Well, after five and a half years, this is the move that is finally going to get me to cancel.
So I've made it a bit of a point not to do too much piling on of a lot of things with VMP because...honestly, I've not had many issues with what they have sent me at all. I've never once had a record show up with an unplayable warp. I did go through 4 copies of "Set Yourself On Fire" before getting a clean copy, but they were dealt with pretty promptly each time. I received some store credit for a couple of dinged covers on stuff that was sold out (Durand Jones and something else I can't recall at the moment...). Not anything even close to the more egregious stuff that I have seen from many of you lovely folks.
When they shut the old forum down, I tried not to hurl negatives around. Clearly those points were already being stated, and I was much more impressed with how N&G came together so quickly. It made me realize that I value this community and the people I've interacted with on it. (Some of them even in real life! What up
@BjorgenFjorgen @Mather @juiceless you wonderful Weird Boys you!)
That being said, I was still very much enjoying the products I was getting from VMP. This includes some big ones from the want list, like QOTSA, Blackalicious, The Roots, El-P, The Flaming Lips, Phoenix, Outkast, and several others. It's even helped with my budding interest in jazz: Alice Coltrane, Art Blakey, Charlie Rouse, Johnny Griffin, Archie Shepp.....lots of stuff that I really love and am grateful to own in these editions.
I'm on an International month-to-month plan ($42 USD per month, which is around $55 CDN). When I started with VMP a long time ago I was doing three months at a time, but found that put more of a strain on my budget than I wanted. It is a bit pricey, certainly, but access to editions of stuff without the extra shipping costs (I know the Canadian contigent will back me up here, but shipping from US to Canada for vinyl is prohibitively expensive. For example, it was far cheaper for me to grab the VMP edition of Fetch The Bolt Cutters than from Fiona's site). Even with having a better job and making more money now, I've never wanted to do anything other than month-to-month, as I now have a bigger car payment, other bills, etc.
It was either going to take a massive dip in what I was getting from VMP, or an unreasonable price hike. $52 per month (approx. $70 CDN) is that unreasonable price hike. I've got several awesome local record stores that I would rather support even more at that price, and in the shorter term it should help me get to my new turntable even quicker.
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