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

btf1980 said:
Skip this one and get the longstanding Pure Pleasure pressing that was pressed at Pallas. I’ve had it for over 15 years and it’s still in print.

www.theingroove.com

Max Roach - We Insist - Freedom Now Suite - Pure Pleasure LP

'This is a classic. At a time when the civil rights movement was starting to heat up, drummer Max Roach performed and recorded a seven-part suite dealing with black history (particularly slavery) and racism. 'Driva' Man' has a powerful statement by veteran tenor Coleman Hawkins and there is...
www.theingroove.com www.theingroove.com
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This one mono or stereo?
 
Nee Lewman said:
The fact that the first drop is for April makes me think @duke86fan is 💯
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This new “system” has been in the works for months at least. It’s likely why they tested the “free” add on to send something that wasn’t in your order history. They did bundles in swaps months ago as well. Those all seemed like pilot programs for what VMP is now. I don’t think they woke up a week ago and went “shit….we don’t have any ROTMs to ship out in a few weeks!”

Or who knows, maybe they did 😂
 
grendel627 said:
I was going to say that. That pressing is mastered by Bernie Grundman and actually sounds pretty good if you get a decent copy. Whoever presses those Candid issues is pretty unreliable. I think every one I've received has been warped and required my pulling out the Vinyl Flat. Once I get 'em flat, they're not bad. And because the pressing quality is inconsistent, they're available for pretty cheap at a lot of places. I think Acoustic Sounds has this one and a few others for less than $15. Can't imagine paying $49 for this.
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I ended up grabbing the VMP for $39 shipped (and used all credit). I was fine to pay that. They do a nice job on most of the classics stuff. $49 plus their $10 shipping for non-members? Fuckouttahere. Gave up on that cheap Candid series. Every copy I got was noisy and warped across different titles.

From what I gathered in the VMP discord/the 5 min I tuned into Paulie talking (and this is my inferring from what was said)…VMP finds it nearly impossible to predict how many copies of each album to press for ROTM with how many subscribers they have. They don’t want Rocket To Russia to happen again and they also don’t want Torres. IMO what they are doing (once you can make sense of it) makes sense for their business. It just doesn’t make sense for customers, especially ones who have been around for awhile.

I really could eventually see them becoming just another reissue label, getting rid of subs altogether and still doing their Crate membership bullshit.

I did add a question for their Q&A that’s happening Friday I think. Asked if they will move these exclusives to a better plant (RTI, Gotta Groove, Furnace, etc). Their reasoning in the past to not do that for ROTMs was they were told that those plants didn’t have the bandwidth or couldn’t meet the monthly quantities and deadlines VMP needed. But now that these exclusives aren’t monthly, why can’t they go to better plants? Will be curious to see what they say…
 
Nee Lewman said:
Pauly said it will remain in place and said he will fight to keep it in place. I believe the company’s intent is to do away with swapping for credit. As to when that will happen, who knows. Pauly has actively told people swapping for credit would be a good option for how those customers view the change. However, he has also told people that he thinks crate is the best option for a large portion of current membership.

I personally believe that opening up multiple avenues of swap was always an issue that lead to inventory management problems. These may never have been untenable for the company; but the large sink of money into the plant, and I still have a hard time believing that it was always a separate entity, with no return brought all of their issues to a head.
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Pauly told people that crate is the best option for many people because he wasn’t gonna say that unsubscribing is REALLY the best option for people ha

Also my reading was that the company doesn’t wanna do away with swap for credit either. It didn’t even seem like those convos had come up. Swap for credit is a goldmine for them. They get money and don’t have to ship anything out 😂😂
 
MikeH said:
This new “system” has been in the works for months at least. It’s likely why they tested the “free” add on to send something that wasn’t in your order history. They did bundles in swaps months ago as well. Those all seemed like pilot programs for what VMP is now. I don’t think they woke up a week ago and went “shit….we don’t have any ROTMs to ship out in a few weeks!”

Or who knows, maybe they did 😂
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I mean the timing is fishy. They suddenly say they have a big change coming in January after only announcing the first record of Q1. Then when they make the announcement it turns out there isn’t a record for February.
 
