Vinyl Me Please Anthology

MikeH said:
I do think that VMP has branding and copywriting issues quite often. Calling the anthologies "The Story of" is just bad titling because the responses to titles are always "how can you tell the story of this label or artist without this title/artist?" Calling their main track "Essentials" leads to people saying "this isn't an essential album". etc. The slogan "Lost Sounds Found" is also pretty bad since they hardly do those types of titles and historically, when they DO, they sell really poorly.
Click to expand...
Yeah, great point. Their only logical branding (besides the ones that are just genres) is Rising, which I think they stole from @Lee Newman 😂
 
MikeH said:
they put The Cry of My People outside of the set as one of the spiritual jazz companion pieces. But overall I agree.

i also understand that they are at the mercy of the labels with licensing. so it's very possible they wanted a Shepp title but couldn't get tapes/high-res files or licenses...definitely the biggest bummer of the set for me though.
Click to expand...
I went for the spiritual jazz companion bundle with some credit. Tbh I’m more excited about those titles than any in the actual anthology.
 
Colonel4Bin said:
I went for the spiritual jazz companion bundle with some credit. Tbh I’m more excited about those titles than any in the actual anthology.
Click to expand...
same. i bought that bundle straight away. my excitement for the anthology definitely went down after we got an AS Karma release (even though IMO it's just okay). I'd still want Ptah, Mingus Plays Piano and Africa/Brass. Usually there are enough titles where they are hard enough to find good copies for good prices that i can justify some anthologies. But hard to see myself getting this unless its on massive sale.
 
MikeH said:
same. i bought that bundle straight away. my excitement for the anthology definitely went down after we got an AS Karma release (even though IMO it's just okay). I'd still want Ptah, Mingus Plays Piano and Africa/Brass. Usually there are enough titles where they are hard enough to find good copies for good prices that i can justify some anthologies. But hard to see myself getting this unless its on massive sale.
Click to expand...
Yeah, Ptah and Africa/Brass are a draw for me. Figure the Szabo is easy enough to pick up on its own, and tbh I’m not a huge Mingus fan and solo piano records don’t do much for me outside on Monk. I’m fine with the VBR Mel Brown I have, it’s not great but it’s fine enough.
 
Colonel4Bin said:
Cadet has yet to eclipse 650/1000. Still over 350 left.

Storf said somewhere on the Discord it would probably take years to sell them all.

It’s a cool set, but price point needs to be lower for me.
Click to expand...
Any idea on how the Waylon is selling? I really want it but I’ve been spending too much on vinyl recently given my playing time has sharply decreased. I just don’t want to miss it, looking for a quiet month of preorders between now and December.
 
Colonel4Bin said:
Cadet has yet to eclipse 650/1000. Still over 350 left.

Storf said somewhere on the Discord it would probably take years to sell them all.

It’s a cool set, but price point needs to be lower for me.
Click to expand...
This makes me sad, this set is absolute fire. But I guess Cadet doesn't hold the same clout as something like Blue Note or Impulse.

I also worry that it dampens the prospect of any possible Cadet titles as future store drops or ROTMs. I was hoping for more Rotary Connection or some Ahmad Jamal in the not-too-distant future.
 
NewsFedora said:
This makes me sad, this set is absolute fire. But I guess Cadet doesn't hold the same clout as something like Blue Note or Impulse.

I also worry that it dampens the prospect of any possible Cadet titles as future store drops or ROTMs. I was hoping for more Rotary Connection or some Ahmad Jamal in the not-too-distant future.
Click to expand...
I’m really interested in the set, but can’t justify the price. If it comes down, I will be more inclined. I just think there’s less of a market these days for $350-400 purchases.
 
Colonel4Bin said:
I’m really interested in the set, but can’t justify the price. If it comes down, I will be more inclined. I just think there’s less of a market these days for $350-400 purchases.
Click to expand...
I honestly think they’re pricing the anthologies too high. The ones that had been sold out were all under $300 (even if just listed at $299).

Have they sold some out eventually? Yes. But ever since they consistently pushed the price over $300 for members (Quincy was the first on iirc) they’ve sat for much longer.

If they want these to sell out in a reasonable time frame, they’d put a 2 as the first number.
 
hayema7 said:
I honestly think they’re pricing the anthologies too high. The ones that had been sold out were all under $300 (even if just listed at $299).

