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

hatfieldpdx said:
There was a spot on comment posted to reddit this morning: "I’m convinced at this point VMP is a social experiment designed to see how much BS customers will put up with and still purchase the product."
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It was really a self inflicted wound too. They were on a high note with the plant about to come online. Sure they were in the hole, but if they had gone all in on that they would have crawled back eventually. Eating that as a loss and having nothing in the pipe to keep the stream of customers happy and they're imploding as a result. Being a sub service they rely on the good will of customers to invest with them, and burning out all the trust they had started to earn back in 2023 is just a perfect case study on how to run a business into the ground at terminal velocity.
 
max_stacks said:
For annual subs, pretax, we’re looking at $44 a record. $4 more than Rhino High Fidelity and annual IVC. It’s common to see new releases at record stores at $40, and even Target/Walmart are rolling out $40-45 new releases. It’s not terrible just looking at that angle. Feels like they adjusted it higher so they won’t need another increase in 2025.

It will come down to curation, and it likely always has for most members. Certainly not going to take a chance on records at $44+ unless that’s immaterial to your vinyl budget.
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But the Rhinos I have are across the board AMAZING, even shit I was so so on like the Doobies. Most VMP are average. I also don’t buy shit at regular price any more.
 
TenderLovingKiller® said:
Looking back over all this, and I will say I am surprised they haven’t just pulled the plug at this point, but the turning point with all this seems to be the Record Plant, right? They were likely not in great health financially prior to the Record Plant, so they decided to throw a Hail Mary and build their own plant to hopefully cut out a big expenditure but they didn’t have enough capital to invest in plant to actually get the plant going and was instead of a savior it became a money pit that they chose to abandon. Now they are in the red and just keep cutting out chunks of the business in hopes that it will reverse their fortunes but they are bleeding out.

I just don’t see a path back to profitability. Even going back to them at their beginnings the potential for growth is now gone. There is no room for growth and in the late stage capitalism world we live in you grow or you die. My guess is they couldn’t find a buyer so they are just gonna keep going until the money is all gone.
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Unless you are one of the few privately owned companies left, you are left with private equity to rescue you and fund your shit and those guys don't like owning things that lose them money so it kind of sounds like they are SOL.
 
TenderLovingKiller® said:
Looking back over all this, and I will say I am surprised they haven’t just pulled the plug at this point, but the turning point with all this seems to be the Record Plant, right? They were likely not in great health financially prior to the Record Plant, so they decided to throw a Hail Mary and build their own plant to hopefully cut out a big expenditure but they didn’t have enough capital to invest in plant to actually get the plant going and was instead of a savior it became a money pit that they chose to abandon. Now they are in the red and just keep cutting out chunks of the business in hopes that it will reverse their fortunes but they are bleeding out.

I just don’t see a path back to profitability. Even going back to them at their beginnings the potential for growth is now gone. There is no room for growth and in the late stage capitalism world we live in you grow or you die. My guess is they couldn’t find a buyer so they are just gonna keep going until the money is all gone.
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Most of these curated clubs have bit the dust because there's no value to experienced vinyl collectors for curation, only brand new collectors seeking to start a collection. VMP's prices have moved away from new intro buyers towards collector pricing. VMP is seemingly stuck in its original vision (let us help you build a collection) while also charging top shelf prices for items available elsewhere i.e. pitching to experienced collectors.
 
Rowan said:
I can’t help but think they’ve done me a favour. I was all for resubbing but it was really against my better judgement. I think I’d constantly have been sitting around waiting for the walls to come crashing in on my £400
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Agree. I was wavering about resubscribing. The Gus Cannon insult is pretty much the last straw, but there have been many issues adding up.

Let's face reality here. VMP is on a death spiral, grasping for survival. But once in the spiral, few companies survive.

I would NOT renew for longer than 3 months. Too much risk that it goes bankrupt during the term of a longer subscription.

Any business that just dumps a significant chunk of their customers is not long for this world.

But let's review where we are with VMP.

1. A failed and ill-advised attempt to start a pressing plant that ended in litigation and losses.

2. A decline in curation. I have only 5 ROTM's in 2024, and an equal number of swaps - and I lose on every swap for store credit.

3. Declining quality. GZ pressings.

4. Firing their entire CS team and going to an automated AI customer service system that isn't terribly intelligent and doesn't respond to support tickets.

5. The Ramones swap fiasco.

6. Cancelling all international subscriptions leaving all international customers hanging. There could have been, and are, other soultions. Claiming to be putting them in stores outside the US places the burden for defective pressings on the local stores. The mather solution.

7. The clearout sales, re-subscribe giveaway offers, the discount bundles - all point to VMP becoming a close-out sale outlet. A sure tell-tale of cash flow issues.

8. Cancellation of two tracks only fairly recently added.

9. Seeming challenges in licensing. Gus Cannon? Teo? La Lupe? These are not 'lost sounds found', they aren't even 'b' titles or 'c' artists.

10. The apparent decline in resale values across VMP titles. Partly over saturation, partly due to the deep discounting over the past year, partly too many shit exclusives. Some local stores don't take in used VMP any more. Too many, they don't sell.

11. Price increases on top of price increases, making many 'exclusives' cost-prohibited compared to their widely available counterparts, and pushing the price of subscription titles well above other higher quality product in the market.

It only takes a few of these to put a company on the road to ruin. That all have taken place in short order is almost impossible to survive.

The number of smoke signals they are sending out recently shows a company that is rudderless.
 
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RHANDMJ said:
10. The apparent decline in resale values across VMP titles. Partly over saturation, partly due to the deep discounting over the past year, partly too many shit exclusives. Some local stores don't take in used VMP any more. Too many, they don't sell.
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The VMP label was derided by the last shop where I tried to get rid of a few. I gave them to my neighbor. Better on the conscience.
 
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