discogs marketplace?

is this usually OK to use? looks to have a much better selection than ebay, or does anyone know of any good alternatives?

(sorry if this has been asked before, couldn't find anything when I searched?)

discogs imho is in the same league as Gemm and Musicstack--generally a slightly more esoteric selection, but the pitfalls and price-gouging remain the same. (i.e. it's a number of individual sellers and so it's dicey no matter what. I guess that's why there's a feedback system? I've never used discogs.)

i assume you're looking for vinyl? discogs is usually fine, but i wouldn't buy anything labeled below nm-, unless you've scanned the seller's profile and s/he seems like a saint

yeah just vinyl and CDs that you can no longer get elsewhere really, thanks for the warning!

i started using it a few months ago and have found it to be pretty great in general though i would agree about not buying below mint. out of about 30 purchases i've only had to deal with one person who ripped me off. i now look on discogs before ebay if looking for a record.

I was able to score a highly OOP release from overseas, and as long as you have PayPal, you're quick, and you're picky about feedback ratings, you should be fine. (same goes with Gemm and the like.)

via discogs that is. Granted, I've only bought one thing from Discogs marketplace, but it was a simple and quick transaction, especially for overseas.

+1 to discogs: they don't have Gemm's crappy UI (Gemm usually contains these impossibly long forms with checkboxes and radio selection buttons all obfuscated while you're trying to buy or sell through them.)

i buy and sell on discogs. have only had 1 bad experience with a guy who tried to charge me 10 dollars to ship a cd single from Canada.

i've shopped quite a bit on Discogs, 30+ purchases or so, and I have been satisfied in all but one. And in that instance I filed a claim through PayPal and got my money back. As long as you use PayPal you should be fine and protected, prices are high though and I don't buy anything under NM-, like everyone else here has said.

I've used it once so far without problem. There are some rare and/or hard to get things on there, but the prices seem a little over the odds a lot of the time.

lol last post on thread: http://www.discogs.com/sell/list?seller=musicberlin

Um, someone want to try and explain this to me? Also WRT his feedback rating/comments?

hahaha. so weird. just 5 seconds ago i sent my friend a link to a record that is also $1540.00. 2 days ago it was $15. something's wacky.

holy shit, so weird. it's actually the same seller. wtf

discogs allows you to bulk upload items to your marketplace account for sale via a .csv file. I guess with an inventory of 25000 items this is what that seller does and that their prices got out of whack somehow in the process.

what i cant stand about discogs is the inflexiblity of postage rates. if im ordering one white label 12, theres no way the postage will be £2.75 or £3. very fucking annoying.

should that weigh less than a non white label?

xp OK that probably explains that

titchy are you saying that's over the odds? It's not if you consider postage plus if you have to buy a mailer!

i suppose. but white labels are still cheaper than normal lps.

i do like discogs though, the offers system is good too. some of the prices people put on their records though is ridiculous (and i do wonder if they do end up getting the prices they ask for).

what i cant stand about discogs is the inflexiblity of postage rates. if im ordering one white label 12, theres no way the postage will be £2.75 or £3. very fucking annoying.

― titchy (titchyschneiderMk2), Thursday, 17 September 2009 20:36 (18 minutes ago)

Postage rates have nothing to do with discogs though, they're entirely up to the individual seller, so I'm not sure what you mean by them being inflexible. You should contact the seller if you think they're charging over the odds.

I happily both send and receive offers on prices via discogs, often the listed price is just a ball park, or best hope, or even a stab in the dark if you're the only person selling an item.

Again, if you think something's over priced then just speak to the seller. No big deal. If they don't like your offer they'll ignore it or let you know. Easy as pie.

well i mean the indvidual seller obv, yeah.

I need to get rid of lots of dance vinyl - some desirable, some considerably less so - and ebay seems like a busted flush for this kind of thing: a few tumbleweed auctions surrounded by acres of Buy It Now postings from professional retailers. Has anyone here used it for selling recently? Is it better than ebay now? Does stuff shift fairly quickly or sit around for months?

I use discogs for buying and selling fairly often. For dance vinyl, I'd say it's def better than ebay. It's really quick and simple to list items, and there are no fees unless your items actually sell, whereas Ebay charges a listing fee. I have some things on discogs that have been sitting for quite a while now, but it all depends on what you have vs. how many others are selling the same item.

Best to put them on Discogs a couple bucks below whatever is the cheapest copy if you want to move it immediately. if you're in no hurry, put it at a good price, offer a discount for multiple items in the Comments field and wait.

