hands on to get reissued. like I never imagined in 2005 that I'd wind up with a collection full of stuff by the likes of Cluster and Haruomi Hosono

sad/hilarious/telling that the quotes from satisfied customers on the vinylmoon page are exclusively people talking about the packaging.

always baffling to me how many of these reissues are of non-notable hollywood movie soundtracks from the last 30 years, crates and crates of them clogging up my local stores, $34 for the original score of Not Another Teen Movie or The Faculty. my assumption has always been that these are aimed at holiday/birthday gift buying by clueless relatives. i was in my local the other day and saw my first one of the season actually, a confused older person wandering in going "i need a christmas gift, he likes heavy metal, do you have heavy metal records?"

i used to be happy at the idea of these people subsidizing weird local record stores, but the fact that theyre now clogging the system to the point of preventing actual new records from being pressed by actual working musicians, my feelings have... changed

tbh im getting to the point of being annoyed at stores for stocking shit like that, seems like theyre sowing the seeds of their own demise. theyre making short-term cash at RSD and the holidays, but when thats the only shit that can get pressed, theyre just going to slowly turn into "Music-Themed Gift Shop: Come In And Buy A Music Vinyl for the Rocker In your Life!"

how much of it is, like, non-specialty chain stores are stocking this shit so if you're an honest to god record store, you better be stocking it too? like you def wouldn't want that type of customer to come to your store, *not* find eight copies of the Stranger Things Vol 3 deluxe pressing or the glossy gatefold edition of the Short Circuit II soundtrack, and head for Best Buy or Barnes and Noble or Urban Outfitters and never come back. plus, some sliver of people who collect other types of vinyl do occasionally get a video game soundtrack or something. based on my friend's collection i was browing last night, there's some overlap with classical and jazz listeners.

worth mentioning that a significant part of the vinyl shortage is due to there being like a million copies of that 7xLP Garth Brooks set getting pressed