My take:
1. While I do enjoy a good podcast, providing the content in podcast form was lazy and a half realized attempt at community. In all reality, it was an excuse to just talk versus doing real work in providing us a full book.
2. All of the extras, the sleeves, booklets, etc. have been on the cheap side. Compare the VMP Blue Note Anthology packaging with the Tone Poet series. Or that neither of the 2LP sets in the Ghostly box were gatefolds. I've enjoyed the music on both, but feel ripped off on the extras.
The crazy thing is, the community aspect is gone. That felt like a major selling point for both the first two sets, and now? It's just totally gone. There's no reason to think that, slowly but surely, the other bonus content will disappear and this'll end up just another overpriced box set. The whole concept of anthology is only worthwhile in so far as they offer content to meet the price; that's this whole discussion about value. But they're slowly removing the value-added aspect, even if those aspects were kind of garbage to begin with, at least they were there. I asked Storf about the community in Reddit and he ignored the question, but he did confirm that the liner notes will be on the typical cardstock.... which sucks, because, like you said, VMP has gone pretty cheap wherever they could get away with it.
I've done all three anthologies now. I think Motown was good, probably the best overall, but the price was also the worst. Ghostly has the best podcast, but the Motown packaging is infinitely better. I actually think Ghostly is kind of trash, to be totally honest. The "bonus material" for Ghostly has been like, some links to Youtube videos and some links to interviews, all done by different publications--the sort of shit I could come up with if I had 0 knowledge of the artists but their name and the ability to type into Google. That's about on par with what the Blue Note antho was like, in terms of bonus content. The Motown bonuses were decent, some actual new content and some of it I liked. Maybe they'll do that again for this Stax anthology; I got the sense that they farmed a lot of the work off to Ghostly for that antho, at least based off the one unboxing video I watch (which was Cam and the Ghostly guy dropping Millennial business marketing buzz words for a half hour), so maybe that's why the Ghostly stuff has been subpar overall.
I think the original idea of antho, as a box set shipped out over time, was good. I think it was a logistical nightmare and they fucked it up so hard that people flipped out, but I still think it's a really good idea and some other (competent) company could pull it off. However, at this point, the anthologies are just super overpriced box sets being sold as premium "experiences" which is just total marketing shit. The privacy sleeves are a joke. The unboxing videos are so stupidly lazy. They don't prepare for them at all and expect the viewers to come in with questions, as if it's our job to make these videos worthwhile. How any company could offer an unboxing video that's just some dude in his kitchen talking a bunch of random bullshit with 0 production value and 0 preparation at all blows my mind. They're not a small company. We should expect better, but it's kind of embarrassing. At least but a fucking webcam and a microphone for fuck's sake.
And yet, I love my Blue Note set. The conversations I had on here led me to really fall in love with jazz. That's what I want again, an actual community of people talking about the content and sharing information. I doubt that'll get replicated again, in all honesty. Maybe if they do another jazz antho. Maybe with this Stax one, who knows. At this point, I've accepted that the anthos are just overpriced box sets, and I'm only buying the ones I genuinely want (Stax being one of them, likely any other jazz set they put out) and I'm only buying those because I can afford it. If I weren't lucky enough to have a good job that pays well, I wouldn't buy these things.
Part of me thinks we're going to look back and mark this anthology thing as the point at which VMP jumped the shark (although I bet many on here would point to earlier points, all valid). It's the point at which any shred of the old "community" ethos was thrown out the window in favor of more profit. The "VMP treatment" used to sort of mean something, but now it stands for absurdly overinflated pricing, horrible QC, decent-to-above-average quality, and a commitment to FOMO marketing bullshit. The anthology is a very good symptom of what's wrong with the vinyl industry in general, and a very good indicator that it's a stupidly big bubble. If I didn't honestly still believe VMP's classics track was a good deal, I would've canceled my sub a while ago.
Hopefully VMP learns that business is a long term game. Sometimes, short term profits need to be tempered in favor of building good will in a community, providing good products and services, and focusing on giving a shit about their customer base. It's about growing a functional, thriving business, not just grabbing as much cash as possible before they get bought out by Walmart or whatever.
But I doubt it'll change.
Anyway, that rant is crazy, but I'll end it here with: I'm still buying this stupid Stax box set.
