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

how much do we charge for an LP in the wrong jacket?

Thanks god CDs are as cheap as duck because of vinyl fetishists.

Xpost - the relic/"roadworn" guitar trend is very much song shopping alive and well

As far as the "cash grab" aspects to vinyl variants, does anyone who listens to Spotify etc (I do) have the right to complain? Music was deemed valueless so they are selling what they can

i spend most of my disposable income on music and music merchandise, concert tix, etc for this reason (probably more than I spend on food), and I do like buying novelty vinyl.

I do also think though the haves can crowd out the have nots in pressing.

Can we discuss the loathsome ness of artist who do cassette-only releases? Yes, please, let me have it on the worst-sounding, crappiest, least durable, least aesthetically pleasing format possible.

I used to fantasize when I was young about having the ability to just listen to every CD in the store and how cool it would be to be able to just think of a song title and get to listen to it. Which obviously you can do now.

sure

But I think when you do that it leads to you getting RYM-brain, where you're obsessed with rating and ranking everything under the sun in order to curate the perfect Top 50 list of albums which you actually haven't listened to in the last 7 years

no, being able to listen to the songs you want doesn't make you need to rate, rank or list anything, there must be something else wrong with you.

xp
Yes, especially since cassettes probably costs more to make than CDs. I don't actually know the costs of each medium, but surely cassettes are more time intensive?

I remember one night, back in like 2002 or 2003, a very stoned buddy of mine came up with a whole plan for used LPs being the delivery vehicle for selling weed to people.

Yeah, nothing bums me out more than getting excited about a band, jumping over to their Bandcamp page and seeing the vinyl pressing completely sold out 3 days after it was released and cassette as the only other option.

yes, time to recapture the warm memory of squinting to read the lyrics on the tiny lyric sheet. ahh, childhood.

the only time I willfully bought a cassette in the last decade was for Mac's out of print No LImit album which literally wasn't available in any other format for an affordable price, and at the time I still had a cassette player.

other than that, tapes are good for emergency toilet paper.

i’m struggling with that image tbh

This has been an interesting thread to read. I saved my father's records from going to the trash when he died. I was 8 and he had around 3 hundred records, mostly classic and psych rock with a bit of random jazz and soul. In high school, I started going to yards sales, ordering records through catalogs and collector's mail order lists. I've purged my collection many times, mostly keeping rare and hard time find records. These days I mostly dig for lounge records that there's no way to hear unless I find a copy. I've been slowly writing reviews that hopefully will end in a complete lounge/vanity record book.

I was gonna try and argue with the anti-tape folks but why bother, your loss

would you prefer no physical release at all? vinyl pressings are booked through 2023 FYI

(thanks, Adele and Garth)

only thing that bugs me about tapes is the loud mechanical clicking sound my deck makes at the end of each side. CLICK

I do still buy CDs on occasion... actually got a new portable disc player for that reason.

I buy all of my digital music, only use Spotify for convenience or playlists

would you prefer no physical release at all? vinyl pressings are booked through 2023 FYI

I'd prefer downloads and CDs, not cassettes-only.

Cassettes are kind of a trash format, which makes them perfect for lo-fi garage/noise/weirdo stuff. Lots of great amusing cassette labels out there in the 90s and even today doing the L-rd's work.

guess those would be Mars Volta guitars

Mars Volta dude did have a pretty sweet Ibanez signature model about ten years ago IIRC

just loaded the top of the thread and just learned by clicking the link that VYNL is still around which is somewhat insane to me

#FOXXBODIES* #FUCKINWHATEVER* #COMACULTURE*

Mars Volta dude did have a pretty sweet Ibanez signature model about ten years ago IIRC

― papal hotwife (milo z), Tuesday, November 9, 2021 10:24 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

If I had $3K, I'd buy Omar's EBMM model: https://www.music-man.com/instruments/guitars/mariposa

Wait, who releases things *only* on cassette with no download? The general practice with all tape labels I know is that the tapes are the physical format for those who want one but they always come with downloads too.

yeah thats always been my experience. im not into lofi noise tape culture but i would assume that anybody honestly doing tape-only-no-download releases has a pretty good idea that their fans are really into playing tapes?

I know Dump did that on this more recent release:

https://editalaservidumbre.bandcamp.com/album/dump-blown-dunks

no, being able to listen to the songs you want doesn't make you need to rate, rank or list anything, there must be something else wrong with you.

― The 25 Best Songs Ever Ranked In Order (Deflatormouse), Tuesday, November 9, 2021 5:08 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

for sure but I don't think I'm necessarily alone in this. idk maybe part of this was first getting access to high speed internet in 2004, when the word was the RIAA was gonna shut down all illegal downloading and sue everyone who downloaded "LiNkIn-PaRk-nUmB.exe". also I am pretty sure torrent trackers were getting shut down on a monthly basis. so there was this attitude of "get in while the gettin's good". I would guess the next generation, for whom everything is just available on Spotify and YouTube all the time, does not feel this way.

fwiw I'm not arguing that digital music is a bad thing, in fact it's been a very very good thing for me, just saying the fact that there is effectively an infinite amount of music out there can cause its own type of anxiety

ive talked before about how a big part of what keeps me in physical media is that, having grown up in the pre-streaming era, i find it hard to wrap my head around the infinite options of streaming, my brain shuts down, it becomes too overwhelming. the physical tactile element of 3-dimensional objects that i can look at, flip through, make stacks, stumble across, set aside, etc is just such an ingrained part of how i listen, remember, and organize music in my brain. i stream as well, but its almost always either triggered by a physical release or results in me getting a physical release.

I still enjoy physical media as well, but I recreate "pulling things off the shelves to listen to later" by simply keeping a list on my phone of things that pop up in my head. Since I can stream them all, it means I never struggle to decide what to listen to next.

Wait, who releases things *only* on cassette with no download? The general practice with all tape labels I know is that the tapes are the physical format for those who want one but they always come with downloads too.

Bunch of examples here where only cassette format exists: https://boomkat.com/new-releases?q[format]=Cassette

this thread was made for this website?
https://kollektivx.com/

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!!????!?