Pre-Order Thread

MikeH said:
With the state of the vinyl market, limited color pressings are unfortunately the thing that sells quickest and best. It's a seemingly necessary evil and TTL isn't the only ones who are doing it. If TTL needs to sell some exclusive pressings of things to stay in business, than I'm all for it. It seems to me that its the opposite of what you are saying is happening. Places like TTL NEED to sell exclusives that are limited because they simply can't compete with prices of everything else with Amazon, Target and other retailers.

I'm not some local record store purist or anything. I buy from big box places too because as a consumer, sometimes the prices differences are astronomical. If it's a few dollar difference on a record, I'll buy from my local (and god knows I buy plenty of used records from them). But some of these records--tone poets come to mind--are $35 at my local and I have gotten for $15-$17 in these big box sales. And there's nothing my local can do about those prices.

The sad reality is that places like TTL need to sell exclusives to stay afloat. Their exclusives also help put them on the map again. They had to close their NY storefront recently and these selling out quickly helps their business. It sucks that this rollout got botched by the shipping price mistake. Shit happens and I don't think it was intentional. I'm glad they are correcting it and refunding the difference though. I have ordered from TTL for probably a decade now between their storefront and online retail. If there were issues with anything, they made it right and they seem like good people.

The other issue as others know is that with resale prices being absolutely insane, places often hike up the price of records. I don't think TTL has done that too drastically--they could sell some of these exclusives for $40+ if they wanted to and they would likely still sell out based on discogs pricings of some of these albums.
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I find it a bit weird that you're making out TTL is some small record store when it's one of the largest online indie stores in the US, similar to how Rough Trade appears in the UK. They might be small fry compared to the Urban Outfitters and Targets of the world but most indie stores would kill for the exclusives they somehow manage to pick up, I mean they sponsor The Needle Drop who is arguably one of the biggest music influencers we have.

Also the Clairo release was up for about 30 mins, without any warning except an email sent out to a waiting list, for someone like me who doesn't check their emails every 10 minutes I sadly missed out, though I hear some international folk had trouble checking out as they were being charged $1000+ shipping fees (?!) - and it's not the first time they've had issues calculating shipping.

The hype for recent TTL exclusives have been crazy, it's actually reminding me of earlier Vinyl Me Please days. TTL will be fine, it's your other local stores who'll be hit worst.
 
phramenma said:
If y'all are ordering the Phoebe Bridgers repress or anything else from recordstore.co.uk, please check out these three releases listed above.
Here's a full list of their year in music:

Recordstore.co.uk - Recordstore Day, every day. CDs, Vinyl, Merchandise, Signed Exclusives, Exclusive Vinyl Releases

Recordstore.co.uk. The UK's leading online record store. Exclusive Signed Records, Exclusive Coloured Vinyl Editions, the best in new music and the albums you love!
www.recordstore.co.uk www.recordstore.co.uk
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Appears Rough Trade will be doing their's tomorrow too. I'm expecting exclusives from Phoebe Bridgers, Rina Sawayama, SAULT, Laura Marling and bdrmm.
 
For those looking at the Phoebe release, be aware that last time some people (saw a few gnarly Reddit posts) had very long waits and some big potential condition issues from the store. Still worth it if you want it but be prepared.
 
heartswells said:
I find it a bit weird that you're making out TTL is some small record store when it's one of the largest online indie stores in the US, similar to how Rough Trade appears in the UK. They might be small fry compared to the Urban Outfitters and Targets of the world but most indie stores would kill for the exclusives they somehow manage to pick up, I mean they sponsor The Needle Drop who is arguably one of the biggest music influencers we have.

Also the Clairo release was up for about 30 mins, without any warning except an email sent out to a waiting list, for someone like me who doesn't check their emails every 10 minutes I sadly missed out, though I hear some international folk had trouble checking out as they were being charged $1000+ shipping fees (?!) - and it's not the first time they've had issues calculating shipping.

The hype for recent TTL exclusives have been crazy, it's actually reminding me of earlier Vinyl Me Please days. TTL will be fine, it's your other local stores who'll be hit worst.
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All of this maybe true.

What differentiates TTL from other "stores" in a significant way is the "Turntable" in the TTL.

They are THE place to go in the NYC area for turntables, speakers, cartrigeges, heads shells, etc.
When you go to the store, the actual Vinyl product is only about 50% of it.
While vinyl takes up much less space to display, they are really selling the Vinyl as an adjunct to the hardware.
Its in the back, with all the gear up front and on display.

I cannot tell you how satisfying it is not have to fight against my giant sausage fingers to properly mount my $100+ cartridges.
TTL will do it for you and their expertise in all issues relating to the set up of your rig is what makes them a reason to keep patronizing them.
They are a step above other retailers for equipment.

Please continue to buy their exclusives so I can continue to rely on them to keep my rig running at its optimum output.
 
