discogs marketplace?

In the iPhone app, I don’t see items for sale that are unavailable in my country. In the desktop browser they’re visible.

Maybe a small thing, but when I search for an artist, the results in the box no longer show the little red, blue or green icons indicating how many are in my wantlist, inventory, or collection

Also, no more "x" buttons on album and artist photos, so if you click one, you end up having to scroll back to the previous page rather than back to the page you were on

wantlists were down for a while, they had a banner announcing they were working again.

the mobile app is a pice of shit

xp yes that change is very annoying!

(the first one, had no experienced the 2nd)

Ordered a record on ebay for the first time in ages, one I’ve been trying to find a good copy of at a reasonable price for over 5 years…seller had it listed at $50 but it didn’t sell, so he relisted at $30 with the option to make an offer, I made an offer at $30 and he accepted right away…

After waiting ~5 days for it to ship the seller refunded my order saying he knows he has it but can’t find it and didn’t want to sit on my money in the meantime while he’s looking.

I want to believe him but this was certainly closer to a $50 record (probably more like $60-$75 really) than a $30 record and I can’t help but be suspicious that this is a case of seller’s remorse.

Would I be justified in leaving negative feedback in this case or should I let him go and give him the benefit of the doubt? He has basically 100% positive feedback with 26k transactions so I don’t think he’s evil or anything.

Why would you list a record you do t have in your hand at that moment.

Sounds like it got relisted and marked down as an “aged inventory” reconciliation but due to that it’s been awhile since the record has been checked on or looked at physically, so when they went to pull it they realized they couldn’t find it.

i'm not sure anyone pays much attention to feedback on ebay, their system is old and so fucked up. sellers can't give negative feeback to buyers for one thing

there were absolutely a few times when i've sold things on discogs and then been unable to find them; things that I listed like, two years ago that never sold and in the meantime I wound up selling them back at amoeba and forgot to take them off, etc.

Yeah, same here. A couple of times I went "nooooh I can't let go of that!"

Not for a long time, though. (Like, twenty years. The "Product" Buzzcocks LP box. God forgives me)

there were absolutely a few times when i've sold things on discogs and then been unable to find them; things that I listed like, two years ago that never sold and in the meantime I wound up selling them back at amoeba and forgot to take them off, etc.

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Saturday, October 28, 2023 11:39 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This has happened to me more times than I care to remember. Recently I took a two week trip and unlisted everything in my inventory for the time I was gone. When I returned, I forced myself, before relisting everything, to look at each individual record to confirm I still had it in my possession. I don't sell a ton of records - there are fewer than 300 items in my inventory - so it wasn't that big a deal, but it was still a tedious process. I'm glad I did it, though. The upshot now is when I do occasionally get a new order, my first thought is no longer "oh shit, I wonder where the hell that is"

never understood how not having the item in stock merits negative feedback. if you get a timely refund and an apology, what more can you expect? no establishment, online or irl, has 0% error rate with inventory.

yeah that's bullshit, in fact I'd appeal that feedback. lame.

If it's just one item in an order then yeah, forgivable, and still likely to get positive feedback from me. But multiple missing titles gets at least neutral feedback. Businesses shouldn't have that high an error rate, and individuals should have their shit together before listing anything to sell. When I sell something, it's pulled from my physical collection and set aside until sold.

so there really isn't any way to turn off this appalling new design for artist discographies?

https://www.stereogum.com/2241158/the-discontent-at-discogs/columns/sounding-board/

i can't lose discogs AND bandcamp. it's not fair

Speaking of the newly redesigned artist pages (^xxp)—they got rid of the search box, to search within a discography?! Insane!

I think they just made it so you do that in the "filter by" box

Oh! Thanks for that—I saw 'search for barcodes & other identifiers' and thought it was just for items used to differentiate versions of releases. I'm relieved that it works for song titles too.

“hey check it out we made all the buttons and tables rounder and added borders and shit”

otm

when you search for a track title it brings up the album or EP it is on, but to see if it was on any compilations you have to click on the Appearances dropdown, whereas before it would show you all results at once. It's a minor quibble but it's very frustrating to use and it's the kind of thing that's indiciative of an organisation that doesn't know or hasn't investigated how its users actually use the site.

