How often do you use Discogs?

It's becoming my first choice for hard to find items. Ebay used to be my first choice, but the prices there seem to be inflated these days and I like that I can easily narrow down specific pressings (I use it primarily for vinyl).

 

I have known of Discogs for sometime but until a couple of months ago I had never used it for any purpose. Since it has begun to become a valued resource. I've made a couple of purchases from there, found several cover artwork versions I could not find elsewhere, and use it increasingly as my go to resource for verifying or identifying versions of albums

 

I really enjoy the wish list function where the website will send you an email if a release you want pops up or price changes. I have used it for the past two years and over many transactions only has one bad experience

 

Almost every day, or at least 4 times a week or so.

 

I check it daily also. I've found it to be of great help.

 

I used it today from my phone in a shop to confirm what I had in my hands was a first pressing and not a reissue. Got so involved in checking label details and barcodes etc. that I didn't notice all the non-fill on side 1. D'0h!

 

It's a terrific site, but I have one pretty big complaint -- the site is set up to allow sellers to link to photos and descriptions elsewhere on the site, so the photos and descriptions rarely correspond to the item being offered for sale.

Before I figured this out, I had the unpleasant experience of daydreaming about the amazing LP I thought I was getting and later opening the box and finding something I had no interest in.

The example that sticks in my brain is a listing for a copy of Introducing The Beatles. The pictures showed a very rare variation: a mono sleeve with "stereo" embossed in black, and a black label stereo disc. When I opened the package, it was a bog-standard mono sleeve with a common rainbow brackets mono disc (which I already had in multiple variations, including the one sent).

The upshot is that if you care about things like label styles, you MUST ask for photos. This is a pain in the ass, because when I see something for sale at a reasonable price that I've been looking for for years, I want to buy it immediately. I don't want to wait for the seller to send me photos. Even worse, one time the seller sent me pictures confirming it was the one I was looking for but when I went to buy it he had doubled the price.

I'd love it if discogs changed its terms of use so any photos or descriptions used in a listing must show or describe the specific copy being sold.

On the other hand, I have found a few LPs that had never surfaced in literally years of obsessively checking ebay. The joy of those discoveries washes away a multitude of sins.

 

Almost daily. Great source, but as stated before user-created and therefore not really complete.

 

Almost daily

 

I use it all the time for CD catalog numbers, and dates. I find it mostly accurate. I also buy things from time to time from international sellers with great results.

 

I contribute a lot to the site, and buy a fair bit through it too.

 

45cat has one entry for a release with many label variations, whereas on Discogs you get many entries for one record, each a different pressing variation. And on Discogs, there is a requirement that on different pressing variations, deadwax info be accounted for, to go with who pressed what copy.

I am a contributor to both. In the case of Discogs, as I am neither a buyer nor seller, my contributions are more a reference guide - a roadmap, if you will - for those who do buy or sell. (Most of my Discogs contributions - surprise, surprise - are CBS Pitman pressings. Ditto at 45cat.)

 

Almost daily as a buyer and seller. I do find it confusing a lot of times when trying to add releases on an artist's page. It has almost never turns out right.

 

I use it a lot to browse and also log my collection but it's not accurate for rare records imo. Just check out Camels first album (first UK press and see that the median is like £5. I also don't trust the sellers as much on discogs because they put in very little information (+no photos) about the item that they're selling. People also list bootlegs and the wrong releases all the time when selling.

 

I use it a lot, mostly for info and cataloging but I've bought some stuff there also. Last great deal I got on there was a mint condition copy of We keep on by Embryo on cd for $8 in mint condition, usually it sells for $50 or so.

 

I use it a couple of times a month to purchase vinyl. It's great for seeking specific pressings, etc, and probably cheaper than ebay a lot of the time. I'd say you've a better chance of getting a record in decent condition but there's a lot of amateurish/muppet sellers on there.

 

More than daily. I catalog my collection there, I've updated a few reissues and variations that weren't alreasy listed, I've bought a few through them, and I reference it when posting catalog numbers on the "listenening to on vinyl" threads here.

 

I use it daily, mainly to keep track of my collection. I also maintain a Want List that I use Crate Digger to access via my phone, so when I blank out at shopping through a zillion records at a record show I can remember what I'm looking for. And I've had much better experience buying records on Discogs than eBay. Despite not having photos of the actual item for sale, all of the Discogs sellers I've bought from have been much more accurate in grading than what I've gotten on eBay. For me, this is pretty much the gold standard for record grading:
http://www.discogs.com/help/mp-grading.html

 

Multiple times during the day! Gotta check that wantlist frequently to get good deals!

 

I've gotten my wantlist emails at night before, and by the morning everything I wanted was sold. Doh! If you do want something (at a good price) you do have to be quick.

 

I use it a lot, especially after reading up on Amazon's treatment of temp workers.

My favorite band bio on Discogs has to be the Violent Femmes'. Pure laugh put loud yuks.

 

I posted in another thread how based on recent bad experiences with Discog sellers (typically items not as described) I am no longer buying records sight unseen unless it is someone I really trust (like some of the sellers here.) Prior to these recent transactions, I had a flawless experience with both Discogs and Gemm and used them on average about 1X per month, 4-5 Lp's.

 

It is a very useful resource, although being user generated, there are a lot of errors. There are also a lot entries about companies and facilities that are simply wrong -based on observation, rather than facts or actual history. i.e. a logical conclusions that are still not correct. So you get the good with the bad.

For the most, part, an invaluable tool.

 

i use discogs just about every day when i'm looking up the release history of any given album or tracking down used records.

 

Not to mention, with repress/reissues of Columbia LP's, wrong info on years in relation to the variant of the '360 Sound Stereo' 2-eye labels, i.e. a pressing of Simon & Garfunkel's Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. from 1970 (with the 2-eyes, but newer typesetting for the top, left and right label copy text) misdated as 1965. And many other such pressings where something misdated 1965 was actually pressed between 1968 and 1970 (given away not only by the label design variant, but also the absence of "NONBREAKABLE" from the label copy text of back-catalogue releases originally issued prior to late 1966/early '67).