Vinyl Me Please Anthology

Enoch said:
I thought just the box was going to be foil stamped, this is the problem with how this was rolled out, everyone has a different understanding of what the actual product was going to be
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I think this extends beyond just this product to be honest...VMP in general has huge communication issues within their own company. Nobody seems to talk to each other and they seem to have no coherent plan for anything ever. Even with this release, nobody knew at first whether or not Horace Silver was in mono...how do you not know that??
 
dhodo said:
I think that's giving them a lot of credit for picking 6 of 12 albums Don Was sent them, isn't it?
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Not sure how the other VMP x Blue Note albums were selected, but was very happy to see the lesser re-released albums like Charlie Rouse made the cut. I think overall, they have pretty great curation of albums all things considered. The curation was never really the issue with VMP. It has always been the other stuff that has prevented them from truly being "the best damn record club."
 
MikeH said:
I think this extends beyond just this product to be honest...VMP in general has huge communication issues within their own company. Nobody seems to talk to each other and they seem to have no coherent plan for anything ever. Even with this release, nobody knew at first whether or not Horace Silver was in mono...how do you not know that??
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of course, but this went out of its way to be lacking in details, it was advertised as a feature
 
botherly said:
Say what you wanna about their QC, they do have really good taste. Big reason I bit the bullet and dove in, I knew I'd get 6 solid albums I'd probably otherwise never know about / buy. Plus it's getting me deeper into jazziphilia which is cool.
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Yea--their curation is really good typically. Imagine if they cared as much about these releases (and all others) as other labels like Pure Pleasure, Sam Records, Music Matters, AP, etc did? The end result would be incredible.

As for getting deeper into jazz, it's really a bummer to see that this is really lacking the whole rest of the "Experience™®©" that they promised. I'm not learning anything new about jazz really from this. Getting the liner notes in the last shipment is dumb. Deleting liner notes to use blown up CD artwork is stupid. They haven't done anything outside of the two podcasts which are interesting but not worth any extra money IMO and the facebook group is just people posting their Blue Note scores and I already get way more interesting information and posts on this free forum which is vastly superior. I think they really blew it on that front too. Would have been cool to have AMAs with anybody remotely involved in jazz history, articles about different jazz eras, videos, etc.

I'm glad some people dove into it who don't have too much jazz experience but I'm not sure how much learning people are actually getting from this outside of encouraging them to look at other artists or listening to things you might not have in the past simply because the records were curated for you. I feel like the awesome people on these forums could have curated a similar experience for free (minus the cost of the records obviously) that would have been way more informative and pleasurable without as many bumps in the road.
 
Enoch said:
of course, but this went out of its way to be lacking in details, it was advertised as a feature
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A lot of things were advertised as features and have not been delivered upon. They even changed that foil/stamping detail in the past day or two on the site when they realized they fucked up. There really isn't a "learning experience". There have been no discounts, listening parties, giveaways or any other exclusive content as promised. They picked 6 albums out of 12 albums that Blue Note sent over and shipped them to me for $230.
 
MikeH said:
I'm glad some people dove into it who don't have too much jazz experience but I'm not sure how much learning people are actually getting from this outside of encouraging them to look at other artists or listening to things you might not have in the past simply because the records were curated for you. I feel like the awesome people on these forums could have curated a similar experience for free (minus the cost of the records obviously) that would have been way more informative and pleasurable without as many bumps in the road.
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As a person that didn't know much about jazz, aside from listening to random records and enjoying it, I've learned... not much. I mean, I live in this culture so I have a really broad understanding of jazz and its history just from, you know, liking music and stuff. But I guess I expected something a little deeper? The Was podcasts hint at some of it. The NYT article they linked to was super interesting, about women in the history of jazz, but like... that's it? Really? I can Google too, guys.

Early in the Facebook group's existence a few people posted some kind of interesting "jazz history primers" but they were just random guys in the group throwing out scattered facts and had nothing to do with VMP's supposed experience.

Just don't promise an "experience" if you don't have one set up. Or be a little more specific about what you plan on doing, as per @Enoch's point.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
I don't know where else the foil stamping might have been mentioned, but this is very ambiguously worded. Grammatically speaking, the "foil-stamped" here refers to "this set," which could be either plural or singular, but logically speaking, it immediately follows the mention of "7 LPs."
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Exactly I had a hard understanding exactly what they meant and not giving the details until it went on sale didn't help and then not even contacting people the foil stamped was removed and not happening
 
Indymisanthrope said:
I don't know where else the foil stamping might have been mentioned, but this is very ambiguously worded. Grammatically speaking, the "foil-stamped" here refers to "this set," which could be either plural or singular, but logically speaking, it immediately follows the mention of "7 LPs."
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The part that really bothers me is that they went in and changed the website AFTER THE FACT when people called them out on it.
 
botherly said:
As a person that didn't know much about jazz, aside from listening to random records and enjoying it, I've learned... not much. I mean, I live in this culture so I have a really broad understanding of jazz and its history just from, you know, liking music and stuff. But I guess I expected something a little deeper? The Was podcasts hint at some of it. The NYT article they linked to was super interesting, about women in the history of jazz, but like... that's it? Really? I can Google too, guys.

