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

It's just a reissue of a 45 with a godawful pun printed on the sleeve.

Brand new vinyl is one of this decade's biggest confidence tricks. pic.twitter.com/KXAPhZjBhQ

— Billy Bell (@Billy_Bell99) September 16, 2018

holy shiiiiiiiit

remember when vinyl was cheap? that was cool.

jeez

my local thrift store is now pricing anything on Deutsche Grammophon for $3.99, it's the end times

my wife comments: "is this his retirement plan or some shit like that?"

(re: McCartney)

But thanks to the economy of scale isn't vinyl much more expensive to produce?

Than it used to be. I mean, obvs labels and stores are also trying to make £££s off the only music people actually pay for anymore.

It is, but small labels still manage to sell LPs for under £10 on much smaller pressings than Paul Mcfuckingcartney, so this is still a massive rip off

I had dinner at Cracker Barrel last night, and in the shop they have a line of "exclusive" picture discs, including the Walk The Line soundtrack.

Holy shit, I'm standing in a Movie Exchange (what CD Warehouse turned into) which carries used vinyl now. The one closer to me has a totally random selection stuff all priced at $3.99 a title, but this "Flagship" location has a bunch of popular titles at the hugest gouging prices I've ever seen.

For example, not one but two used 2003 reissues of Dark Side of The Moon for $69 apiece.

And as a further obscenity, a vintage copy of Songs In The Key Of Life with both records and the EP but no book and there's a full split bottom seam on the back cover could be yours for a cool $100!

I'm about to barf.

This price only available for the next 05:32 minutes!

jfc

Actually, that’s not a terrible price for the 03 DSOTM. It’s pretty widely esteemed by the Hoffman nerds as being the closest you’ll get to an original pressing - and more likely to not be crackly. You can find em a bit cheaper on Discogs but not much - & likely by the time you factor in shipping... but that Key of Life price is donkulous.

Maybe the Stevie is a HOT STAMPER.

it sure ain't the NICE PRICE

so I'm trying VNYL now on a lark, I realize they're legit now. i'm on the one record a month plan, set to #curate.

will need to be restrained if I get Bobby Caldwell record

what have you gotten so far?

Nothin yet. Waiting for my first.

My Spotify is full of 80s power ballads which might put them on the wrong scent

Err, good luck with that! https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/vnyl.org

will need to be restrained if I get Bobby Caldwell record

― Lady Antibody (Neanderthal), Saturday, July 18, 2020 6:34 PM

what the hell's wrong with bobby caldwell?

not exactly my thing, esp if they look at my playlists and my custom written "tastes"

just joshin. looking forward to your updates on how it goes.

but jeez, that link that mike posted isn't too encouraging, is it? what are they doing?

sounds like they're just really slow. i'm guessing I'll last one delivery on this thing cos I'm impatient as fuck, lol

Be prepared to receive the careful selections your blind grandma might pick out if you asked her to grab an LP for you while she happened to be at Goodwill shopping for nightstand doilies.

I just got rid of a bunch of crap that came with some curbside records. If you like throwing money away, you could have sent it to me and I could mail you a Mantovani or Ray Conniff record every month for a very long time.

VYNL is hoping to take advantage of the popular trend of getting cool points to be among the first to reevaluate some bland popular hit artist of the past and/or novelty record as "actually really good" via thinkpiece or tweet.

Be prepared to receive the careful selections your blind grandma might pick out if you asked her to grab an LP for you while she happened to be at Goodwill shopping for nightstand doilies.

― Evan, Monday, July 20, 2020 11:14 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

To expand on this, I wonder if VNYL ever shipped anyone an old calendar by accident. Understandable mistake when you're just mindlessly pulling things out of bins without looking, then packing and shipping.

I thought they (sadly) dropped the (endlessly clownable) thrift-store records bit early on, and inked deals with unknown labels, in order to act as a distribution channel for unsold product by unsuccessful contemporary artists.

Oh, maybe! I must have forgotten, because that sounds familiar now.

great, I'm gonna get the Heene Boyz debut album on vinyl

on colored vinyl

Lol they shipped my package.

