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

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'm genuinely at a loss for words after reading the whole Stereogum story.

And a long, disappointed sigh at "kickstarter economy."

guys, the people getting burned are college kids and their moms. it'll be ok

haha, my grandparents had that Firestone record.

Ah, the days when major corporations had their own orchestras.

i think gotvnyl retweeted a couple of zings they took at face value

https://twitter.com/aalupului/status/598895797841895424

psst if you're actually looking for #XmasVibes this is my family's go-to thrift-store-level christmas record and it rules:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/91dwOvGB6TL._SX355_.jpg

if people are happy with the vinyl unearthed by vnyl's dig squad, well then i'm happy for them

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moEhGU3m3Ok

Each box comes with an exclusive 7” vinyl, digital mixtape, three seasonal recipes, ingredients, and tasting notes. One past Pairing Box included recipes for simple tomato pizza with fennel pollen and clam, pancetta and arugula pizza paired with music by Local Natives.

pizza delivered to your door, what will they think of next

wow thnx Vnyl!

http://eil.com/images/main/Jane-Olivor-Chasing-Rainbows-507207.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81qqA4Z0UUL._SX355_.jpg

http://cdn.discogs.com/osmx-dv2q_8kkEG9xTuIP5JwBf0=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb()/discogs-images/R-3524427-1334069248.gif.jpg

why are all these twitter people bragging about how they got suckered

i think gotvnyl retweeted a couple of zings they took at face value

Again, Gotvnyl is the parody account. They probably did that purposefully.

I hadn't realized that regarding Doug Martsch earlier. They got me.

ok. wax and stamp : last blog post : 18th dec 2014.

guess there was no kickstarter funding behind it then.

personally, i find this whole idea weird, but i am not target audience.
i dig in the bins (cd, not scratchy vinyl !), and so, i don't need anyone else to help, but for those that do not have the time nor patience, then this sounds rather fun.
that said, £30 a month is proper bonkers.
if i was wanting a "digging in the vinyl bins" service, then it would have to be a tenner a month, max.

and yes, i know that would mean a constant supply of ray coniff/james last records, but hey ..

Howard the Duck soundtrack fucking rules.

If they sent me the GOOD James Last record (Voodoo-Party) I'd be pretty stoked. But it wouldn't be that one.

"What happened to vinyl fans being diggers?"

most young/new vinyl buyers do NOT want to dig. they just want that old Smiths record right where they can see it as soon as they walk into a store.

Some enjoy targeted ads. It's nuts out there.

Looks like they're not even hiding where they're getting their records from:
http://t.co/7y4ONBMhaW

xxp In that case I'm going to start a new subscription service where, for a £45 fee per month (non-refundable), we not only select for our customers three random LPs a month, but we also don't send them out and instead listen to them for you as well!

If they sent me the GOOD James Last record (Voodoo-Party) I'd be pretty stoked

recently released :

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/71FQHV19zeL._SL1200_.jpg

highly recommended.

Howard the Duck soundtrack fucking rules

yeah, I honestly think that someone who sent me a copy of that record really would have nailed my #vibe exactly

not that cheap on discogs tbh

Whoa whoa whoa, there's a good James Last album?!

yup.

tis very balaeric ..

yeah when i worked at goodwill some years back, i was always the first one to go through records, pick out the good stuff, and send it off to shop (which was our shorthand for the shop goodwill processing facility). they track which stuff comes from which donation sites and the places who consistently send in stuff that sells get paycheck bonuses; only ever about $30 every six months, but hey!

this also explains why you'll hardly ever find anything of any interest in the record bins in the stores.

protip: if you're into jewelry, shop goodwill could be a literal goldmine.

also yeah: i am definitely a disgruntled former employee

So, I guess my days of donating to Goodwill are over now

sidebar attesting to gw's overall shittiness:
the local chapter here was found intentionally making payroll mistakes only on the checks for employees with developmental disabilities. it was never said out loud, but the implication was that they targeted these employees because they were less likely to notice.

it amounted to several years worth of this practice and over a million dollars in stolen wages.

