Vinyl Me Please (store, exclusives, swaps, etc)

Have to say that this year has been a serious decline for VMP. The pressing plant fiasco, the stupid mystery boxes, the curation has gotten pretty bad (two months in a row swapping for credit), there’s seemingly no big ticket exclusives any more (particular VMP only exclusives), and now this. If my account wasn’t up right when they’re making these changes, I would have requested the refund (and still might).
 
wmeugene said:
Have to say that this year has been a serious decline for VMP. The pressing plant fiasco, the stupid mystery boxes, the curation has gotten pretty bad (two months in a row swapping for credit), there’s seemingly no big ticket exclusives any more (particular VMP only exclusives), and now this. If my account wasn’t up right when they’re making these changes, I would have requested the refund (and still might).
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I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment, especially for the price of an international sub.
The Impulse delays were pretty much it for me. I have zero enthusiasm to rejoin at any point in the near future. Honestly though, the price point of collecting as a whole (along with major life purchases like buying a new dwelling) has made me cut back to the point where I am just going to sit back and enjoy what I have. My wife okay'd a new player (thinking of a Carbon EVO), but as far as record purchases themselves I have pretty much gone from like $200-300/mo down to zero for the past couple of months. VMP is definitely getting no money from me.
 
wmeugene said:
If my account wasn’t up right when they’re making these changes, I would have requested the refund (and still might).
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My 12-month renewal is up at the end of next month. If it wasn't for the free records, I might not even have done the last one. Along with the curation issues (which clearly aren't going to be fixed under Matt) and the new changes to "Classics" (ibid) and the overall cost (ibid), it's incredibly hard to justify a membership.

On the liner notes issue, the major complaint from members was that they'd jam the book inside, distending the jacket & possibly affecting the record. Yes, the quality of writing varied (ibid), but I expected that. This switch to a generic zine is the wrong 'fix', imho, and seeing as how the vast majority of them will immediately be tossed, a bit ironic alongside their celebration of not having to dump a bunch of unsold records in a landfill.
 
Man I’m really going to miss the Country sub. They’ve barely scratched the surface of what the genre has to offer. And it’s ending on such a whimper too.

My sub is up in September and I was already on the fence about renewing. But this may be a good time to part ways with VMP for a while at least. I’ve been buying less and less from them the last year.
 
This gives me "Disney decade" vibes


Basically I'm the 90s Disney planned for this major big new stuff to come to the Disney Parks in the 90s, many new rides, new themes, and even the expansion into Europe with euro Disney

But then eurodisney flopped so unbelievably badly that Disney had to cut back on everything they were doing and not really get any revival back until Bob iger took over
 
5 bucks there planning something like Kenny Garrett or Sade or something that was after their window so they had to change it
 
My thoughts on this are as such…

Essentials was getting harder to keep hyped.

Country and Rock were getting harder to source as it is clear to me that the labels realized that there was a market for these things.

Hip Hop was a no brainer because outside of Interscope the labels don’t seem to want to repress stuff, how was the market not flooded last year. The genre seems to thrive in fomo.

Classics… saturation - Jazz was always the most successful genre for the sub, Blue Note has two reissue lines for their product. Verve/Impulse is gonna Verve/Impulse. Adding funk gives them room to play with Real Gone stuff that has been popular for them and indicates to me a desire to keep from repeating in Essentials for the time being. Getting rid of the date restriction means they can probably get the occasional BN or Impulse as those companies don’t seem as successful when they move past that line in the sand.

PayPal - they were finally transparent about it.

Shipping, we all knew it cost them more. Unsure why they are finally fixing it but doing it with replacements when:
1. They’ve struggled to fulfill replacements recently 2. They still can’t seem to bundle regular orders consistently
Is a little baffling and I wonder if they either pissed someone at Saddle Creek off or there is new leadership there and it behooved them to use services they weren’t before and offload dead stock taking up space there (mystery bundlepalooza)
 
I was one of the people they recently interviewed, as an acknowledged N&Ger and someone who had left and returned and been critical. While not saying axe country and rock I expressed less was more, better curration and better product. These changes will be fine if the product is better, the line up of picks for this quarter (bar the 3 Essentials) I found very underwhelming. Hissing Of Summer Lawns, on 2 disc 45RPM, was something I felt VMP could do very well. And they did. I hope there is more like this to come.
 
