Vinyl Me Please Anthology

Mather said:
The thing with the Anthologies are, they are in my opinion doing too many, too frequently. They will burn out on this very quickly, as will the consumers. There's only so many worthwhile box sets you can put out before you start scrounging. One box set every two months is not sustainable for very long. Unless they take a break this will go south. We've already seen the last two (likely) not sell out before they were pulled... And we're only on box 4 now.... I don't know how many they have planned for next year but if they keep up at this pace they will lose all semblance of being a "special" item and will just be another expensive monthly item, like the Woodstock box.
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they aren't even "sets" imo. They are random collection of records bundled into a box. it amazes me how many bundles VMP has had sit in the store, but as soon as they supply a box to store them in and don't reveal what is inside people think they are special and over pay for them.
 
YimYames said:
they aren't even "sets" imo. They are random collection of records bundled into a box. it amazes me how many bundles VMP has had sit in the store, but as soon as they supply a box to store them in and don't reveal what is inside people think they are special and over pay for them.
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For Stax, this is fair. For BN at least they tried to do one album per era/subgenre (bop, free jazz, etc), and Motown had the Women Of theme. But yeah Stax is basically a bundle in a box. I mean the email said "Introducing VMP Anthology: The Story Of Stax Records, an 8-album journey through the label’s first golden period from 1957-1975" so they're billing it as a history lesson, but if the guesses are close to accurate the time period they're covering is only 65-71.
 
Mather said:
The thing with the Anthologies are, they are in my opinion doing too many, too frequently. They will burn out on this very quickly, as will the consumers. There's only so many worthwhile box sets you can put out before you start scrounging. One box set every two months is not sustainable for very long. Unless they take a break this will go south. We've already seen the last two (likely) not sell out before they were pulled... And we're only on box 4 now.... I don't know how many they have planned for next year but if they keep up at this pace they will lose all semblance of being a "special" item and will just be another expensive monthly item, like the Woodstock box.
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But what if you’re the consumer who has like 50 or so records and invested in a nice setup and you have all this empty space in your kallax that you want to fill up as soon as possible so you can show off your collection when you have people over. You might want all of the “limited” “audiophile” boxes you can find, regardless of what they actually are haha. Warps are only really an issue if you’re trying to spin the records.
 
Ericj32 said:
It feels like their unspoken target customer is someone who doesn’t know much about music or have much of an existing record collection but is willing to shell out for something that either will be viewed as collectible and have high resale value or will give their record collection some hipster cred.

Now that they’re getting rid of the monthly subs, you have to commit for at least 3 records at a time. It’s not a completely blind commitment since you can swap, but even that ability is now being restricted, too. And I have to think that the success of Anthology is partly responsible for that change. If they can focus more on customers willing to shell out larger and larger sums for larger chunks of records more and more blindly - there’s no incentive to continue to offer one-offs, and definitely not to offer them at a good price, hence the price increases in the store this year to discourage those one-off purchases that don’t require a larger subscription commitment.
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Interesting theory on that one. Probably not too far off on some of those thoughts. I bought the Blue Note set because I'm a big BN fan and my jazz collection is fairly diverse. I have Blue Note Review box-sets and lots of Music Matters Jazz titles, so I don't really fit the demographic of what you're describing. But I can see how there is some truth to that.

I think that if you're a Jazz collector, as long as the sonic quality is high, you don't mind picking up the tab for the box set. I have multiple copies of the same album (in Jazz as well as other genres in my collection) so I didn't mind the duplicates. But not everyone has that collector mentality, though.
 
Jeff Lerner said:
For Stax, this is fair. For BN at least they tried to do one album per era/subgenre (bop, free jazz, etc), and Motown had the Women Of theme. But yeah Stax is basically a bundle in a box. I mean the email said "Introducing VMP Anthology: The Story Of Stax Records, an 8-album journey through the label’s first golden period from 1957-1975" so they're billing it as a history lesson, but if the guesses are close to accurate the time period they're covering is only 65-71.
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Still Random records within a theme.
To me a box set doesn't exclude things within that theme.
 
Tyr said:
Interesting theory on that one. Probably not too far off on some of those thoughts. I bought the Blue Note set because I'm a big BN fan and my jazz collection is fairly diverse. I have Blue Note Review box-sets and lots of Music Matters Jazz titles, so I don't really fit the demographic of what you're describing. But I can see how there is some truth to that.