Have they sold some out eventually? Yes. But ever since they consistently pushed the price over $300 for members (Quincy was the first on iirc) they’ve sat for much longer.

If they want these to sell out in a reasonable time frame, they’d put a 2 as the first number.
Click to expand...
My reasonable wish, that'll never happen, is that box sets go back to being cheaper than buying each record individually. You should get a discount for buying them all in one go.
 
Hemotep said:
My reasonable wish, that'll never happen, is that box sets go back to being cheaper than buying each record individually. You should get a discount for buying them all in one go.
Click to expand...
This is why I look elsewhere at boxes when they go on sale. I got the Otis set from Rhino for like $70 I think.

Remember when they’d sell bundles that didn’t even have a discount on them? At least they fixed that!
 
hayema7 said:
This is why I look elsewhere at boxes when they go on sale. I got the Otis set from Rhino for like $70 I think.

Remember when they’d sell bundles that didn’t even have a discount on them? At least they fixed that!
Click to expand...
I do the same. I love box sets. They are a big weakness of mine. So I hunt for the blowouts too. That Otis set is nice and I regret not grabbing it when it was that price. I opted for the Staple Singers box set over that one at the time. It's gorgeous too.
 
hayema7 said:
This is why I look elsewhere at boxes when they go on sale. I got the Otis set from Rhino for like $70 I think.

Remember when they’d sell bundles that didn’t even have a discount on them? At least they fixed that!
Click to expand...
I think labels can do steep discounts and charge less in general because they aren’t paying for licensing. They also aren’t paying to take the tapes out to bring to a studio to cut. They just hire Bernie or KG or whoever for a day to cut all the records then pay for the pressings/packaging.

I’d love to learn more about the licensing side and how much companies like VMP pay to license titles for a box set.
 
IMO they should split these boxes across 3 or 4 months. Like, sell the empty box and first two less popular records first, then another two the following month and so on. Those who want the full set will buy them all, those who just want a few records will buy some too. They would still seat on some releases/boxes but at least they would have most if not all the money spent covered.
 
Skalap said:
IMO they should split these boxes across 3 or 4 months. Like, sell the empty box and first two less popular records first, then another two the following month and so on. Those who want the full set will buy them all, those who just want a few records will buy some too. They would still seat on some releases/boxes but at least they would have most if not all the money spent covered.
Click to expand...
Thats what they did for Bluenote. (Well sort of you were all in). Dolly is sort of that way.
 
Lee Newman said:
Thats what they did for Bluenote. (Well sort of you were all in). Dolly is sort of that way.
Click to expand...

Yup. Difference is you had to pay full price to have a pair of BN titres shipped and a box is missing for Dolly's titles.

On the other hand, I don't know how they deal with labels and if these allow VMP to sell their Anthologies this way. I guess it might be complicated to work with such big labels with an extensive catalog like BN or Impulse. This last box took them 3 years and we probably don't know all the issues VMP had to solve before releasing the box.
 
Skalap said:
Yup. Difference is you had to pay full price to have a pair of BN titres shipped and a box is missing for Dolly's titles.

On the other hand, I don't know how they deal with labels and if these allow VMP to sell their Anthologies this way. I guess it might be complicated to work with such big labels with an extensive catalog like BN or Impulse. This last box took them 3 years and we probably don't know all the issues VMP had to solve before releasing the box.
Click to expand...
I think they would be sitting on tons of stock if they did it this way. How many boxes do you make? Not everybody is going to buy all the titles…If the BN box is any indication, seems like VMP goes to a label and says they want to do a box set and the label says “this is what you can choose from”. Labels aren’t letting people have free rein over their catalogues, especially the huge labels. I don’t doubt that VMP would have wanted to do all the huge titles from Impulse but either Impulse wouldn’t let them or it would have cost too much to license.

So you get some heavy hitters (Ptah, Karma, Africa/Brass) then some lesser known titles. Then they also got to do the Spiritual Jazz collection in smaller numbers.

I’d love to be a fly on the wall to know why this got pushed so far back…wouldn’t be surprised if they were going to press at QRP and then they decided to open a plant and steal the plant manager so QRP came off the table. Then their plant seems to have been delayed quite a lot. I almost feel bad because the wind got taken out of their sails. I think this would have sold out fairly quickly had the VBR and AS releases not happened.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top