Early in the Facebook group's existence a few people posted some kind of interesting "jazz history primers" but they were just random guys in the group throwing out scattered facts and had nothing to do with VMP's supposed experience.

Just don't promise an "experience" if you don't have one set up. Or be a little more specific about what you plan on doing, as per @Enoch's point.
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There is one user in the FB group that posts some awesome stuff about the history of jazz, how to distinguish between different subgenres of jazz, etc that appears to be original content. Chris Irwin I think is his name? That stuff is awesome to read and is the content that VMP should have been doing all along. Instead they are having members of the group do it for free.
 
MikeH said:
There is one user in the FB group that posts some awesome stuff about the history of jazz, how to distinguish between different subgenres of jazz, etc that appears to be original content. Chris Irwin I think is his name? That stuff is awesome to read and is the content that VMP should have been doing all along. Instead they are having members of the group do it for free.
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So before all the problems were discovered I was going to suggest for future Anthologies for VMP to screen all posts to prevent all the what's spinning post and other weird random post but of course that would immediately weed out the complaints, so now I am torn on what feedback to give, assuming they will still do that now that is has been screwed up
 
botherly said:
lol, fair point. I guess I'm trying to dredge up some positivity.
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I actually feel like I'll have plenty of positive opinions on the records and the box, despite what my entire post history may imply, lol. My problem there is, I haven't received them yet. Which isn't really so much a complaint as it is me getting antsy because it seems just about everyone else has.
 
Enoch said:
So before all the problems were discovered I was going to suggest for future Anthologies for VMP to screen all posts to prevent all the what's spinning post and other weird random post but of course that would immediately weed out the complaints, so now I am torn on what feedback to give, assuming they will still do that now that is has been screwed up
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My feedback would have been don't use facebook as the forum and instead create another forum but that was all before they nuked the VMP forum and deleted comments. Facebook is awful for the kind of "experience" they promised. But it is easiest for them to self-police and it's free for them.
 
MikeH said:
There is one user in the FB group that posts some awesome stuff about the history of jazz, how to distinguish between different subgenres of jazz, etc that appears to be original content. Chris Irwin I think is his name? That stuff is awesome to read and is the content that VMP should have been doing all along. Instead they are having members of the group do it for free.
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I literally just finished watching one of his videos, it's really good. They should pay this guy. Learned way more about the kinds of things to listen for from that 8 minute video than I have from anything else so far.

Enoch said:
So before all the problems were discovered I was going to suggest for future Anthologies for VMP to screen all posts to prevent all the what's spinning post and other weird random post but of course that would immediately weed out the complaints, so now I am torn on what feedback to give, assuming they will still do that now that is has been screwed up
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I honestly think it's the Facebook format. Fbook is really good with images. People loooove pictures and Facebook is really designed around promoting pictures as much as possible. That inevitably leads to long feeds of now playing and stuff (I'm not going to pretend I'm not guilty of posting a new playing picture in that group). I think the forum format is just so so much better. They obviously know how to host and moderate a forum, so why not have a pw protected forum hosted for each anthology with different threads? Some for now playing pics, some for discussing theory, etc etc. I have no clue why they're insistent on using Facebook unless it's to force everyone into using their real names? It's just not a good platform for discussion.
 
Enoch said:
So before all the problems were discovered I was going to suggest for future Anthologies for VMP to screen all posts to prevent all the what's spinning post and other weird random post but of course that would immediately weed out the complaints, so now I am torn on what feedback to give, assuming they will still do that now that is has been screwed up
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I don't see the actual posts as being the problem. The problem is that they are using FB, which is notorious for having their algorithm that shows things in a scattershot order and makes it hard to see content you actually want. If they had used a message board or just about anything that wasn't FB, it would be easier to isolate things like post after post from the same 1 or 2 people of jazz records without any actual discussion content.
 
botherly said:
I have no clue why they're insistent on using Facebook unless it's to force everyone into using their real names?
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Because as their CEO has said I believe, VMP isn't interested in things that will cost them money and not make them money. Hosting a forum + developing more original content costs them money with no immediate financial return. Facebook is free. Other people generate the content.
 
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