I went to the Goodwill nearest me only a couple of times, they carry probably about 20 records at any moment and it's basically all along the lines of completely trashed copies of stuff like flower drum song or Eddie rabbitt's greatest Hits Volume 2, definitely not priced to move.

I like to donate actually decent stuff to independent thrift shops (like one for the SPCA) and scads of questionable shit to Value Village (aka Savers). They manage to sell, like, coax cable. At least there's always a steady supply of it on the wall.

this thrift “chain” in my area is pretty cool, 100% of profits go to HIV prevention

https://outofthecloset.org/

I don’t know about vinyl, though, never found any cool discs digging thrift stores, possibly born too late

yeah we have St. Vincent De Paul for a good local org

my best thrift score in recent memory (i.e maybe 5 years ago) was a Mothers Of Invention album, the Buckingham/Nicks S/T, Miles Davis Quiet Nights, and T Rex Electric Warrior all together.

we have a local SVDP too, actually two. i agree that it's good people. also the scores there are way better across categories

yes that score above was at SVDP, also the time I found a stash of like half a dozen mint Brazilian 45s from 1970-72, Veloso etc

Not quite getting what this is, exactly, but it probably belongs here: http://repress.qrates.com

― a full playlist of presidential sex jams (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, August 15, 2016 5:11 PM (seven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Not quite getting what this is, exactly, but it probably belongs here: http://repress.qrates.com

if i'm reading this right they'll straight up bootleg anything?! wtf

― andrew m., Wednesday, November 2, 2016 4:20 PM (seven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

"QRATES gives artists, labels and brands the tools..."

It's aimed at artists and labels, not just random people. How much checking they do is open to question though.

― koogs, Thursday, November 3, 2016 4:46 AM (seven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

not going qreat...

https://www.reddit.com/r/vinyl/s/inBLbNHOsx

https://www.reddit.com/r/VinylReleases/comments/18lkvuz/just_a_reminder_do_not_buy_from_qrates/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CzkCDvkveh0/

original url doesn't work so i'm having trouble understanding what this is

It was service that pressed to vinyl anything you sent in to them (copyright be damned).

sending in carrots

i thought this was an interesting comment in the first reddit thread:

Qrates uses GZ Media as their pressing plant. GZ was known for being a “safe” plant for sample-based music. Lots of vaporwave artists got their stuff pressed there, for instance. Around June of this year, GZ started using AI technology to identify samples and require clearance documentation. A LOT of Qrates’ projects were sample-based music, and around the middle of this year, a lot of projects had to be mass-refunded. This is my speculation. Qrates ran out of money to get anything pressed because GZ Media started cracking down on samples, and they had to mass refund a bunch of projects and ran out of cash.

the sad thing about those reddit threads is just how many comments were basically, "whaaa! we should be able to press any sample we want, this is bullshit".

original url doesn't work so i'm having trouble understanding what this is

― budo jeru, Tuesday, December 19, 2023 2:59 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ah I didn't realize that, here: https://qrates.com

i have only ever made records by physically going somewhere and having lacquers cut, which you then would mail off to be plated. it always seemed to me like the places where you sent files w/ music and art were weird because surely you'd end up with a disappointing product? or maybe i'm just too cynical about the QC at these kinds of places, although this story . . .

iirc, CZ does direct metal masters

i'm not saying it's not legit, nor do i think my caveman process is the only way. but i've only ever been able to make it happen by doing as much as i possibly could myself

plus it's more fun that way

I won't go as far as calling it a shady scam, but I can't image why anyone would want to listen to Feldman's String Quartet II, an extremely long and quiet piece, on vinyl. Any tiny flaw, pop, or crackle will likely be louder than the music, and you have to switch sides every 25 minutes. Oh, and the label only offers this recording on vinyl - no CD, download, or streaming. (Luckily there are two other recordings of the piece out there).

https://www.discogs.com/release/14771547-Morton-Feldman-Pellegrini-Quartet-String-Quartet-II