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

MikeH said:
the capping thing is interesting because i bet the way they use the shopify software doesn't allow them to do it. But there has to be some way for them to get an auto notice to trigger, even if manually, to put the tracks on standby.

from what i've seen, they essentially have a bucket that's for swaps, a bucket for subs and a bucket for add-ons. the inventory for all 3 has to add up to the total they have, but they cant limit, say swaps to 2,000, mains to 8,000 and add-ons to 2,000 as those numbers can greatly fluctuate. i imagine there has to be some better system though. not a shock that their site doesn't account for it.


from what i saw, they are going back and doing this now and the process wasn't automatic. some people, rightfully, just wanted to get it squared away straight away.
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I don’t need you to use their Shopify excuse for them. 😜
 
MikeH said:
We ordered similar amounts of Ramones to what we ordered for Black Moses, Joni Mitchell, and DMX.
Based on the announce reaction (people complained about 2 Ramones, milquetoast boilerplate about "Lost Sounds Found") , we assumed that'd be fine. Given how many Joni, DMX and Isaac we have on hand now, we especially thought we were fine

Swap out rate for Ramones was near historic lows for Essentials. Something like 1/4 of as many people who swapped OUT of DMX and Joni swapped out of Ramones

Swap IN rates (ie people swapping from Rock, Classics or another track into Ramones) were sky high compared to past months.

Which lead to us being oversold.

So instead of it being a lottery for who will or will not get a copy, we made a tough decision

We decided to prioritize people who were subscribed to Essentials as the priority.

So, if you swapped into Ramones, we needed to remove that. Which is what we said in the email.

It's less than ideal, but it's the only choice we needed to make: Essentials members get the priority over people who swapped into it. We also swapped anyone who was on a free promo subscription to Too Tough to Die, because we prioritized only PAYING Essentials members

Basically, it was a shit decision that we were forced to make. We want everyone to get the record they love, but it's not an infinite inventory pool.

There will be no repress (google the Ramones and see why)
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Transparency!
 
MikeH said:
at a certain point, if shopify doesn't do half the shit they want, then maybe its time to uh not use shopify??
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I have never encountered another vendor who blames as much shit on Shopify as them. Yeah, it sucks. But it is widely used and they are the only people that can’t seem to get PayPal running, so I go back to that instagram post above and say maybe they just don’t know how computers work.

I am just as likely to think it is their current scapegoat as they are also scapegoating going international with their temp cs team… wasn’t a problem except at holidays over the last couple of years so maybe something else is up - like a revamp of how they handle cs but that’s my tinfoil hat talking.

Storf’s answer is telling though. They play a game that is always gonna bite them in the ass. You shouldn’t be forecasting on people swapping the sub away. If you are then you are doing yourself a disservice that also goes against their whole fomo mindset.

Certainly you should press more if you think an album is gonna be a huge seller but it shouldn’t fundamentally change the way a cap would work.

If you have 20000 subs. You should always have 20000 copies on hand. If you are forecasting that you are gonna have 5000 swap that title away… maybe don’t do that record? So you decide whatever % you want for replacements and whatever % you will generally have for swaps. You can play with that last one if you think it’s gonna sell well.

Hell having the damn thing put you on a wait list every once in a while is good for them. It builds the fomo model they so cherish.

As a side, imagine they start this whole swap sub and kick people off of that or auto pick another album for them.

The solution doesn’t make sense and the “we’ve done everything but fix it” since it happened the first time is just what they do.

I also think it is interesting, even if the logic is sound, that they nuked the runaway most active thread in the discord following this.
 
I've equal amounts of sympathy and increduity on this. Firstly their modelling isn't always going to be perfect and the order seems justifiable but why can't they buy a system that stops people from swapping when they hit their stock level. Allthat had to happen is when an allocated number was hit people were prevented from swapping.... and I get that people may have been swapping out too and that would have potentially led to them having excess that needed to go up later but surely coming out with 'more people have released the records so we can open a few extra copies up to swaps is better than 'you can't have the record we told you you could have'.

