No 10 / 15% vinyl discounts at Acoustic Sounds or Music Direct

Well, recent Target - but 2 and get 3rd free made me purchase whole Half Speed Bob Marley collection.... looks like our local stores seeing potential in record sales....

 

Makes sense. They have the right to raise the price and we have the right to go elsewhere.

 

Am I happy about this? No. But I do understand it. Manufacturing is expensive...Quality manufacturing is even MORE so. This is speculation, but I'm guessing the profit margins aren't as good as people think. Compare Analog Productions to Music Matters. Yes, MM is a better product...but not dramatically! Now compare their pricing. MM is what? $70-80 on average? That's hefty coin. Worth it? Yes. Now look at AP. Pricing is $35 for a 33rpm and $55 for a 45rpm. That's allot of bang for your audiophile buck! This is my opinion, but at the end of the day I think AP is still a bargain. I love both...but I have allot more of AP in my collection. Food for thought.

 

I pre-ordered Neil Youngs new live album on Amazon Thursday for $8 less than Acoustic Sounds, Music Direct, etc. It was received 2 days later, in perfect condition. Free shipping with Prime. Didn't have to wait 3-4 days for it to ship and another week for Fed X. Didn't have to buy $99 of vinyl to get free shipping. Not bad.

 

I agree - the acoustic sounds 10% is assumed at this point. $34 for a tone poet without discount? Amazon has them for as low as $26? Come on! AS is great, but this rubs me the wrong way .... their success is turning to greed.... but that’s what the market will do. Hopefully they restore the discounts so I can return to a company I really appreciate.

 

AS orders are also taking so long to be fulfilled, I may bow out for a while until they’re no longer swamped. Waited a month for two in-stock records to ship, and even then I had to email them to ask what the problem was (it took a week for them to reply).

 

The problem with that is when you need certain rare record, you place the order, get all excited that is in stock and after 2 weeks, you get an email stating that it is no longer available and sold out!!! That gets me furious!!!!!

 

Customer service counts for something I think. I ordered from AS a SRV , Couldn't stand the Weather 45rpm. I inadvertently (my fault) had it sent to my old address. I got in touch with AS and they had it returned to them and re-shipped to my current address no charge.

 

Really frustrated with AS pricing and service lately. Full price on everything without even the usual 10% off and orders take FOREVER to process and ship. I placed a small order last week that still hasn't gone out. When I called, they said it will hopefully ship next week! . They say their warehouse staff is limited due to Covid, but that's the same for everyone and I don't see this sort of lag with any of the other stores I order from, even smaller shops like Plaid Room, In Groove, etc.. They are removing any incentive customers might have to choose their store, which is a bummer as I have had good experiences with them in the past.

 

I noticed more and more stuff are "Not Eligible for Additional Discount" now.

I guess the times they are a changin'.

 

Interesting. Maybe with less people working because of Covid, Acoustic Sounds had to raise their prices to cover the additional cost of the reduced labor.....

 

Interesting..I have spent over $20k Cdn since start of Covid, about 3-4 k at AS..without the discounts it is just not worth it to pay exchange and shipping..

 

Looks like no discount for Memorial Day weekend too. Same with Music Direct.

 

Jump on it while you still can!

Save 10% on Vinyl with Code LP10

 

Music Direct emailed a code for 10% of $99+ orders with some exclusions: : MEM10

 

Nearly every audiophile pressing is excluded and what’s not is either backordered/out of stock or already available on Amazon for significantly more than 10% off. This sale is almost laughable. I have 35 items on my “in-print” wish list and 27 were out of stock and 8 were excluded.

 

Welcome to the new vinyl world.

 

Wonder if acoustic sounds will follow suit on this sale

 

I'm well aware of the new reality we live in... I'm just saying it is disingenuous of Elusive Disc to hold a sale when they have excluded nearly all audiophile items and are either out of stock or already well out of market for the remaining items. I'd rather they just not do sales than a meaningless, hollow attention grab that was obviously sent out late on a Friday afternoon probably under the presumption that the principals for MD and AS had already left the building for the weekend.

 

Perhaps it was just weird timing for me but I noticed the disappearance of Acoustic Sounds' ever-present promo code at the same time that I noticed that they discontinued their partnership with (???) to offer digital music downloads. If you'll recall, the promo code applied to both in-stock physical media and seemingly any digital media. Was it just my odd timing or did these two changes actually occur at the same time, and if they did, are they related? One would think that the digital side of things would have been easy to maintain with a reduced warehouse staff. I'm with all of you, though: the physical media was more affordable and highly competitive because of the 10-15-20% discounts, but without those promo codes, Acoustic Sounds has become almost non-competitive. I'm now actually really worried about the stability of the company, not seeing any sort of Memorial Day sale.

Also, has anyone looked into what the general COVID-19-related restrictions are in the municipality of Salina, KS? I haven't but I suspect that understanding which restrictions it implemented and how it's handling them might shed a little light on how Acoustic Sounds had to react, and possibly when they might be able to go back to some semblance of normal.

Had Acoustic Sounds even just put a 10% promo code up for the weekend, I probably would've dropped a $300-500 order on them. Well, I guess there's still one day left to hope...

 

theyre selling more records than ever

 

You mean 'the place that keeps pushing back delivery dates on product that HAS been released?' THAT Amazon?

 

Though I have to say that I've never had Amazon ask me to return anything that was damaged or sent in error; they just gave me credit or a replacement, and said "keep it" with reference to anything already sent.

 

A volume based one would be my guess.
OTOH, the LITA Nancy Sinatra which HAS been released has had the release date via Amazon pushed back multiple times, for who knows what reason...

 

"Destroying customer incentive" is never good for a store, on-line or B&M.