Good advice. Thanks. Tbh I'm more interested in offloading most of it than making big £££.

ive put some stuff around the lowest price theyre listed at on discogs but still waiting to shift them. starting to think im possibly the only person buying old grime or dubstep 12s.

what does it mean when there's a color bar to the side of a release in discogs.

there's yellow, grey and orange here http://www.discogs.com/artist/Rolling+Stones%2C+The

If you hover over them it tells you.

ah! thank you. i've been searching for hours

So, if one were selling off a few hundred records of the psych / noise / jazz / indie variety, discogs over eBay, for sure? My issue with discogs (and, for CDs, Amazon) is the fact that things sell in spurts, with no deadline. It tends to make packing records and regular trips to the post office a full time job. Any advice?

i dunno, i always buy on discogs, sell on amazon. i don't want to wait for people to stumble over what i'm trying to unload, and on average, i get really good money from ebay sales.

i think the upside (sale price) on ebay is (or can be) higher, but the ease of doing stuff on discogs might be better, depending on how much hassle you're willing to go through

Yeah, I find Discogs has rarer stuff in the first place, and then for a more reasonable price than Amazon. If what you're selling is aimed at the collectors market or folks that may not look at Amazon first, Discogs is the way to go.

Thanks!

it feels good to sell rare-ish things on ebay for +£££s to people who don't know about discogs ;)

Coincidentally they just linked to this via their Facebook page:

http://www.discogs.com/blog/339369-top-30-most-expensive-items-sold-by-month

Advice on this:

Person contacts me on Discogs about an item that I am not listing for sale, offers me a large (but not obscene) amount for it, then paypals me with his "brother-in-law's" account and wants me to ship it to his sister (he's in Europe). Obviously I'm not going to ship it to anyone other than his brother-in-law (since anything else violates PayPal's Seller TOS) but should I even do that? Is this some sort of crazy elaborate scam to get a CD single? His Discogs rating is fine... but the whole thing seems pretty suspicious.

Obviously I will not accept the payment if I don't ship him anything btw.

I would just make sure to do delivery confirmation/insurance so he can't say it never arrived and file a claim with Paypal. That's the only scam I could think of if he already paid. Unless he somehow got hold of someone else's Paypal account but that seems far fetched.

Does seem a little suspicious to have done enough business on discogs to have a rating and yet you don't have your own Paypal acct?

Thanks for being such a big part of the Discogs community. If you’re anything like us, you collect more than just music.

With that in mind, we’re developing databases for other things we collect. We want to invite you to be one of the first people to see the work that only a few collectors and Discog’s staff members have built.

To get early access to the beta, just click what you’re into below and start submitting!

Submit My First Book

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hmmmm

hmm discogs is really a good database and have often thought it would be nice to be able to look up different editions of books/comics/movies instead of just doing ebay-searches but not sure if this seems like a greedy move or an enthusiast move, also not sure if such databases/market places already exist

also, any thoughts on whether the new tax policy will be very harmful to the 2nd hand market place? (apparently Discogs will add 25% tax or something for all orders going from US to EU)

Whoa- what? Really?

It's VAT that's now payable on *fees* paid by sellers at their local rate if they are in the EU. Fees are 8% of sales prices.

So it only applies to sellers in the EU and it's nothing to do with where orders are going. I think it works out to no more than around 1.8% on the price of a record in practice. Presumably VAT registered businesses would be able to claim it back as well so no need to pass it on to customers.

I'll give Discogs credit for hooking me up with a good guy from Norway who had a Neil Young tribute LP I'd been trying to get for eight years (Everybody Knows This Is Norway. It's worth more than I was prepared to pay, so he ripped the CD, put it up on Soulseek, and I got it from him that way.

The other thing I've listed on my want-list is a Velvet Underground tribute that came out in the late '80s. I get an e-mail every few weeks saying one's up for sale, but it's always around 20 pounds, which after conversion and shipping is just way out of my buying range.

It seems to be a good place to buy from. I've only had one negative experience I can think of where a cd arrived shattered because it was sent with neither jewel case or adequate padding.
May have been others but that is the only one came to mind. Think I got a refund but not the cd I wanted.
Discogs is also a reasonably ok resource though it does have gaps. I use it frequently when EACing cds I've bought when they're not in the EAC database. Tends to have tracklisting down for main release version at least.
Gap can be in what releases are listed though.
Would be useful to have reviews of lps and individual release versions too. I think there are some reviews on site but sporadic. There is rateyourmusic I guess. But would be useful.

I actually appreciate discogs more because of the lack of reviews. Everyone on Rateyourmusic considers themselves geniuses but they're really just a slightly better class of youtube commenter.

I had someone buy from me in Argentina but wanted me to ship to his sister in Chile as you are 'not allowed' more than two foreign packages a year or some such.

So I did, and it all went fine.