I think the issue that something sold out is just the way it is. I think the way they tried to deal with it with a sweep bonus and a few choice extra options is a reasonable offer. I think the fact they let themselves get there in the first place is total madness.
 
Not sure if VMP has acknowledged it, but sure seems like this is clearly a consequence of consolidating tracks coupled with a likely reduction in pressing quantities to help move away from the warehousing bottleneck that recently led to a "re-boot" of their wholesale program. While it was always going to be tricky to navigate this transition, they seem to have dropped the ball in epic fashion. Again.
 
hatfieldpdx said:
Not sure if VMP has acknowledged it, but sure seems like this is clearly a consequence of consolidating tracks coupled with a likely reduction in pressing quantities to help move away from the warehousing bottleneck that recently led to a "re-boot" of their wholesale program. While it was always going to be tricky to navigate this transition, they seem to have dropped the ball in epic fashion. Again.
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The tracks haven’t reduced yet though. Next month. Country and rock were still in play.
 
hatfieldpdx said:
Interesting. I haven't been a member in ages, gratefully, and have only been following the headline news. Still likely they reduced pressing numbers, no?
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I reckon they just had really poor Rock and Country picks so everyone bailed and went to essentials (and classics which also looks sold out). Basically just didn't plan for the exodus that some piss poor curation inspired
 
Just checked the discord, to get more of a flavor. Storf is suggesting that they have been making business decisions based on "response", or reaction to various picks, when the reality is that they are primarily (only?) listening to the tiny sample size of VMP worshippers hanging out in the discord. A situation that they created with intention, I might add. Hard not to shake your head.
 
hatfieldpdx said:
Just checked the discord, to get more of a flavor. Storf is suggesting that they have been making business decisions based on "response", when the reality is that they are primarily listening to the tiny sample size of VMP worshippers hanging out in the discord. A situation that they created with intention, I might add. Hard not to shake your head.
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They're the Donald Trump of record clubs. 99% spin and gold foil.
 
Rowan said:
I reckon they just had really poor Rock and Country picks so everyone bailed and went to essentials (and classics which also looks sold out). Basically just didn't plan for the exodus that some piss poor curation inspired
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I don’t know that Nickel Creek was poor curation. Just didn’t make any sense given the fact that there was a high quality audiophile version available. They had the nonesuch thing going, Dotted Line needs a repress….
 
Funny story here.
I had some store credits that I wanted to use before my sub ends at the end of the month. So since there was a B2G1free campaign I decided to buy a couple records. Instead of adding the three to my cart (which means 2x$36 + 20% VAT). I added only two, used my credits and paid the remaining with my CC (with the 20% applied on the remaining only).
Then I sent an email right after explaining the situation and asking to add a third record, free, to this order.
Believe me or not but they already shipped the two records I purchased on Sunday and no sign of any free record 😂😂😂
 
Ghost said:
I mean, this doesn't seem to be THAT egregious. Their logic feels sound to me in terms of prioritizing who does and doesn't get the record. Should they/could they have made better forecasts around the demand, yeah that's **probably** an oopsies but I also don't know what actual data they have to justify pressing a bunch more of a particular record versus past months.
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Their logic seems sound if they were new to this business model. There are several pretty obvious red flags they should have accounted for, like lame other tracks, the fact that people that were bummed about two Ramones titles were not likely bummed about Rocket To Russia, and the fact that the past three LP essential titles underperformed meant there were even fewer desirable swaptions.
 
Someone on Discord brought up that there was an office hours on Thursday with Paulie and Storf before this news broke.

This could have been a good time to get ahead of the mess, take a bullet and give us the game plan.

However, Storf reacted and said they didn't know about this issue yet, which I find hard to believe considering the office hours ended at 1pm ET and the first $15 swaption email came exactly 2.5 hours later.

No way they discovered this issue, got direction, and built a new email in sub 2.5 hours.
 
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