Nee Lewman said:
I’m not agreeing with him. I see no benefit in that plan, it will always be cheaper to be a member because you get records and a bigger discount. But I think giving them anymore than a month’s worth of money at this point is a poor financial decision and. Giving them free money is a worse decision.
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If you’re a member on a longer sub (and for some reason don’t ask for a refund) I think the move might be to swap for credit and then keep rolling it over on one month subs or use it to buy the store exclusives. It’s basically a free/cheap crate membership
 
Nee Lewman said:
I mean the timing is fishy. They suddenly say they have a big change coming in January after only announcing the first record of Q1. Then when they make the announcement it turns out there isn’t a record for February.
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Eh I don’t think it’s all that fishy. They knew the change was coming. They weren’t gonna announce that 3 months in advance. They likely realized that with the delays and financial issues that all this stuff was untenable to keep monthly ROTMs going on 3 tracks.

So I’d bet they probably chose the album they had licensed already that would sell best to launch this “new experience”
 
MikeH said:
Eh I don’t think it’s all that fishy. They knew the change was coming. They weren’t gonna announce that 3 months in advance. They likely realized that with the delays and financial issues that all this stuff was untenable to keep monthly ROTMs going on 3 tracks.

So I’d bet they probably chose the album they had licensed already that would sell best to launch this “new experience”
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Dude. If it had been planned well (I’m not necessarily saying they forgot), they would have announced the plan instead of a record. It would have made more sense to announce it when there was a full slate instead of causing another big uproar and then classics being 3 MONTHS off from being available for the plan and the first one issued.

As to Rocket to Russia and stuff. I’ve said my piece. Allowing swaps on add ons was a bad idea when they announced it. Quickest way to shore everything up was to do away with that bad practice. Just because customers like something doesn’t mean it’s a good business idea.

They are an unserious business doing unserious things.
 
Nee Lewman said:
Dude. If it had been planned well (I’m not necessarily saying they forgot), they would have announced the plan instead of a record. It would have made more sense to announce it when there was a full slate instead of causing another big uproar and then classics being 3 MONTHS off from being available for the plan and the first one issued.

As to Rocket to Russia and stuff. I’ve said my piece. Allowing swaps on add ons was a bad idea when they announced it. Quickest way to shore everything up was to do away with that bad practice. Just because customers like something doesn’t mean it’s a good business idea.

They are an unserious business doing unserious things.
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But the issue is that there IS no full slate right now. Which is why they are not doing ROTMs anymore haha. Supposedly they will try to announce 2-3 true exclusives each month as preorders and hope to make it eventually so they are in stock to order instead of preorder.

I never said it was a good plan. As others said, if you need that gigantic wall of text to explain what the new "experience" is and it STILL doesn't make sense after reading it twice... then maybe its not a good plan.

I agree that adding swaps on add-ons was a bad idea for them as a business. They kept adding more and more factors to make inventory and orders hard to manage. There is so much about their business and how it is run that makes no sense. Don't get me started about how bad the website is and how its held together by bandaids and spreadsheets that have to be manually updated.
 
Nee Lewman said:
That’s what I was saying all along. The timing is suspect. They ran out of ROTM ready to go. Shut can we make this new plan work next week? I don’t know. Fuck. What do we do? Announce January and let’s beta test and pray.
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Wouldn't be shocked if some titles got pulled from them for not paying the labels or they were worried they wouldn't sell and stopped production. The titles were licensed already for Jan/Feb/March. The hints were in the mag and titles were confirmed by staff on discord.

I just don't think this was a spur of the moment decision for them. The beta testing was done months ago to set all this up. I bet they reached a point where they decided that they just can't afford to press the ROTM quantities they were doing for even 3 tracks anymore and didn't have much of a financial runway so they axed the ROTMs they had planned with big runs and pivoted.

Those 12 month subs with 8 bonus records all ran out by now and I'd be they were hoping more people would stick around. But with all the issues lately, I bet the large majority of those jumped ship.

