Vinyl Me Please Anthology

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.
Welcome to the VMP threads. Half the people that post in here haven't even purchased a single Anthology. It's interesting.

I'm stoked for Stax too, my GF basically forced me to pull the trigger. We enjoyed the Blue Note Anthology despite the issues, the rollout and podcasts turn it into a sort of bi-weekly event/date night.
 
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.

I don't care to search back for the exact timing, but around a month ago, I pushed back on the idea of the December Anthology being Stax because I thought it would be a bad idea, or at least poorly handled by VMP. Seeing what's likely going to be in it and how it's being marketed, I stand by that. The 'curation' suffers from so many notable albums already having received recent pressings. While there are going to be a couple that longtime collectors have been waiting on, these are hardly the albums someone would choose to tell "the story of Stax" if given a blank slate.

Even though I bought it, and only slightly regret it due to the label offering up their own pressings so quickly, the Ghostly Anthology suffered from the same issue. They've been good about going through their back catalog the last few years for a number of albums that would be most representative if you're telling their history, and all the recent albums are in print. That doesn't even get into the shoddy, essentially non-existent "community"/bonus aspects that are supposed to justify a VMP Anthology's cost beyond that of a normal box set.

I think everyone is largely in agreement that aside from the non-early bird pricing, the Women of Motown worked because the execution matched the concept. For two sets in a row now, the concept is suffering and VMP is selling it as something it can't be, and that deserves discussion. It isn't meant as an attack on anyone who does buy an Anthology. I love Stax, own a lot of the pressings, and would have loved to buy this one. For me, the cost and the records involved aren't justified.
 
The thing with the Anthologies is that 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 these will lose all semblance of being a "special" item and will just be another expensive monthly item, like the Woodstock box.

I don’t think it’s too many. I just think they released the last 3 anthologies too close to each other. 4 boxsets a year isn’t anything crazy. What they should have done was release a boxset every 3 months. A boxset per quarter is a good pace imo.
 
I don't care to search back for the exact timing, but around a month ago, I pushed back on the idea of the December Anthology being Stax because I thought it would be a bad idea, or at least poorly handled by VMP. Seeing what's likely going to be in it and how it's being marketed, I stand by that. The 'curation' suffers from so many notable albums already having received recent pressings. While there are going to be a couple that longtime collectors have been waiting on, these are hardly the albums someone would choose to tell "the story of Stax" if given a blank slate.

Even though I bought it, and only slightly regret it due to the label offering up their own pressings so quickly, the Ghostly Anthology suffered from the same issue. They've been good about going through their back catalog the last few years for a number of albums that would be most representative if you're telling their history, and all the recent albums are in print. That doesn't even get into the shoddy, essentially non-existent "community"/bonus aspects that are supposed to justify a VMP Anthology's cost beyond that of a normal box set.

I think everyone is largely in agreement that aside from the non-early bird pricing, the Women of Motown worked because the execution matched the concept. For two sets in a row now, the concept is suffering and VMP is selling it as something it can't be, and that deserves discussion. It isn't meant as an attack on anyone who does buy an Anthology. I love Stax, own a lot of the pressings, and would have loved to buy this one. For me, the cost and the records involved aren't justified.

I'd argue that it's a little early to say the Stax Anthology doesn't work given we don't know the exact titles or the context of why Storf picked them. I mean it could be that he only had a select number he could do or these were ones he maybe always wanted to do. I mean there's a point where VMP will have a hard time finding something that hasn't be reissued in a while. That's part of what was nice about the Blue Note Anthology since they got to do things that Blue Note hadn't done in a while. Given Storf is a huge Stax fan, I think it's pretty cool that he was able to do two Anthologies of labels he's a huge fan of in Stax and Blue Note. His curation of Blue Note was pretty great so I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on what he picks for his Stax Anthology. And my hope is he's got other labels or artists he's interested in that are of interest to me. He jokingly teased something about MF Doom but that could have been tongue-in-cheek. But man I would be down for that.

Ultimately, if there's not a market for these Anthologies, VMP won't keep investing in them.
 
I don’t think it’s too many. I just think they released the last 3 anthologies too close to each other. 4 boxsets a year isn’t anything crazy. What they should have done was release a boxset every 3 months. A boxset per quarter is a good pace imo.
Right but they've released three of those 4 boxes over the past what... 4 months? And Storf said they want to do one every month in 2020. I don't think 4 a year is too many, but 3 in four months, then 12 more in the next 12 months is madness.
 
The only one that sticks out as being tacked on was Ghostly. Which it probably was. I could very easily see Ghostly saying to VMP that they'd like to partner up on a box set. Ghostly is the only one where there wasn't an exclusivity other than the colors and box itself. It's always interesting all these additional motivations people assign to VMP on here.

And the 12 in the next 12 months is a want to do not a will do. I'm sure if Storf had his way, it would be so but it's obviously not realistic. Especially not with all the issues the company is having right now. Stax is announced now but won't come out until January. The next one will be announced in February but won't come out till some time in March. Unless they have these completely in the pipeline, ready to go, they won't do more than probably 6 a year. This is all pure speculation on my part. VMP has always had project ideas that never came to fruition like Crate Digger Me, Please and Country Me Please. I think we'll see Anthologies that were some of these ideas.
 
And the 12 in the next 12 months is a want to do not a will do. I'm sure if Storf had his way, it would be so but it's obviously not realistic.

I’m not sure that expecting that they will fail to meet this quantity goal means in any way that they’ll be somehow forced to improve the quality of the sets that they actually release. Six anthologies in a year is still probably too many if they’re still doing 3 rotms and 5-10 exclusives each month.

I think a lot of people on here are concerned that VMP is just barrelling on forward with announcing more and more new releases for people to preorder and failing to address and acknowledge the known issues that are preventing people from getting the records that they paid for months ago. This whole year people have been waiting well past the promised delivery date for their records for one reason or another and each time VMP sends a “here’s the deal” e-mail like it’s a one-off glitch that will never happen again. Some people end up waiting for months and then just getting refunds because VMP oversold the records or sent them to the wrong people. If they actually took time to address these issues, I think people would be more inclined to give them the benefit of a doubt that they’re not just announcing more preorders to raise cash for products that only certain buyers will actually receive.
 
Just picked up the Motown set for a little over $240 on Discogs. Best price I've seen on it, so I snapped it up.

I really enjoyed that set. I am one of the rubes that doesn't mind overpaying (by some metrics) for the records to learn something new and listen for the story arc of the music. Album #4 (no spoilers in case you don't want to know) was a highlight for me. Happy listening!
 
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I really enjoyed that set. I enjoyed the curation and the story arc of the music. Album #4 (no spoilers in case you don't want to know) was a highlight for me. Happy listening!

I bought the Motown box against my better judgement and really enjoyed it. I listen to most of those records regularly now. I'm giving them the benefit of doubt on Stax. I actually really like both the BN and Motown boxes.
 
I bought the Motown box against my better judgement and really enjoyed it. I listen to most of those records regularly now. I'm giving them the benefit of doubt on Stax. I actually really like both the BN and Motown boxes.
Mmmmm I just purchased the Stax box! As the Motown Box was really good, I have a really good feeling about the Stax box, especially as it’s the same pressing details as the Motown Box! 📦⭐💎😇

Looking really forward to the whole experience in 2020! 🌈🙌🎷🎉

I’m going to listen to the podcasts this time and really immerse myself in the experience! 🙇‍♂️👨‍💻
 
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