JUst thinking that it would make it a full resource if people said what they thought of the lp since it could help one work out which lps by an artist were worth getting. also which pressings/releases of which lp.
BUt I guess that most people going to discogs are doing so to buy material they're already aware of. Particularly marketplace.
Just thought if it was done right it could help the experience. But not sure how 'doing it right' would be achieved anyway since I can see what johnny's saying about rateyourmusic being true at least to some extent. Ego/opinion outweighing info etc

Do wonder where you get information on the best sounding versions of things from since it doesn't seem to be fully utilised on RYM and Amazon just mixes all reviews for all releases under a title together.

Of course anyone can post reviews on there and the entire database is user populated. The process of submitting release data excludes editorialising though, which is as it should or it would never get done and.disagreements would be endless.

I like that the site still feels a bit down-home and ungentrified. Not unlike this place really. My impression is that the staff are still enthusiasts for the most part.

discogs are reviews are great, it's either:
a) old school clubbers reminiscing and being crazy hyperbolic about old school house/rave
b) a bunch of people posting "repress please?" or "you gougers should be ashamed or yourself" (hip euro "underground" deep house 12"s on small labels)
c) some person posting "the label on my copy is more periwinkle than violet and 'chuggin gasoline' is about 6 seconds longer than on the original uk chiswick issue"

its been ass o clock lately

Would be good if there was an option when on vacation to keep store open but buyer gets message saying ‘Vendor is away until 15th August, do you want to continue?’ when making a purchase.

with the drop down menu go to inventory. scroll down and click *show actions*. then click *expire all for sale items*. then go on vacation. when you get back click *relist all expired items*.

That's actually what they removed. Some users on their discussion board recently claimed there was no way to expire items in bulk anymore, but I guess Discogs added this update in their instructions in response:

https://support.discogs.com/hc/en-us/articles/360007520934-How-Do-I-Temporarily-Take-My-Inventory-Offline#h_01HWABEJH4F9ZEMK8G2BDJCN26

huh, didn't know that. its always how i've done it but i haven't done it in a while.

i have done it this year but months ago.

AN ABANDONED CART AUTOMESSAGE ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

Was that email or a popup?

email, I got another one that thankfully gave me the "unsubscribe from abandoned cart emails" option

Site redesign - I hate it!

fucking awful

Enshittification in action

It doesn't look any different to me in Chrome on a laptop. Is this a phones-only thing?

AN ABANDONED CART AUTOMESSAGE ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

― pink-haired Marxist (sleeve), Saturday, August 17, 2024 9:27 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

ok now i know what you're talking about

lame!

Is this a message where you are a buyer and it nudges you when you put something in a cart but did not buy (annoying), or you are a seller and it tells you when someone has left one of your for-sale items in a cart ( as a seller, what are you supposed to do about that, email they guy and force him to buy it?).

I've never seen the second thing happen to me as a seller.

it nudges you when you put something in a cart but did not buy

this

wow, here's a new one:

I was out of town when I received an order, and since it would be six days before I could ship, I offered the buyer free shipping and said I'd send a partial refund, as I have done dozens of times before. I sent the partial refund of $5, and the status automatically changed to "refund pending." Whatever, right? But this morning I dutifully shipped the item, as promised, and tried to change the status to Shipped, and it won't let me, because there is a "refund pending."

Saw a box set I've been eyeing up for ages and finally decided to pull the trigger. Seller was listing it for £200 but had "make an offer" enabled. Didn't want to take the p*ss so offered him £180 which was duly accepted. Sent the money and only then decided to check eBay where I saw the same seller had the same item listed for £160. More fool me, I guess.

If it makes you feel any better, the shipping on eBay (automatically set — usually insanely high — by the system) was probably more than £20 more than the shipping on Discogs (set by user).

Quite possibly, although I don't understand the mentality of a seller listing an expensive item at different prices on different platforms.

A lot of e-commerce sites do the cart nudge thing, it is annoying but there are worse things imo.

what was the box??

Doesn't matter.

A lot of e-commerce sites do the cart nudge thing, it is annoying but there are worse things imo.

Yeah, I've gotten those from a few labels and quite a few distros lately. It's annoying because I tend to collect things in my carts, and when I'm feeling frivolous or spendy I'll just bundle a few things together and buy several records at once. This habit also keeps me from buying things impulsively when Boomkat or Stranded or Soundohm assures me that the spiritual jazz reissue / key document of the minimalist French underground / new limited cassette on Demdike Stare's label is "an absolute must" and "is sure to fly"

I'm guessing the comment on this listing is a wild cut-and-paste mistake...

https://www.discogs.com/sell/item/3227467864

wow

yikes. someone really should discreetly let that seller know, but man that's gonna be an awkward message

maybe he'll be like "free shipping for life!"

hahaha I literally just bought a rec from that seller

Loooool they are a the biggest seller in the US on discogs and run from a really good shop in South Philly. They list so much that they have a whole team who does it, must have been one of those kids' lists that did a little cut/paste screwup

oh no, what did it say?

