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

I know people hate when people write on the cover or scuff it up but all that tells a little story of the person who had it before. It's cool to own something that meant a lot to someone else before.

i bought a second copy of kraftwerk's man machine because i saw that someone had —in ballpoint pen— done a strikethrough of "kraftwerk" and changed the band name to "the geeks."

so yes, obviously greatest post of all time, frogs. well said.

:)

my story with this is a lot of the vinyl I got in Green Bay was from the collection of a guy named "Juliano". I know because he wrote his name on all the covers. judging by the wear of the various albums you could tell exactly what he was way into (King Crimson) and what he wasn't. dude obviously had good taste (according to me) but if I ever encountered him I feel like I would yell at him "what, you don't like SPARKS!?"

also I have my grandma's original copies of several Moody Blues albums (lol, I say "original" as though they're worth more than three bucks) and when she gave them to me she told me about how she and her friends would come over and get high and listen to them. in fact one of them had something in the gatefold that might've been 50-year old dried out weed. so if I get high and listen to them myself I can't help but picture her in her mid-20s sitting on some ugly sofa with her hippie friends smoking shitty weed and talking about how they want to marry Justin Heyward

omg, amazing. that's really special imo. i've held on to a select few of my parents' records that I also enjoy listening to, but i wish i'd used music to open more conversations with them. a lot of their life stories are a little bit obscure to me, and even the photo albums are vaguest about their like, teen and young adult years when they were Beatles fans (mom) and folkies (dad). I don't even know if my mom had a favorite Beatle! the records still feel like a real connection, though.

yes, i love when i find a gambit of albums all marked with the same initials/name. shoutout to keith jackson and g.seguin. i'm keeping a lot of ya'll's stuff safe.

hey here's a shady scam or other silly business to take advantage of earnest new vinyl collectors:

remember some years back in the guitar scene, the big deal was "reliced" guitars? we should start a VNYL type dealie, but all the albums we send out will be "reliced" (raisey eyebrows). we only take pre-payment for a minimum of two years worth of subscriptions, and hell yes we do custom orders. BUT IT'LL COST YA!

read that as "re-liced" guitars at first and was very grossed out for a moment

guess those would be Mars Volta guitars

lol! might as well be, because now nobody wants them anymore!

for clarity: i meant like past tense of "relic" in terms of relic being a verb. new guitars would be purposely worn down in certain areas to make it look like the "new" guitar had seen a lifetime's worth of ****M O J O****

they were inexplicably popular and still get made to this day (tho much less popular nowadays). it's the stupidest thing of all time.

yeah that's the dumbest trend of them all.

"want to look like you played this guitar for 40 years without actually doing it? here you go!"

so yeah, what about our business that we're starting?

"want to look like you listened to this motley crue album 40 years ago, before you were born? here you go!"

Imagining you going through a pile of gatefold dollar bin LPs... writing "Joey" on the front and shaking some oregano into the inside cover, repeat

yeah, you in?

"Dear Steven,

Sorry about your lumbago. Enjoy the Banana Splits on 45.

Love,

Uncle Rudy"

with a misplaced grocery list inside the jacket

oh, that kind of custom order would be expensive as fuck.

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.