R.I.P. VMP Forum

Space Wanderer said:
I don't think things like Anthology are really as core to the VMP business as they seem to us forum-dwellers. They clearly have their most success with well-known albums that hit the spot for dudes in their 30s and 40s.
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I don't think it is either, but that only speaks further to how split their focus is. The real issue for me with the Anthology was that they presented in as a diversion away from the standard issues like overselling Nat Turner, at the time. They told us that they apologized for that issue and all of the rest, but boy did they have something else for all of us that we'd really be excited about in the meantime, while that all got worked out. Then they didn't tell us shit, dropped the info on Billboard, and released something that definitely wasn't within everyone's budget, while marketing more heavily away from us. That's where they put their focus, while continuing to ignore the real problems like quality control and shipping. Then, because they still have the core business to run, they wound up slacking on the details for the anthology crowd. Jack of all trades, yadda yadda.
 
Dead C said:
Quick poll. How many people do you think signed up for the Anthology and are playing those selections on one of these?

I think -- or, at least, hope -- that's the point that people are trying to make here. Not to trash people who buy tables like that, but that the VMP brand is confused and conflicted. They are selling what is, supposedly, a high end product to rationalize the price point. Yet, they tell you that you have to deal with damaged products because it's not a big deal. They market the anthology to audiophiles and hardcore collectors, then slack on the QC for the packaging and fuck it up. What are you selling? The suitcase models have built in speakers that rattle the whole thing to the point of skips. That's not even being pretentious, it's science, yo! Get that Lil Wayne off the table.

I can see someone playing a Phoenix record on there. That being said, if you're going in blind for a high end Anthology box and aren't even really into jazz -- I know a lot of people saw this as an opportunity to learn more about it -- but are throwing these discs on a suitcase player, you're probably better off picking up a new turntable and spending your money picking up jazz titles for a fraction of the price.
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An ongoing problem for VMP, pick a focus, stay with it
 
Dead C said:
Egon is fine. He has Rappcats and he still seems connected to Stones Throw in some capacity. He's also written some great stuff. I'm sure the VMP partnership is a benefit, but to imply that he "needs" them sounds a bit insulting. VMP are the ones calling him. At this point, it seems like they need him a lot more than the other way around, when their "curation" is essentially becoming color variants of Now Again and Mr Bongo titles. If VMP folds, Bongo and Now Again will still be finding albums to release. What happens when those labels stop handing them their titles? Did Who Sampled? really do anything in regards to "curating" 3 recent selections out of the Mr Bongo catalog? It's just another move to appear as if VMP has diversity in sources, while showcasing one more industry connection.

Are the cocktail recipes, stencils, or even the art really selling points, anymore? These are more like the resudue left over from them trying to find a voice. They've ditched all the important aspects and held onto the garbage that costs them money. Scrap all that. Fuck the obis, too, if it's tacking 5 to 11 bucks onto the price tag per record.

Either they have no idea what people care about, or they're simply targeting the people that do care about this stuff that I have no interest in.
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I'm not doubting that Egon's label is sustainable. I think his collaboration with VMP has increased his sales, maybe artificially so, because a bunch of people are sold an album without having exposure to that type of music or his brand.

VMP gets to have access to these rare and special records that they don't have the connections to get. I understand why they rely on theses types of relationships. They would have to invest a lot of time and money be able to do it regularly. Probably why Crate Digger never really got off and running quickly.
 
Count_Vader said:
What happened with Billboard?
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VMP dodged every question about the Anthology from what it would include to what it would cost and just left everyone confused until it actually dropped. They promised the forum early access, though. THey had a link where we could sign up to get an early pre-order price exclusive to us. Then, BIllboard just released an article with the information they wouldn't tell us and it included the pre-order link. So, they opted to go through them and try to blast it elsewhere. It sold out in pre-order. The rest of the world had a chance to find out the details, when they dragged us along all week
 
Dead C said:
VMP dodged every question about the Anthology from what it would include to what it would cost and just left everyone confused until it actually dropped. They promised the forum early access, though. THey had a link where we could sign up to get an early pre-order price exclusive to us. Then, BIllboard just released an article with the information they wouldn't tell us and it included the pre-order link. So, they opted to go through them and try to blast it elsewhere. It sold out in pre-order. The rest of the world had a chance to find out the details, when they dragged us along all week
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Damn, every new thing I hear digs their grave a bit deeper...
 