It's still there, but it's a link to some pretty crazy letterboxd lists.

is it really worth it to have a staff listing and packing up $2 CDs?

Well, in theory it should be that people think ok, what else can I buy to make the package worthwhile?

In practice (like last month), someone buys a newspaper freebie version of Joy Division "Closer" for £3, plus postage of £7 to the US

Yeah, reminds me of when I stocked up on those cheap Marshall Cavendish "Jazz Greats" CD's just because of the transfers John R.T. Davies did for them. They're like £1 or 2 each in the UK but even in bulk, shipping them to the U.S. inflated it to like $8 or 9 USD per disc.

in my experience the vast majority of discogs buyers only buy one thing.

well, but, this particular seller has a huge inventory though. yeah I mean I guess if they get a lot of multi-CD orders, sure.

I’m a total sucker for what else can I get to make the shipping worthwhile. Every time I buy a single 20 dollar 12” I get like a dozen 2 dollar records to take the journey.

Same here. I'd say I bundle stuff about half the time, as long as shipping is reasonable

I've also noticed more sellers having minimum purchase requirements, which I condone. When I used to sell, I would often dread having to pack up an $8 7" and make a trip to the post office for what ended up being a profit of less than enough for a cup of coffee

I switched to flat-rate shipping a couple months ago, because yeah, when I’m buying on Discogs I ALWAYS see what else I can bundle in there to amortize the shipping cost per item. I’ve received exactly 2 bulk orders since then — everyone else is like “this is the one record I want”.

The only downside is if you put ten things in your cart but the one you really wanted isn't available (which happens far too often), you've just wasted a lot of time. This only happened to me once, but I bet it happens a lot.

Ah, that happened to me on eBay once: I'd bid on loads of 7" singles from one seller, but lost every auction except for one where I was the only bidder. So, I persuaded him to charge me zero p&p, and I paid the price and he didn't have to send it to me.

I had one of my few back and forth a with a dealer over that. I had one record I really wanted and added some other ok cheapo records and shipping wasn’t cheap. I ordered and paid and he responded that he didn’t have that record and could refund the price and I had to work hard to get him to cancel the whole order because I didn’t want to pay a bunch of money for a bunch of records I didn’t really care about.

That should honestly have been a 1-message transaction. Someone wants to cancel because you fucked up? Boom, done.

Hope you gave him (it’d be a him) a neutral review at least.

I don't even remember to be honest!

had a horrible experience in the spring with a non-responsive seller. i waited a week with no status change, no message, no nothing. sent a note: "hey, is this ever going to ship?" his response was aggressive and nasty right out of the gate. it was just kind of shocking to witness somebody be so incompetent and so rude, that it was almost kind of unhinged. my suspicion is that this person did not have the record, and so they landed on a tactic of painting me as "being in a hurry" -- as if i had brought the cancellation on myself by being so unreasonable with my expectations. when i tried to explain that all i wanted was an update, they doubled down. so i did end up cancelling the order, just to get out of dealing with this person. i was strongly inclined to leave negative feedback, but the seller's attitude and sort of delusional, angry demeanor made me fear that they would retaliate, so i decided not to.

but: i recently checked their storefront to find dozens of negative reviews and a seller rating reduced to 92% -- haha, take that fucker!

I must be a dream customer. I just got a discogs status of "shipped" and was confused because I didn't remember ordering anything. Thought maybe it was spam. Then I noticed that on Aug 13th I ordered the italo-disco version of David Bowie's Starman and 1 other 12" from somebody in Italy. I created the order 20 days ago, seller sent invoice 20 days ago, I paid invoice 20 days ago and discogs noted payment received 20 days ago.

Then I totally forgot about it until I got the shipped notification from the seller 7 hours ago.

I don't know why it took him 20 days. He has 5,782 reviews, 99% positive, but that does include 56 negative and 128 neutral. A lot of the bad reviews mention quality not being as good as listed, orders taking too long, bad packing etc etc. Wish me luck.

Sounds like a classic Italian seller!

Someone ordered a record from me on a Sunday, I mailed it on the Monday with full tracking. Royal Mail took 20 days to deliver it, buyer gives me bad feedback for being slow. Ok it was only neutral, but seriously fuck you prick.

Once a year like clockwork a record takes 3 months plus to get from me (Canada) to Europe.