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

TenderLovingKiller® said:
I just pulled my VMP exclusive of Dan Deacan’s Spiderman Of The Rings off the self yesterday for the first time in an while and it reminded me what VMP could do when things were rolling. Great jacket with lots of sharp details the albums sounds great too. It’s such a a nice package and one they you could pick up as a swaption for under $30. They have always had random issues of varying degrees but when they do an album right they really did fill a nice hole in the industry.
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No doubt, they had some nice wins over their history.

in the end, I think this has been an example of the pitfalls of rapid company growth under a leadership team not experienced enough to handle it. That ultimately falls on their board and investors for allowing that to happen.
 
Biscuit said:
No doubt, they had some nice wins over their history.

in the end, I think this has been an example of the pitfalls of rapid company growth under a leadership team not experienced enough to handle it. That ultimately falls on their board and investors for allowing that to happen.
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Yeah, once they finally go belly up and the vitriol has melted away I think collectors will miss em and several of their releases will be the definitive version in the media.
 
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I make no bones about the fact that I will miss them. For a time they were doing the best presses of a lot of titles for the most reasonable prices, with by far the best jackets, were actually listing the pressing info that at the time NO ONE did, and actually sought out good engineers to do the work and prior to GZ actually got good plants to press a lot of their stuff. I will miss that.
 
Mather said:
I make no bones about the fact that I will miss them. For a time they were doing the best presses of a lot of titles for the most reasonable prices, with by far the best jackets, were actually listing the pressing info that at the time NO ONE did, and actually sought out good engineers to do the work and prior to GZ actually got good plants to press a lot of their stuff. I will miss that.
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i agree with all of this.

in hindsight, a lot of their early work feels like a fever dream in this hobby because they were seemingly doing a lot of things right in an accessible manner that wasn't always there in the audiophile world. my subscription finally lapsed last month and outside of a year after that big price hike during the pandemic, I was mostly a member from Donuts onward. the vibes are just really bad and there's no way the non-monetary costs of dealing with them coupled with the once again increased monetary cost of doing business with them are worth the hassle. i really do hope they pull out of all of this for the better, because I think they really do have some passionate, good people working behind the scenes, but the realist in me knows this feels eerily like a lot of other businesses i've been a fan of that are no longer around.
 
Mather said:
I make no bones about the fact that I will miss them. For a time they were doing the best presses of a lot of titles for the most reasonable prices, with by far the best jackets, were actually listing the pressing info that at the time NO ONE did, and actually sought out good engineers to do the work and prior to GZ actually got good plants to press a lot of their stuff. I will miss that.
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Prior to GZ, I mean Odeley was pressed there! 😜
 
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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Three Feet High and Rising for sure, that was a huge surprise to get pressed.

Edited to add since I just put it on. Maybe Go For Your Guns. So good.

I definitely lost interest in them after the whole message board fiasco that brought us here.
 
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stpaulbrowns said:
What VMP album will get your first spin after they fold?
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Flying Lotus -  Cosmogramma. The record I started my 12 month with in '19.

If VMP were run by competent people who understood how to price competitively, scale accordingly, maintain a website with inventory system that functions half-decent, not be so reliant on FOMO, and staff that knew how to engage in communication with their customers and take criticism, they would be printing money forever. Even with the vinyl plant blunder.
 
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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Miles Davis-Sorcerer. It was my first ROTM after my wife bought me a subscription for Christmas in December 2017. I'll miss that plucky little company I loved supporting. I don't have as many hard feelings about them. They introduced me to a lot of artists I otherwise wouldn't have looked at or previously passed over like MF DOOM, Mitski, Blossom Dearie, and Noname. I'm still upset that I didn't buy the Special Herbs box set they were selling. I got more into Blue Note records and Stax because of Storf's curation. It wasn't all bad. I just realized one day I had too many records and it was the easiest source to cut out.
 
Biscuit said:
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.
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Any litigation on credits is going nowhere real fast. As already mentioned, unsecured creditors will be last in line for assets and the least of which are those with outstanding VMP bux. You’re right that VMP bux is essentially a loan, but it’s a loan with nothing securing it and essentially at zero interest.
 
I'll spin Daniel Norgren's Skogens Frukter, the release of which led me to VMP for the first time in early 2017.

Scanning discogs, I have 125 VMP exclusives in the collection. All killer, no filler as the saying goes, though I have sold off and PIF'd some that were bought due to FOMO. I finally quit my on and off membership for good in 2023, though I have found a few 2024 releases from other sources.

In the end, they just couldn't seem to get out of their own way, but it was a damn good run for a while there.
 
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