Joe Mac said:
I mean I agree with your sentiment entirely but I think Van Morrison is a big enough legacy artist that it’s hard to say that anything from his 60s and 70s output isn’t “essential” regardless of subjective taste. Also, for me it is my favourite of the essentials I got off them whilst i was subscribed.
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Oh yeah, I wasn't trying to knock Van the Man! Even though I couldn't really get into Veedon Fleece myself, I know that a lot of people really loved that pick and found it one of their better releases. But I feel like an album like VF, where it's a more obscure yet acclaimed album from a popular artist, kind of tows the line between "essential" for me.

It's more just a point that VMP's marketing of the albums they curate as "essential" doesn't quite seem to be the reality. If VMP just decided to drop the pretense that every single album they did an ROTM of was a super-influential, important album in music history, and just admitted that "this is a record club for people who like the same music we do", they'd oddly end up having more respect from me personally.
 
gaporter said:
Oh yeah, I wasn't trying to knock Van the Man! Even though I couldn't really get into Veedon Fleece myself, I know that a lot of people really loved that pick and found it one of their better releases. But I feel like an album like VF, where it's a more obscure yet acclaimed album from a popular artist, kind of tows the line between "essential" for me.

It's more just a point that VMP's marketing of the albums they curate as "essential" doesn't quite seem to be the reality. If VMP just decided to drop the pretense that every single album they did an ROTM of was a super-influential, important album in music history, and just admitted that "this is a record club for people who like the same music we do", they'd oddly end up having more respect from me personally.
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I can see that but the problem is that you can’t touch his huge ones because like all the big legacy artists it is too big to work for a subscription service, loads of us would already own it. I never did like the essentials tag tbh.
 
Joe Mac said:
I can see that but the problem is that you can’t touch his huge ones because like all the big legacy artists it is too big to work for a subscription service, loads of us would already own it. I never did like the essentials tag tbh.
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I do agree with you there - and I don't mind them doing releases of lesser-known albums from bigger artists. That honestly sounds like a cool idea for a record club, one that focuses more on reissuing deluxe versions of hidden gems in an artist's discography. But it's clear VMP doesn't see themselves that way, and that overhyping of all their ROTMs and exclusives just makes VMP look worse, imo.
 
Joe Mac said:
I can see that but the problem is that you can’t touch his huge ones because like all the big legacy artists it is too big to work for a subscription service, loads of us would already own it. I never did like the essentials tag tbh.
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Night At The Opera is a pretty big one, though. So is Odelay.
 
Dead C said:
Night At The Opera is a pretty big one, though. So is Odelay.
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Yeah I might have spent a lot of time in the old place saying how A Night At The Opera was their worst ever pick, a cynical film tie in and not curation...

Odelay is before my time with them and again I’d disagree with it as a pick because it could have been more interesting given his diverse catalogue.
 
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Joe Mac said:
Yeah I might have spend a lot of time in the old place saying how A Night At The Opera was their worst ever pick, a cynical film tie in and not curation...

Odelay is before my time with them and again I’d disagree with it as a pick because it could have been more interesting given his diverse catalogue.
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Plus, if anything, it kind of just reflects how unfocused they are and how inconsistent their brand really is.
 
Dead C said:
Plus, if anything, it kind of just reflects how unfocused they are and how inconsistent their brand really is.
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Completely, they seemed to veer from curation to “the label offered this and we can sell loads of it” far too often. Neither is wrong per se but they spent far too long defending the picks that were the latter as being the former.
 
VMP would've been a great company for people who just bought a Crosley and want to start with the hobbie but is not sure how to do it and also wants something "cool".
IIRC, they use to sell speakers, and not the cheap ones, and a turntable on their website some time ago. That was a way of saying "if you want to improve your Crosley, this is our recommendation, but it's not mandatory".
So you could listen to Gorillaz, and Fiona, and Weezer, and Beck, and every now and then something curious, like Wells Fargo, and let's get Nina Simone because you will look really cool when you invite a girl to have dinner at your house and play that one.