I think that if you're a Jazz collector, as long as the sonic quality is high, you don't mind picking up the tab for the box set. I have multiple copies of the same album (in Jazz as well as other genres in my collection) so I didn't mind the duplicates. But not everyone has that collector mentality, though.
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Yeah, I definitely didn’t mean to suggest that anyone who bought an anthology was that kind of “target customer” I mentioned, but just that it seems like they are increasingly trying to build their products around folks who are happy to go in blind on a large upfront commitment and might not really care so much what they receive.
 
Ericj32 said:
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I also want to say - not to single anyone out - that I’m a little baffled at how controversial a certain someone is on here. Maybe he overshares about his spending habits and thought processes, but I’ve never seen him disparage anyone else or engage in personal attacks or - wait for it- even deign to respond to personal attacks against him. I think that takes a certain level of maturity.

I also don’t think being semi-hit on is really that scandalous when the context is a basically anonymous online forum where you can only really be objectified based on the words and images you’ve chosen to post. Like what does it really mean if someone says that they think you’re attractive or sexy and they have no idea what you look like or really anything about you other than what music you like and what records you’ve purchased? Yeah, it’s weird, but isn’t that pretty innocuous in the scheme of things? Maybe I’m just too single and desperate to be sensitive to that kind of pain and moral trauma though lol.
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I can’t think who you could possibly mean !

Given my inability to work out N&G AOTM hints i think you should get on that train and pick an Album
;)
 
botherly said:
Storf was talking like they want to do one anthology per month next year. That seems kind of stupid, honestly. I suspect these boxes are only going to get worse from here. I bought Stax, but I fully plan on skipping anything that doesn't really excite me from here on out. I'm glad I got Motown and BN though. Ghostly, not so much.
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I guess I'm not really surprised, it's pretty much the way VMP has been heading for a while... Fast and cheaply made rather than show and measured quality. Almost every change made to the service has followed the roadmap of this decline...
 
mdmost said:
The next one isn't coming out till February according to Storf. So the one a month thing isn't happening.
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It should really be a 2 or 3 per year thing though. As others have said, they are going to quickly run out of labels and gimmicks, and the quality cannot stay up to par churning out so many.

Unless their plan is to have every other set be a throwaway like the ghostly one.
 
RobbieBobby said:
It should really be a 2 or 3 per year thing though. As others have said, they are going to quickly run out of labels and gimmicks, and the quality cannot stay up to par churning out so many.

Unless their plan is to have every other set be a throwaway like the ghostly one.
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You’re not into the idea of an ‘Anthology Box Set’ Anthology box set compiling six Anthology box sets that have been lost to time over the last 18 months but deserve AAAAA treatment, a collectible box set outer box, and two podcast interviews where Storf interviews himself? I’d pay $350 per box set for that.
 
swamp jazz box set said:
You’re not into the idea of an ‘Anthology Box Set’ Anthology box set compiling six Anthology box sets that have been lost to time over the last 18 months but deserve AAAAA treatment, a collectible box set outer box, and two podcast interviews where Storf interviews himself? I’d pay $350 per box set for that.
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Good luck, that kind of exclusivity would run you at least $500.

In all seriousness, I am pro Anthology and think the idea is a good one, but it feels like they are dangerously close to jumping the shark already. If I had purchased the Women of Motown box, I would probably feel like I was ripped off a bit. What made that one $100 more than the Stax box?

I think they are getting greedy, and it sucks because I really wanted the WoM Anthology. I know its available for far more reasonable prices on Discogs but I have had too many bad experiences purchasing on there to trust it, and in the event that one of the records has non-fill or is warped, theres no way VMP would be sending a replacement.
 
Women of Motown was $295 when it was released. If you bought Blue Note, you got a $30 off code so it was $265.
 
That was the after the early bird price. There wasn't any such price change for Ghostly and Stax looks to be a set price. Maybe they learned their lesson because at $345, that Motown was never going to move.
 
So much negativity on this thread. Just in terms of this upcoming box, which seems to mirror the design of Women Of Motown (which I've not seen hardly any, maybe even one, negative comment about from those who bought it), I'm pretty darn excited about this STAX box. It just seems odd to me to have so much vitriol against, and continually post about, something you haven't purchased, or have no plans to.
 
heavysoulbrutha said:
So much negativity on this thread. Just in terms of this upcoming box, which seems to mirror the design of Women Of Motown (which I've not seen hardly any, maybe even one, negative comment about from those who bought it), I'm pretty darn excited about this STAX box. It just seems odd to me to have so much vitriol against, and continually post about, something you haven't purchased, or have no plans to.
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Don’t judge a box by its cover? :)
 
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