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

https://newreleases.discogs.com/cassette-player

I pre-ordered the new Lemon Twigs LP with a bonus cassette of demos/outtakes and am gonna be digging my CD/cassette boombox from 20+ years ago out of the loft eaves to play it. Not had a tape deck for years and years. Are these we are rewind dudes any good? Can't really think of Discogs as a thing I'd want their logo on anything I owned tbh.

yeah I'd assume yr old boombox is better quality. clean the tape heads with alcohol and q-tips, moving the q-tip across the heads in the direction of the tape travel, not up and down.

Ah, thanks for the advice, sleeve! Also hoping the cassette comes w/a dl code tbh.

Beyond a couple of mixtapes of yore and old interview tapes, I have exactly one cassette at the moment, my dad's old tape of Let It Bleed, which sat in our family car for years and years.

i already shouted out the new episode of We Buy Records on the AI thread, but it deserves a mention here for their incredulous discussion of the $9,800 EX700 cartridge, "crafted from the finest spruce harvested in the South Tyrol region of Northern Italy—the very area said to be the source of the wood used for Stradivarius violins."

aaaaaaaagh lol

i guess that really belongs on the audiophile snake oil thread though, oops

So VNYL… I mean, sorry, Vinyl Me Please out of nowhere suddenly charged a ton of customers $500 give or take via PayPal and people are having trouble in some cases disputing the charges. And there have been reports from some people that VMP sent them a package in order to prove that the transaction was for an item, and either just got a random record they didn’t want, or a box with nothing in it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/VinylMePlease/comments/1uqeikc/latest_scam_victim/

wow

more like Vinyl Me No Thank You!!!!!!

haha I had VNYL for one month and all they sent me was a shitty 90s hip hop comp record

iirc chaki went to the physical location of their store here in L.A. and called them out for their scamming but i forget the deets.

classic thread

divergence on the lefsetz thread brought to my attention some of ya'lls ignorance re:'TINY VINYL'----
https://www.tinyvinyl.com

now i don't use the word "splendid" often... but these here trinkets....

I wonder if the technology now exists to make a playable Chu-bop?

TINY VINYL INSPIRES WONDER

:D

Wait till they discover 7”s and they can market them as giant tiny records

coulda sworn we discussed that one! seems like the idea is "singles for people whose cheap gimmick turntables make it hard to switch to 45," or maybe just "stocking-stuffers they can fit in the checkout line at Target." i'm sympathetic to the former, sorta, since our main listening table is my partner's U-Line which, i guess to save two bucks on parts and manufacturing, requires you to physically move the belt to a different position to switch between 33 and 45, with the result that we absolutely never do that.

it's actually for better sound quality but yes it's a pain

(not a scam!)

*U-Turn... Apparently I was thinking of office supplies lol

Having all the music so close to the spindle - isn't that going to fuck with people whose decks/carts suffer from inner groove distortion, or have I fundamentally misunderstood record players? (tbf almost certainly the case)

yah i mean these discs are not an audiophile product.

@sleeve - wait, do you mean that the manual belt change is a sound-quality thing? i've certainly heard the case made for belt-drive in general, but not for having to personally lift the belt off the spindle and reposition it. also, their more expensive models feature electronic speed control...

my low-high-end NAD turntable makes you

xp I thought inner groove distortion was an issue with all vinyl records due to the smaller circumference of the groove the closer you get to the spindle - having a better record player or stylus isn't going to help with that

Yeah, I think you're right, CP - hence being warned about putting the noisiest songs on the end of a side by mastering people, even though the ends of sides are where the noisiest songs belong!

xps to Dr C, yes my understanding is that the less parts/devices you have connecting to the turntable itself, the better the sound in terms of noise floor/hum, which is why pretty much all higher end turntables work like this including my Music Hall MMF-5

The moving the belt thing is supposedly an audiophile rule in that it reduces parts that can resonate or interfere with the sound. I’m not convinced that Project/Uline turntables, the cartridges that most people use, and the speakers that most people use are going to reveal the compromised sonics that necessitate moving a belt. The actual result of this is people not bothering to play things at 45rpm which is a shit tradeoff. And it makes the manufacturing cost of these turntables substantially cheaper so Project can say “It sounds better!” while charging more.

