I like the idea if that where you could give them your discogs profile and tell that what kinds of artists you like so they send you stuff that you would enjoy. I'd consider joining a vinyl club if they offered something like that. I wouldn't want to pay $40+ a month for a membership where I wasn't interested in 90% of what they were offering and it isn't stuff I would have bought if I was going shopping at a record store.
That was VNyl and (initially) Bandbox’s stchick.
End of All Music (record store in Oxford, MS) has both a record of the month club and an option where you can send them money, tell them what genre(s) you like and they will curate/send you a box of records they select. It's been a big success for them.
is vnyl still around or did they shut down? I know people complained about them not being very good. I love discovering new artists but I don't want to be stuck with stuff that I'd only play once or twice. There are certain kinds of albums I wouldn't want to receive. I also like the mystery aspect of receiving mystery albums that you don't know what they are but the membership would have to be cheap and I'd have to like the majority of the albums I received. I wouldn't want to end up getting a bunch of dollar bin vinyl junk either. I occasionally see stuff in membership clubs that I want but not enough to get a membership. Honestly I'm just happier buying the albums that I want then paying for albums that I have no desire to listen to.
They appear to still be around. There are comments about them on r:/vinyl that sound a lot like the VMP issues.
I just don't think it's a very successful model for a Club. If they want to do it well this kind of curation is very time-intensive so you need lots of man-power or at some point an ai to do that. If you than choose individual albums you have low margins on every Album and no fancy exclusives but end up with albums that you could get cheaper elsewhere. And that's assuming they hit you with the right albums at a high percentage.
Are you familiar with VNYL? That was a similar preference where they sent people records based on “vibes” unfortunately for their customers that usually meant stuff found in the sale bins or overstock of poor selling albums.
Stories across social media that their CS is tightening on refunds or CS is very slow to respond. Some folks have had to go to their credit card companies to dispute. I wonder if there's been a run on refunds of late and that has impacted their liquidity for new requests?
Yep, I’ve seen the same, which is (1) why I asked for refunds instead of waiting these preorders out and (2) specifically asked that the refund be made to the original point of purchase. I’ve had no issues with such refunds in the past, but I was curious if they would give me trouble. The response I got was not promising!
I'm definitely willing to discover new music but there are certain genres like jazz. classical and country that I know I'm not into and probably wouldn't listen to those albums more than once. The only membership clubs that I'd be remotely interested in joining are Magnolia and Secretly. I was apart of Secretly a few years ago with a three month membership because I really wanted the new Angel Olsen and Hatchie albums and this seemed like the cheapest way to get them. At the time the membership was $60 for three months and the Angel Olsen album alone was at least $40 with shipping. The good part was I was able to make my last album the new Stella Donnelly album which I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to do that because you can only skip a month every six months and the other albums in between that didn't interest me at all. I don't mind curated albums but I don't want a membership where I don't care for the majority of the albums included and don't have a way to swap it for albums that I'm into more.
Did melody respond to you? If so that’s their AI who probably has a boilerplate response. Others on discord reported getting refunds within hours as recently as 2 days ago. Curious if they have suddenly tightened things