The bigger problem is that they have alienated long term subscribers. Even some of the most loyal VMP stans on the discord won't re-sub. They've catered to newer subscribers with this new plan (pick up our back catalogue instead of a new ROTM). But the newer subscribers are all having a shit time with the service with the delays for preorders and fulfillment. my money is on them just becoming a reissue label and doing away with subs altogether by later this year if they make it that far.

Goes without saying, but I wouldn't invest any kind of real long-term money with them. I'm gonna burn the rest of my credit hopefully soon, or keep a sub and just roll it over with swap for credit each month. I'm just playing with house money now.
 
MikeH said:
If you’re a member on a longer sub (and for some reason don’t ask for a refund) I think the move might be to swap for credit and then keep rolling it over on one month subs or use it to buy the store exclusives. It’s basically a free/cheap crate membership
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I missed this nugget in the FAQs, "if you wish to cancel your membership and get a pro-rated refund (either for store credit or back to your original payment method)"

I thought cancellations could only be issued as store credit.
 
mucusoffmybrain said:
I missed this nugget in the FAQs, "if you wish to cancel your membership and get a pro-rated refund (either for store credit or back to your original payment method)"

I thought cancellations could only be issued as store credit.
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I believe you only have until some time in early February to do this. I don't think they will refund cash if you use store/member credit of course.

If i was an international member, it would be a no-brainer to get a refund. If for some reason I just resubbed for a year as a domestic subscriber, I'd get my money back. Then maybe use the Creem deal and JOINTHECLUB20 to get 20% off a shorter sub and 3 free back catalogue records and roll over my sub to credit each month to keep a membership in case something popped up that i wanted.

Or....there are plenty of other cool subscription services out there to support that do cool releases, get stuff out on time and have some great and interesting music for cheaper. Shoutout Mississippi Records subscription and Tipitinas.
 
mucusoffmybrain said:
I missed this nugget in the FAQs, "if you wish to cancel your membership and get a pro-rated refund (either for store credit or back to your original payment method)"

I thought cancellations could only be issued as store credit.
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Given the change in terms of the subscription, they pretty much have to offer a refund since this is not what you signed up for or what they promised when you paid them. They give a date so they can say that silence as of that date in February implies consent with the changes. I think it is a no-brainer for everyone to seek a refund at this point.

This has restructuring/bankruptcy written all over it. Just look at the bandbox saga.
 
MikeH said:
Also my reading was that the company doesn’t wanna do away with swap for credit either. It didn’t even seem like those convos had come up. Swap for credit is a goldmine for them. They get money and don’t have to ship anything out 😂😂
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I would think the swap for credit is a liability. Look at all of these folks with hundreds in unusable credits (nothing worth buying) sitting around bitching now. If VMP folds, there's going to be legal fights for that credit to be refunded i.e. debt. If VMP is stuck unable to fulfill existing orders due to a lack of cash flow, but they owe people either product or cash back, that's a problem. Credits are money paid up front i.e. loaned to VMP without fulfillment if unused.

If you "close the loop" with each customer transaction- they either buy something by choice, VMP picks something for the customer, or you don't buy anything--then you don't have these piles of credit, it's cleaner if they are forced to close. Also easier to deal with Shopify and accounting-wise, rather than tracking all these credits year over year.

I am surprised they haven't had limits around credit, such as it must be used by end of each year or if they could, they'll refund it.
 
stpaulbrowns said:
All this VMP doomer discourse has me wonderin' ...

How many of us former VMPers who joined Needles & Grooves after they shuttered the discussion board ever thought N&G would outlive VMP?

What VMP album will get your first spin after they fold?

I'll probably start with Fiona Apple - Tidal (followed by the Blue Note Anthology)
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I figured this forum would last longer than VMP, but to watch VMP crash and burn like they have has been the surprise. They never ran an efficient business but man they truly turned out to be inept as they continued to grow. I'm shocked how many people here still give them a single solitary dollar knowing what we've all known for well over a year now. I'll spin Ready to Die when they make the announcement that they are shutting down officially since that title is fitting.
 
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