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

I think I understand this as you pay money along with a group of strangers, for someone to buy a record, then this person gives you a rip of the record and this person keeps the record.

But also there’s an option for the buyers to vote to sell after it’s been ripped?

back in my day we shared dope music with anyone who would listen 100% for free.

seems like another nightmarish way that the internet is monetizing what used to be organic human interaction.

i mean, neat idea to get otherwise obscure music "out there" but right up front there's a huge disclaimer about how it's for "TEACHING, RESEARCH, PRIVATE STUDY, AND REVIEW ONLY I SWEAR GUYS I LOVE THIS COMMUNITY" and i am as equally as horrified by it as i am enchanted.

thread delivers two days and running. very creepy "sunday in perfect suburbia" vibes, this last one.

ahh shucks, i got this one confused with Awesome Audiophile Snake Oil

but still, this is a really great one too.

that is some weird trapdoor backgroundo elitist ridiculousness! ever heard of YouTube? oh wait are these supposed to be like Dr Ebbetts quality?

iow, what austin said!

lads i just had lunch and i’m storing up a few big lossless rips myself

FLAC

This thread from Scat Records is, disheartening, to say the least.

We've been pressing records at RTI for 25 years. They're so backed up now that they won't accept *new* print deliveries for the last 3 months of 2021. Much of the print we've sent their way earlier this year is being stored outside.
Time to take the hint. Open to suggestions.

— Scat Records (@_ScatRecords) November 4, 2021

My distributor: "we've gone beyond pressing delays to systemic collapse"

— Scat Records (@_ScatRecords) November 4, 2021

related, on the trucking shortage:

https://jalopnik.com/greed-is-why-the-supply-chain-crisis-isnt-ending-veter-1848068966

Is this rolling US economy into shitbin?

Is this rolling US economy into shit cut-out bin?

Fixed

this is such bullshit, bring back CDs already

just sell cds in the same sized jackets that vinyl came in, best of both worlds, no more backlogs

this is such bullshit, bring back CDs already

― brimstead, Thursday, November 18, 2021 4:12 PM

BUT MY WARM AESTHETIC!

maybe VNYL can sell "smug, unearned superiority complexes" for a premium too if they run short on product

then what have i been paying for this whole time!!????!?

surely this isn't real

https://better-records.com/collections/new-arrivals

Imagine paying $650 for Blind Faith.

the FAQ teeters on the edge of being an actual store for the ludicrous Hot Stampers guy we were mocking this summer, and being an extremely knowing parody. the item descriptions feel overwhelmingly like the latter, so somehow sadly i think it's probably the former.

What’s the difference between White Hot, Super Hot, and Nearly White Hot. Are these Goldmine standards.

lol this is good.

Imagine paying $650 for Blind Faith.

"tell me you have more money than you need without telling me you have more money than you need"

from the Jackson Browne description:

This one was bigger and bolder, with more Tubey Magical richness on Jackson's voice

"The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1978"

Pretty sure no one was using tube equipment in 1978.

three hundred for supertramp!

(i thought these might be nfts)

Wait, does this dork think all analogue recording was on tubes?

Hot Stamper FAQ answers written as if the jig is up, probably with the salesman mindset that coming off as brutally honest and self aware will build trust.

$150 for the Doowackadoodlers!

IMAGINE THE PRICES FOR DOODLETOWN PIPERS ULTRAHOT STAMPERS!

most of our clowning on Hot Stampers as a concept is in the Snake Oil thread. the discussion I was thinking of from last year starts here: Awesome Audiophile Snake Oil

"The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1978"

Pretty sure no one was using tube equipment in 1978.

― Johnny Mathis der Maler (Boring, Maryland), Monday, January 31, 2022 11:43 AM (forty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

there is still tons of tube gear being used to this day

though a lot of it is being used on digital recordings which kinda defeats his point

but tube consoles are still used in studios all the time and were even more so in 78

Hot Stamper 'First Mention': Crazy Priced Vinyl On EBAY

lmao at the last sentence here

What makes you guys think you know it all?
We definitely don’t know it all. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. If we knew it all we couldn't learn anything from the piles and piles of records we listen to every day. With practically every shootout we learn something new about our favorite records. That, more than anything else, is what makes the kind of tedious, time-consuming, mentally exhausting work we do fun. Case in point: a Columbia Pressing we played not long ago.

Self-XP And that post was about 'Better Records'!

that paragraph from frogbs makes me feel attacked

though a lot of it is being used on digital recordings which kinda defeats his point

but tube consoles are still used in studios all the time and were even more so in 78

https://vinylblade.com/product

won't this be a bit heavy and tricky to play at the right speed? i dunno about this

also, not vinyl:

Vinyl Blade’s grooves are copper-clad steel, which may wear your stylus down faster than a normal record.

and not really a saw:

Do not use Vinyl Blade on a saw. It is not rated or intended for use as a functional saw blade. Attempting to use Vinyl Blade on a saw could result in serious injury or death.

yup really got my doubts on this one

what could possibly go wrong

got to up the speed to play it right, just be very very careful

I was hoping there would be some disclaimer about having to disconnect your stereo every time you wanted to put this record on because with all of the metal bullshit it's made out of, you will get electrocuted if you touch it while everything's powered on. Just paying for the luxury of inconvenience at this point.

I'm just waiting for the tie-in where they start selling a subscription service for needle replacements. Because you just know some goober is going to SWEAR YOU GUYS THERE'S A HUGE DIFFERENCE IN FIDELITY I MEAN IT, it will become a regular thing, and then this thread can finally merge with Awesome Audiophile Snake Oil and we can sit here and just be all like, "Yep."

NEEDLE ME, PLEASE

some goofy art thing... kinda can't wait to see what they sell for, tomorrow

The funniest thing about this is that its a Weeknd song. How is this not some metal band?

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/16/49/76/164976990c547d6d697ef98b555e4a69.jpg

old school sunday: introducing the amazing compact disc.

really funny watching stuff like this now. SILICON CHIPS? SOUNDS FURPHY TO ME THERE, SHEILA.

i love that story, saw it on first broadcast on aus TV back in the day and have happily watched it through at least 3 times since it appeared on youtube - it's not just nostalgia, I think it's actually really well-made TV

have never quite lost that sense of the compact disc being a nifty modern invention, and the styling on those early players is ultra-tasty IMO

https://www.vinylmeplease.com/products/the-james-brand-vmp-knife

$79 stainless steel artisan knife for opening records, with a handle inlay made from recycled vinyl from VMP pressings.

vmp doubling down.

(or is this tripling, quadrupling, or perhaps even more by now?)