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waruv said:
For those looking at the Phoebe release, be aware that last time some people (saw a few gnarly Reddit posts) had very long waits and some big potential condition issues from the store. Still worth it if you want it but be prepared.
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I don’t think that’s recordstore though, it’s that press, and actually most presses of that album. I got that version of mine elsewhere and it still sounds like it was mastered down a crackly phone. Dead oceans fucking suck.
 
The Commish said:
All of this maybe true.

What differentiates TTL from other "stores" in a significant way is the "Turntable" in the TTL.

They are THE place to go in the NYC area for turntables, speakers, headstocks, cartrigeges, heads shells, etc.
When you go to the store, the actual Vinyl product is only about 50% of it.
While vinyl takes up much less space to display, they are really selling the Vinyl as an adjunct to the hardware.
Its in the back, with all the gear up front and on display.

I cannot tell you how satisfying it is not have to fight against my giant sausage fingers to properly mount my $100+ cartridges.
TTL will do it for you and their expertise in all issues relating to the set up of your rig is what makes them a reason to keep patronizing them.
They are a step above other retailers for equipment.

Please continue to buy their exclusives so I can continue to rely on them to keep my rig running at its optimum output.
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yea, I remember going to the NYC store a couple of years ago, and the stock on equipment, TTs and headphones they had was amazing. from my perspective, I feel that some record stores are selling less (often used) equipment than before, which may be to supply and demand.
 
heartswells said:
Appears Rough Trade will be doing their's tomorrow too. I'm expecting exclusives from Phoebe Bridgers, Rina Sawayama, SAULT, Laura Marling and bdrmm.
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Awesome, I want bdrmm on wax and I balked at Record Store shipping costs for a single record. And this reminds me, gotta keep an eye out on Bleep, since they usually do these year end AOTY store exclusives as well.

EDIT: hopefully these RT exclusives are stocked in US stores, as well as UK, bc if not, i'd face the same shipping conundrum.
 
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heartswells said:
I find it a bit weird that you're making out TTL is some small record store when it's one of the largest online indie stores in the US, similar to how Rough Trade appears in the UK. They might be small fry compared to the Urban Outfitters and Targets of the world but most indie stores would kill for the exclusives they somehow manage to pick up, I mean they sponsor The Needle Drop who is arguably one of the biggest music influencers we have.

Also the Clairo release was up for about 30 mins, without any warning except an email sent out to a waiting list, for someone like me who doesn't check their emails every 10 minutes I sadly missed out, though I hear some international folk had trouble checking out as they were being charged $1000+ shipping fees (?!) - and it's not the first time they've had issues calculating shipping.

The hype for recent TTL exclusives have been crazy, it's actually reminding me of earlier Vinyl Me Please days. TTL will be fine, it's your other local stores who'll be hit worst.
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Sure, they aren't a tiny local, but they aren't a big box record store or owned by major labels like Deep Discount, Sound of Vinyl, Udiscover, etc. They aren't pulling numbers anywhere near those retailers. And they had one storefront but had to close it down recently after COVID struck. So in the grand scheme of things, I think they are one of the better places to shop from. If people are fine calling Bullmoose a "local" and prefer ordering from there over the big box stores, I see nothing wrong with saying TTL is a smaller store.

People are acting like them jacking the costs to $15 shipping is some evil plot by them to screw over customers and I'm just not buying it. At the end of the day, it was a record launch that went poorly.
 
The Commish said:
All of this maybe true.

What differentiates TTL from other "stores" in a significant way is the "Turntable" in the TTL.

They are THE place to go in the NYC area for turntables, speakers, headstocks, cartrigeges, heads shells, etc.
When you go to the store, the actual Vinyl product is only about 50% of it.
While vinyl takes up much less space to display, they are really selling the Vinyl as an adjunct to the hardware.
Its in the back, with all the gear up front and on display.

I cannot tell you how satisfying it is not have to fight against my giant sausage fingers to properly mount my $100+ cartridges.
TTL will do it for you and their expertise in all issues relating to the set up of your rig is what makes them a reason to keep patronizing them.
They are a step above other retailers for equipment.

Please continue to buy their exclusives so I can continue to rely on them to keep my rig running at its optimum output.
Click to expand...
Sadly I thought I read that they closed their storefront now.
 
As for the TTL experience...maybe I'm just jaded but I've dealt with dramatically worse retailer experiences than that one in several other collecting centric hobbies. I think a lot of Funko fans or Sneakerheads would give up a lot to have the Clairo issues be their issues.
 
Joe Mac said:
To be fair so long as they refunded/replaced there’s no way they could tell that inside a sealed package or could really have caused that by rough handling or shit packaging. That came out of the press like that and was let go! I’m still blaming the label/pressing factory 😂
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Haha, completely fair, maybe it's just a warning more about Dead Oceans than Recordstore.co.uk...but there's also a non zero chance that particular record spent time in a literal ocean for a bit before it got fished out.
 
Dead Oceans (and other secretly labels) have been much better lately but ever now and then you get a stinker. I usually buy direct from them since I'm in their record club and they've always made things right immediately.
 
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