Bandbox: an uncompensated review of an interesting new club

It’ll be interesting to see who owns the records that are sitting in the pressing plant warehouses. If bandbox never paid for them, then they wouldn’t be owned by bandbox right? So maybe if that dude on Reddit is open to doing what he said, we may see some of these records after all….

Might be smart to take screenshots of your unfulfilled orders in case their site goes down
 
MikeH said:
It’ll be interesting to see who owns the records that are sitting in the pressing plant warehouses. If bandbox never paid for them, then they wouldn’t be owned by bandbox right? So maybe if that dude on Reddit is open to doing what he said, we may see some of these records after all….

Might be smart to take screenshots of your unfulfilled orders in case their site goes down
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Their site is down, I looked immediately when I got the email.

Let’s face it this company was doomed from the start, they offered a year sub 12 records for $100 with bonuses for picking an album every month, that cash infusion must have been huge since they kept going for a year and a half, but that was an unsustainable business model, I’m glad I got most of what I ordered, upset I gave away my Elliot smith albums anticipating the bandbox editions, so now I need to spend more to replace them
 
Igbid said:
Their site is down, I looked immediately when I got the email.

Let’s face it this company was doomed from the start, they offered a year sub 12 records for $100 with bonuses for picking an album every month, that cash infusion must have been huge since they kept going for a year and a half, but that was an unsustainable business model, I’m glad I got most of what I ordered, upset I gave away my Elliot smith albums anticipating the bandbox editions, so now I need to spend more to replace them
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Not for nothing… they were around for five years.
 
Igbid said:
Their site is down, I looked immediately when I got the email.

Let’s face it this company was doomed from the start, they offered a year sub 12 records for $100 with bonuses for picking an album every month, that cash infusion must have been huge since they kept going for a year and a half, but that was an unsustainable business model, I’m glad I got most of what I ordered, upset I gave away my Elliot smith albums anticipating the bandbox editions, so now I need to spend more to replace them
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Yea like Lee said, they were around for 5 years. They seemed to have a giant cash flow issue and the 40% off gift cards wasn’t a good sign. Curious where their 7 figures of sales went though considering they seemed to stiff many of the pressing plants, labels and bands and never actually pressed many of the records.
 
MikeH said:
Yea like Lee said, they were around for 5 years. They seemed to have a giant cash flow issue and the 40% off gift cards wasn’t a good sign. Curious where their 7 figures of sales went though considering they seemed to stiff many of the pressing plants, labels and bands and never actually pressed many of the records.
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Everything they did was a red flag cash grab, their sales were bonkers $20.24 off every album at new year, they did stuff like that every other month, you’d have been crazy to pay full price for anything 🤷‍♂️
 
Igbid said:
Everything they did was a red flag cash grab, their sales were bonkers $20.24 off every album at new year, they did stuff like that every other month, you’d have been crazy to pay full price for anything 🤷‍♂️
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Well the new year sale was a last ditch effort to either raise cash to pay debts or get money while they could when they knew they were about to declare bankruptcy.

They were charging $40 for a record and using smaller independent plants so their price per unit was likely nowhere NEAR $40. Wouldn’t be shocked if they ran the business properly that they could still make at least a little profit selling some of those records for $20.

I know they bought a record press and it clearly didn’t work out because the album they said they were gonna press themselves ended up being pressed at another plant.

It sucks for those of us who didn’t get some records we ordered but I feel even worse for the plants who never got paid for their work and it looks like at least one of them has had to shut down
 
MikeH said:
Well the new year sale was a last ditch effort to either raise cash to pay debts or get money while they could when they knew they were about to declare bankruptcy.

They were charging $40 for a record and using smaller independent plants so their price per unit was likely nowhere NEAR $40. Wouldn’t be shocked if they ran the business properly that they could still make at least a little profit selling some of those records for $20.

I know they bought a record press and it clearly didn’t work out because the album they said they were gonna press themselves ended up being pressed at another plant.

It sucks for those of us who didn’t get some records we ordered but I feel even worse for the plants who never got paid for their work and it looks like at least one of them has had to shut down
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Sadly it appears that quite a few artists didn’t get paid. Some like Dean Wareham/Luna got a bit of product they could sell on tour at least. Financially it has been a totally shit show at the fuck factory there for well over a year I think. Still amazes me that the Lush exclusives were printed and shipped pretty close to the original street date, but that probably has everything to do with 4AD
 
Igbid said:
Everything they did was a red flag cash grab, their sales were bonkers $20.24 off every album at new year, they did stuff like that every other month, you’d have been crazy to pay full price for anything 🤷‍♂️
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Also price adjusting after you bought something even if you ordered it six months ago. I figure they had to do that since shit was never delivered on time. But in the real world that is usually a no go.
 
MikeH said:
If you have not received the album and it goes on sale, you can email CS and they will refund you the price difference
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Yes, but it’s a rarity and unlike bandbox, VMP doesn’t blow things out that they don’t actually have yet. (I.e. they might do some special sale on something before it ships but they are not doing a ten dollar special on a $40 record that they have not shipped yet)

This should have stunk to us of wtf?
 
I wonder how much moving from the subscriber model screwed them. They probably had a better stream of funds when there were people who had payments automatically sent every month.

I know we weren’t paying full price very often but I assume quite a few of their customers were.
 
Lee Newman said:
Yes, but it’s a rarity and unlike bandbox, VMP doesn’t blow things out that they don’t actually have yet. (I.e. they might do some special sale on something before it ships but they are not doing a ten dollar special on a $40 record that they have not shipped yet)

This should have stunk to us of wtf?
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I actually paid for $240 subscription back in the day for a year and I thought that was hell of a deal, then they did the $120 for a year and my thinking was like how the hell they going to do this and make money, should have known then that I was loaning them money.
 
I actually paid for Judas Priest but I also got like six free records from them. I don’t even have access to the email account that I purchased it from so it’s a wash. 🤷‍♀️

Bob on the other hand was another freebie.
 
Lee Newman said:
Yes, but it’s a rarity and unlike bandbox, VMP doesn’t blow things out that they don’t actually have yet. (I.e. they might do some special sale on something before it ships but they are not doing a ten dollar special on a $40 record that they have not shipped yet)

This should have stunk to us of wtf?
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Well VMP did do 40% off everything including preorders last year. The anthologies that aren’t out yet were also included. I grabbed impulse for 40% off. But yea bandbox regularly had 50% off codes for preorders and stuff and the waits have been MUCH longer than most stuff at VMP.
 
MikeH said:
Well VMP did do 40% off everything including preorders last year. The anthologies that aren’t out yet were also included. I grabbed impulse for 40% off. But yea bandbox regularly had 50% off codes for preorders and stuff and the waits have been MUCH longer than most stuff at VMP.
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VMP does it for codes? Really? Shit they spent too much money on that plant.
 
Lee Newman said:
VMP does it for codes? Really? Shit they spent too much money on that plant.
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End of last year they had those 40% off codes and they worked on preorders. I got the sly bundle, Nina bundle, spiritual jazz bundle, Waylon and impulse anthologies and more at 40% off. The codes this year have excluded preorders. That code even worked on the Grateful Dead box at one point
 
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