Also, it's just so prone to crashing and not loading. I have to open Discogs in incognito mode 90% of the time just to use it now.

a couple of years ago they trialled a feature where you could click on a track title and it would list all the releases that track was on, was really useful if you were looking for a specific version or mix of something. of course they pulled that feature after a few months

everything they've done since has made the site worse

lol @ "Now Hiring Senior Site Reliability Engineer" at the top. good call guys

haha yes I saw that

They need one. The app (trash) crashes regularly for me now and the mobile site (also trash, but less so, and in different ways) is extraordinarily slow/times out on me all the time now.

Maybe I’m under some illusions about a) the volume of commerce on Discogs or b) how much revenue you’d need to make a site like this profitable, but I can’t imagine they’re doing anything but making money hand over fist.

Despite numerous quibbles, I’ve found Discogs an invaluable resource for the past 10 years, in too many ways to enumerate. It seemed like an example of a site that did what it did very well and also seemed likely to stick around for a long time, providing its owners and staff with a decent living and providing users with necessary services and information.

I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes there, but this seems less and less likely to be the case. If it goes, or is sold to some revenue-maximizing conglomerate & run into the ground, I’ll be fairly bereft.

i'm not sure how many people actually work there but I don't think it's very many. they have to be raking it in.

Hosting bill could be a big one.

yea the site gets used for reference constantly, in fact I suspect like 90% of their traffic comes from people who never bought or sold anything on it

They could do a subscription model, like x$/yr to maintain your collection on there, waived if you’ve bought or sold anything in the past 12 months.

Maybe I shouldn’t be giving them any ideas.

they could, like, pay users for providing their data for them lol #jarodlanier

I don't really like that idea, feel like very few would pay and for me and I assume many others cataloguing your collection is generally what leads to actually buying/selling stuff on there. I hadn't bought a single thing off there until that one pandemic afternoon I spent actually going through everything I had on there

my feeling is that it's going to end up like imdb

Bought out by Amazon and left to twist in the wind?

pretty much

i love the marketplace aspect of it, which for me mostly works really well (though I only buy and do not sell records). still bummed over how expensive overseas shipping has become, however - for the most part i wouldn't even consider buying stuff from the us or europe now (i'm in the uk)

i mean i'm deeply invested in the database too and have contributed many, many releases. there was a time when i actually felt like it was important to pitch in that way, even if that feels naïve in hindsight

i've been buying / selling since 2014 for context

ugh, I expired all my items last week so I wouldn't have to deal with posting things in December and the associated whinging about things not turning up because the Royal Mail is so fucking shit. today I got an email from someone complaining their CD hasn't arrived yet from October. yet they left me positive feedback a week after I posted it??

yea the site gets used for reference constantly, in fact I suspect like 90% of their traffic comes from people who never bought or sold anything on it

what do we think about this

https://www.discogs.com/about/listening-and-evolving-message-from-discogs-ceo-kevin-lewandowski-2023/

will read, but looks like the guy who messaged me saying his CD didn't turn up, despite leaving positive feedback over a month ago, is a serial scam artist. he has loads of negatives saying he did the same thing he did to me.

ffs. I'm going to have to refund the cunt anyway aren't I because Paypal will side with him won't they? it was only a few quid but it's the principle, fucking scumbag. is there any way to report scam buyers on Discogs?

looks like you can contact them through this form?

https://support.discogs.com/hc/en-us/articles/16078486038413-What-Can-I-Do-If-I-Suspect-I-have-Been-Scammed-

I think I helped get one account banned by doing so a few years ago

what do we think about this

Codewise it sounds like they are gong down the micro-services route… and that’s going to open its own set of problems for them no doubt.

CEO saying “first half of 2024” means this is probably a waterfalled deadlinde and it will be more like end of 2025.

what is a micro-services route?

breaking the backend (at least) of the site up into different services, which should improve scalability and make it easier to quickly deploy fixes and enhancements. Given the amount of use discogs gets, it's the right way to go, I suspect (I know nothing about the underlying technology but I have worked on plenty of aged monoliths and they get really difficult to scale after a while). Done correctly, all of this is a good thing. Done poorly, it will mean instability and shittiness.

taken at face value (which is all I can do), this is a promising statement from the CEO.