R.I.P. VMP Forum

sorcerer said:
Do they put playlists in those emails they send? I have them all set to go to my junk folder.
They tried to do a cool community curating thing where people would write a paragraph on a record they wanted added to the store and then they'd add it to the store, but that only lasted about a month. Still not really sure why they axed it.
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oh i have no idea- i’ve had communication from them blocked for a long time. i just meant it as in they’re often promoting the music their customer already knows about
 
GritNGlitter said:
Seriously though.


Both of these. I had a fair amount of trust for my first 6 months or so, until I realized they know absolutely no more about music than I do, they just have the hubris to think their faves are essential.
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But but but my favourites are all essential even if just to me

Also, I’d subscribe to your curation, I’ve got 3 or 4 of my favourite purchases this year off the back of your recommendations.

And yeah, they really do love blowing smoke up their own arses and for all of their great picks they’d go on two or three month streaks in essentials that would confuse me.

AndySlash said:
my main issue with more recent curation was because many of the selections clearly tied into a business relationship they had fostered (e.g. now-again). once we started getting multiple releases from these relationships, it was clear that 'curation' was just another buzzword and not something truthful.
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Eugh! No more crow barred now again nonsense being foisted on me is such a relief...

GritNGlitter said:
The other thing that drove me crazy was their commitment to making "best" lists and recommendations that were intentionally NOT the artists' best. "Well, we want to give our customers something new--everyone knows X is the best album, so we're going to call this less good album the best one."
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Yes, but with one caveat, I LOVE that Van Morrison record and didn’t need another variant of Astral Weeks lol!
 
Joe Mac said:
But but but my favourites are all essential even if just to me

Also, I’d subscribe to your curation, I’ve got 3 or 4 of my favourite purchases this year off the back of your recommendations.

And yeah, they really do love blowing smoke up their own arses and for all of their great picks they’d go on two or three month streaks in essentials that would confuse me.



Eugh! No more crow barred now again nonsense being foisted on me is such a relief...



Yes, but with one caveat, I LOVE that Van Morrison record and didn’t need another variant of Astral Weeks lol!
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I would've preferred Moondance though...
 
Aw, you guys.

I don't mean that it was bad to have ROTMs that aren't the pinnacle of each artist's career, but all of their "magazine" articles and that kind of thing. But yeah, they did a piss poor job convincing us that their selections were important or anywhere close to essential.
 
Kris said:
My main beef with their "curation" was that lots of times the reason for picking it was because they "loved it in grade school" or some other pivotal life stage. Nostalgia doesn't makes something good. It might be a reason to have something in your personal collection, but it doesn't hold up to a larger group unless they're selling to people exactly like them.
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lmao I am going to apply this thinking to Nada Surf, because come on. :LOL:
 
GritNGlitter said:
Aw, you guys.

I don't mean that it was bad to have ROTMs that aren't the pinnacle of each artist's career, but all of their "magazine" articles and that kind of thing. But yeah, they did a piss poor job convincing us that their selections were important or anywhere close to essential.
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I'll never forget the article that Talked up Lauryn Hill's Unplugged 2.0 as one of the best unplugged performances...
 
I'm a 40-year-old that doesn't have the time to devote to going to random shows and reading countless music blogs, so over my 2-years of membership, the curation has been great for me. I’ve found a ton of music that I never would've found otherwise. But that isn't the essentials (for the most part): it's the rising and other curated picks.

The thing is, I had come to depend on you all as much as VMP to introduce me to new stuff, which is why I was so bummed that the forum was shut down. Yet here we are anyway. So, VMP will run its course for me, but I'll still be here and I guess I have VMP to thank for that?
 
mgp said:
I'm a 40-year-old that doesn't have the time to devote to going to random shows and reading countless music blogs, so over my 2-years of membership, the curation has been great for me. I’ve found a ton of music that I never would've found otherwise. But that isn't the essentials (for the most part): it's the rising and other curated picks.

The thing is, I had come to depend on you all as much as VMP to introduce me to new stuff, which is why I was so bummed that the forum was shut down. Yet here we are anyway. So, VMP will run its course for me, but I'll still be here and I guess I have VMP to thank for that?
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I agree with this. I thought they did a good job with new releases. None of us have nostalgia attached to those, but tbh their lists weren't terribly different from NPR or other sites. Except hip-hop maybe? I don't know, because I don't really follow hip-hop news. I did find some great hip-hop albums from VMP (and the forum).
 
GritNGlitter said:
Aw, you guys.

I don't mean that it was bad to have ROTMs that aren't the pinnacle of each artist's career, but all of their "magazine" articles and that kind of thing. But yeah, they did a piss poor job convincing us that their selections were important or anywhere close to essential.
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Yeah it’s just a classic smart guy internet move to be like “actually the best xxxx is the one everyone thinks is the 2nd worst”. I’d be surprised if they’re not doing that with the OutKast record right now.
 
Kris said:
I might need you to curate some albums for me. Didn't you hype Olivia Chaney and Hilary Woods? Two of my favorite albums of the last year or so. I saw an album you posted earlier today (I think?) but I forgot to bookmark it and now I can't find it again.
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Blushing!

They were two I was banging on about last year!

Yeah the recommendations thread doesn’t seem to have taken off over here, it took ages for me to find today and it seems to have sunk again. Maybe we are just recommending stuff everywhere over here so it’s not as necessary?

Anyway it is an album by an Irish folk artist called Anna Mieke. By the sounds of it she is pretty well schooled in Irish music and traditional techniques but who has also travelled pretty extensively and so her music has taken on influences and so is probably much more Celtic folk than trad. I am loving it but I have to give all credit to LovesVinyl record club, they picked it as one of their June picks which made me audition and then pick it!



I’ll be honest in that folk/trad/Irish music is a really new avenue for me over the past couple of years and so I’m getting much more excited about discovering those albums, than my typical picks of 3-5 white guys in a band playing indie music, no matter how good it is lol!
 
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Count_Vader said:
You have absolutely no reason to be embarrassed. You're an amazing person for making this case. I'm not an easy person to move I rarely get emotional in the sense that I display it physically. This moved me to tears. I've always felt out of place from the small Kentucky town I grew up in. I was always ostracized and treated like an outsider. I was withdrawn and created a false persona to keep people away. I was hesitant to open up to anyone even my own family. Especially about my personal life and sexuality. The only person I was able to fully open up to is my girlfriend (who came from out of state which is why I talk about her on here so much) but this fucking community has been a way for me to actually feel like I belong somewhere. I feel like I have true friends here. You guys are like family. When I found at that the forum was cancelled I was devastated but unfathomably relieved when I discovered this forum existed. Thank you for trying your best to preserve the only place that I really felt any belonging to.
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I related to this post a lot, as a fellow small town Kentuckian. Cheers. 🍻
 
gouis said:
Yeah it’s just a classic smart guy internet move to be like “actually the best xxxx is the one everyone thinks is the 2nd worst”. I’d be surprised if they’re not doing that with the OutKast record right now.
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That is their second worst album....
So many of their big name albums were nobody's favorites now that I think about it...
 
Delta Don said:
also they will hold you to how many replacements you have gotten. the curious thing about that email is that 8 replacements in 30 days just means that there was a large order and lots of the order was jacked. plain and simple just have more quality control...
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That was me. Most of my boxes ranged from 10-20 records and the 8 covered about 30 records received and were all documented warps/scratches.

They’re definitely tightening up the policy and seem resigned to and content at driving long term members away.
 
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