A LOT of what people so for the sake of perfect sound is theoretical and not audible to the average person. Good speakers are the biggest factor in sound.

my record player has a button that changes the frequency of the AC signal to the motor to switch between 33/45. I had to buy it as an extra because when I bought it, it only played at 33! bit of an issue for someone with a massive collection of 7"s tbh

having a better record player or stylus isn't going to help with that

IME the ATVM95ML got rid of most of the inner-groove distortion issues I was experiencing with the elliptical stylus - the slimmer needle navigates the narrower grooves better.

I bought a speed box for my project which feels like a damn scam.

bought two tiny vinyls for my daughter. She is 9 and she loves tiny things. I got the kpop demon hunters one and kacey musgraves. we listened once.

found a blog post yesterday like 'great old school forums that are still active!' (ilx wasn't on there btw) and it said vynl me plz or whatever had its origin in a message board? is that true? the embarassment shoulda killed the board! no longer active!

yah, if i were to ever shell out for a higher-end table, I'd accept a possible ding to some subtlety of sound in order to listen to singles again, or things like Kid A (double EP at 45 rpm).

IME the ATVM95ML got rid of most of the inner-groove distortion issues I was experiencing with the elliptical stylus - the slimmer needle navigates the narrower grooves better.

― Nina in the broadcast booth (stevie), Wednesday, July 15, 2026 11:18 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

same here - there are still a few LPs I can hear IGD on but for the most part using a microline has completely eliminated it. as emily mentioned they used to put quieter and less dynamic songs at the end of sides to mitigate this but I don't know if that idea's entered anyone's head since 1988. sadly I've kind of gotten the feeling that a lot of vinyl manufacturers approach it from the angle of "whatever, half the people who buy these won't listen to them anyway", seems to be way more non-fill and noisy pressings these days than there was in the 70s and 80s

xp just to be clear, I can change the speed on mine, it's just manual

I bought a speed box for my project which feels like a damn scam.

oh totally, my post was a little over-dramatic and really should have said "in order for it to be convenient and pleasant to listen to singles again." it's not impossible, I just can't really be bothered!

I'd accept a possible ding to some subtlety of sound in order to listen to … things like Kid A (double EP at 45 rpm).

Is that the later 12” version? Because the double 10” is 33.3 RPM. You may be needlessly missing out right now.

they used to put quieter and less dynamic songs at the end of sides to mitigate this but I don't know if that idea's entered anyone's head since 1988.

There’s a version of Ravel’s “Bolero” where the record plays from the centre outward, which was done so that the quiet early part can eventually open up to the louder more bandwidth consuming later part of the piece in full fidelity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoLJSmvsbs8

hahahaha that's amazing!

woah

as emily mentioned they used to put quieter and less dynamic songs at the end of sides to mitigate this but I don't know if that idea's entered anyone's head since 1988.

Our mastering person did still advise this in 2020! He didn't insist on it but we were told to keep it in mind when finalising the running order. Basically, the loudness would have to be reduced over the whole record if we put the noisiest ones last, in order to mitigate the inner groove problem. Most of the record was pretty noisy anyway, so it didn't really change how we ordered it in the end.

My Rega RP-1 also has to be manually switched to 45rpm, which I've done maybe three times in the ten years I've owned it. Other than that, I mostly love the Rega, though another design flaw is that it lacks a removable cartridge, and you practically need 20/20 vision, a jeweler's tool, and the steady hand of a surgeon to change the friggin' needle on the damn thing.

I have a P-2 and cannot wait to get something else. No ground wire, changing carts is a pain, everything is plastic.

xp do you mean a removable headshell? Surely you can change the cartridge on it?

yes, sorry, that's what I meant, but it's still a little tricky. I mean the little bolts are so tiny. I just miss the relative ease of switching out the needle on my old SL-1200

I have a couple of old Pioneer PL12Ds I picked up cheap - great turntables, absolute workhorses, and they sound fab - and you can unscrew the whole headshell to fuck about with the cartridge if you have to, and that just seems the perfect, foolproof system.