If they had stayed with the "kind-of mainstream and some occasional unusual choice" curation, it would've been great. But Classics worked so well for them in term of sales that I think that that's where they lost it and greed just consumed and now they think they can release an album of Vladimir Putin farting in purple vinyl and all the copies will be warped and they don't can't because you cannot listen to that album but anyway what would you do with that time.

But I would totally apply to a club with the old vibe of VMP.
 
Waitressboy said:
VMP would've been a great company for people who just bought a Crosley and want to start with the hobbie but is not sure how to do it and also wants something "cool".
IIRC, they use to sell speakers, and not the cheap ones, and a turntable on their website some time ago. That was a way of saying "if you want to improve your Crosley, this is our recommendation, but it's not mandatory".
So you could listen to Gorillaz, and Fiona, and Weezer, and Beck, and every now and then something curious, like Wells Fargo, and let's get Nina Simone because you will look really cool when you invite a girl to have dinner at your house and play that one.

If they had stayed with the "kind-of mainstream and some occasional unusual choice" curation, it would've been great. But Classics worked so well for them in term of sales that I think that that's where they lost it and greed just consumed and now they think they can release an album of Vladimir Putin farting in purple vinyl and all the copies will be warped and they don't can't because you cannot listen to that album but anyway what would you do with that time.

But I would totally apply to a club with the old vibe of VMP.
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And the irony of the whole thing is that, out of all of the albums they released, you can't play Gorillaz on the Crosley, because it skips
 
Here's my two cents on VMP. I've now got all the backlog of Classics (save for JLH and a couple others that were gone before my time). I'm going to stick with them through a Classics sub and may add Essentials or RHH here and there if they have something really interesting. I may even buy the stray exclusive here and there. But! My days of buying stuff blind and enjoying it are over. I've not complained about minor warps or split seams once, but those days are over as well (though I'm doubting they make it right with their new policies).

Up until now, I've treated VMP as a friend...a community, but they seem like they want to be big boys now and be a business and not a community. So, I'll treat them as such. I'm disappointed with their direction, but at the end of the day, they've (sometimes) got a product I want. I'll still give them some money, but I'll be a lot more careful about it and take advantage where I can.

Honestly, I don't see VMP being around in 2 years, because they obviously have no idea how to run a business. They've made it clear that they're only interested in the Hipster, Urban Outfitters crowd. So, when, those folks get bored and jump ship, itll be bye bye VMP. I guess I'll stay on the ship until it sinks, though. They have made it clear they're all about them, so I'll just make it about me. I still think Mort Garson is rad, though.
 
Dead C said:
And the irony of the whole thing is that, out of all of the albums they released, you can't play Gorillaz on the Crosley, because it skips
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I remember hearing complaints about Demon Days skipping. Dozens if not hundreds online. Fairly soon it dawned on me that they were skipping because all that people were playing them on cheap players, most of which had that infamous red ceramic cartridge...

I think it was at that moment I realized just how big of a percentage of people getting into vinyl did so without doing any prior research, and how many of them were going to be short sold a great hobby and rewarding listening experience because of how those tables make records sound. It really bummed me out.
 
Sodajerk said:
Here's my two cents on VMP. I've now got all the backlog of Classics (save for JLH and a couple others that were gone before my time). I'm going to stick with them through a Classics sub and may add Essentials or RHH here and there if they have something really interesting. I may even buy the stray exclusive here and there. But! My days of buying stuff blind and enjoying it are over. I've not complained about minor warps or split seams once, but those days are over as well (though I'm doubting they make it right with their new policies).

Up until now, I've treated VMP as a friend...a community, but they seem like they want to be big boys now and be a business and not a community. So, I'll treat them as such. I'm disappointed with their direction, but at the end of the day, they've (sometimes) got a product I want. I'll still give them some money, but I'll be a lot more careful about it and take advantage where I can.

Honestly, I don't see VMP being around in 2 years, because they obviously have no idea how to run a business. They've made it clear that they're only interested in the Hipster, Urban Outfitters crowd. So, when, those folks get bored and jump ship, itll be bye bye VMP. I guess I'll stay on the ship until it sinks, though. They have made it clear they're all about them, so I'll just make it about me. I still think Mort Garson is rad, though.
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I am very curious what's going to happen to VMP and places like Newbury when the Vinyl Fad fades...
 
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