MyWifeHatesTrain said:
Also, as usual, poor Paulie, although at this point, I’m absolutely certain he could go do something else… so who knows what the deal there is.

Discord seems surprisingly quiet given the news. Maybe they paid the plants to be quiet. As usual what I did read was weirdly positive.
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I can’t read the discord. It seems the Slurms McKenzie emoji brigade will hype up everything and thus the lack of actual objectivity has the opposite effect and you come away not caring at all.
 
MyWifeHatesTrain said:
My thoughts on this are as such…

Essentials was getting harder to keep hyped.

Country and Rock were getting harder to source as it is clear to me that the labels realized that there was a market for these things.

Hip Hop was a no brainer because outside of Interscope the labels don’t seem to want to repress stuff, how was the market not flooded last year. The genre seems to thrive in fomo.

Classics… saturation - Jazz was always the most successful genre for the sub, Blue Note has two reissue lines for their product. Verve/Impulse is gonna Verve/Impulse. Adding funk gives them room to play with Real Gone stuff that has been popular for them and indicates to me a desire to keep from repeating in Essentials for the time being. Getting rid of the date restriction means they can probably get the occasional BN or Impulse as those companies don’t seem as successful when they move past that line in the sand.

PayPal - they were finally transparent about it.

Shipping, we all knew it cost them more. Unsure why they are finally fixing it but doing it with replacements when:
1. They’ve struggled to fulfill replacements recently 2. They still can’t seem to bundle regular orders consistently
Is a little baffling and I wonder if they either pissed someone at Saddle Creek off or there is new leadership there and it behooved them to use services they weren’t before and offload dead stock taking up space there (mystery bundlepalooza)
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I think they had the idea that subscribers would possibily extend their subs with more tracks. Unfortunately for them and for all of us the after Covid brought a lot of spending restrictions in many houses. So instead of adding more, they limited themselves to one track, maybe two, and swaping from month to month. VMP had to follow and press enough records for everyone and in many cases pressed way more records than needed. Now they have a huge amount of money boxed and scored on there shelves.
Reducing the number of tracks gives them a better control of how many records must be pressed for each track and I would not be surprised if they keep with the "press on demand" stuff they did recently.
 
Murfocakes said:
I was one of the people they recently interviewed, as an acknowledged N&Ger and someone who had left and returned and been critical. While not saying axe country and rock I expressed less was more, better curration and better product. These changes will be fine if the product is better, the line up of picks for this quarter (bar the 3 Essentials) I found very underwhelming. Hissing Of Summer Lawns, on 2 disc 45RPM, was something I felt VMP could do very well. And they did. I hope there is more like this to come.
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Thanks. /jk
 
My replacement Alicia Keys that was sent because the first replacement had a misprint on it… has a totally different misprint on it. You honestly couldn’t write this shit….

I mean… in this case it seems VMP actually can’t write something. Namely ‘The Diary of Alicia Keys’ on the front of a record box set
 
Rowan said:
My replacement Alicia Keys that was sent because the first replacement had a misprint on it… has a totally different misprint on it. You honestly couldn’t write this shit….

I mean… in this case it seems VMP actually can’t write something. Namely ‘The Diary of Alicia Keys’ on the front of a record box set
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You now have two copies of a record you can't buy anywhere else.
 
Rowan said:
My replacement Alicia Keys that was sent because the first replacement had a misprint on it… has a totally different misprint on it. You honestly couldn’t write this shit….

I mean… in this case it seems VMP actually can’t write something. Namely ‘The Diary of Alicia Keys’ on the front of a record box set
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Please enjoy your copy of the “Dairy of Alex Trebek”
 
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