Problem is i wrote some traditional metal and hip hop that i liked but i also hooked up my Spotify that has mostly 80s power ballads on recently played tracks.

Can't wait for my dogeared Ugly Kid Joe record

it got (gently) teased upthread, but if you end up being unhappy with VNYL it seems like this might be worth looking at:

https://www.vinylmeplease.com/pages/join-the-club

https://store.rhino.com/music/box-sets-1/1970-the-complete-fun-house-sessions.html

Does a $400 Stooges box set count?

VMP are fine and put good records back into print (I wouldn't own Buhloone Mindstate if it wasn't for them) (though its the short version of the album), tho their shipping is expensive if you're foreign and their copywriting is icky

They reissue that Fun House thing every 10 years and it keeps getting more expensive. I love Fun House but I’m not buying that.

the $20,000 Fun House boxed set which comes with an actual fun house with an affordable mortgage attached, fresh with Stooges posters and artwork adorned on all of the walls, and a squatter in your living room

...and the exclusive VMP version adds a cocktail recipe.

Has the Funhouse box ever been on vinyl before? I got the CD box when Rhino Handmade put it out and I hardly ever play it, even though Fun House is one of my favourite ever records - it's just that the finished article is so perfect I don't want to hear alt-takes, alt mixes or even live versions.

I would buy a standalone CD with just the 17-minute version of "L.A. Blues" on it, but I don't have much interest in hearing the rest

i have the "declaration of war: best of the funhouse sessions" rhino LP from the '90s and can't remember the last time i played it. it has, i think, the only two full takes of what AFAIK are the only two tracks that didn't make the record ("slide" and "lost in the future") plus the 11-minute version of "fun house"

along with the 17m "LA blues" (which i've only ever heard on youtube) i think that's all i probably need — i just can't imagine wanting to listen to 30 sides worth of outtakes, false starts, studio dialogue, and alt. takes. or in other words:

it's just that the finished article is so perfect

which is another way of saying that sometimes there's a line between deep appreciation and fandom, and with the stooges (and this record in particular) i just don't think this kind of hyper-archivist, completist approach enhances my understanding of the art, there's just not a lot for me to learn from putting a microscope to this recoding project. sometimes there are things you just don't need to know about and that's okay.

It’s a very particular kind of fandom. I can see appreciating the complete sessions of a Miles Davis album or something, but I don’t really get it for “Fun House” (great as that album is).

it reminds me of this quote from foucault, which i've roughly translated here because i'm having a hard time finding an english translation online:

But suppose we are dealing with an author: is everything they wrote or said, everything they left behind, part of their work? This is both a theoretical and technical problem. When you set out to publish, for example, the works of Nietzsche, where should you stop? You have to publish everything, of course, but what does this "everything" mean? Everything that Nietzsche published himself? Of course. Drafts of his works? Obviously. His many unpublished aphorisms? Yes. The erasures also, the jottings at the bottom of his notebooks? Yes. But when, inside a notebook filled with aphorisms, there is a reference, the indication of an appointment or an address, a grocery list: work, or not work? But why not? And so on, indefinitely. Among the millions of traces left by someone after their death, how can we define a work? There is no thoery of the œuvre, and those who ingenuously undertake to publish these œuvres lack such a theory and quickly find that their empirical work is hindered.

(original here: http://1libertaire.free.fr/MFoucault319.html)

i just don't think this kind of hyper-archivist, completist approach enhances my understanding of the art, there's just not a lot for me to learn from putting a microscope to this recoding project. sometimes there are things you just don't need to know about and that's okay.

I totally agree. I'm generally a lover of alt-takes, etc, and yesterday was listening to that deluxe Tusk from a couple of years back and thinking, "I could listen to several disks more of this, hearing every permutation Lindsey ran through for each song", because those tracks definitely mutated in the studio. But the Funhouse sessions is just like 27 versions of Dirt that are all roughly the same, just not as good as the album version, and that doesn't do it for me.

my package from VNYL arrived while I was out. on my way home to see what doodoo they gave me.

oh, this oughta be good. . .!

Unboxing vid me please.

^^^