Numero Group - Dropping CDs & Huge CD sale

When they had to refund me last time it was went smoothly. They'll let you know before they ship it out in case you want to swap it with something else (they did last time anyway) so you'll know ahead of time.

 

Yes definitely. Or if USPS is used to picking up 10-12 boxes and all of a sudden they show up and there are 50-60 boxes...

 

Or somebody has to make a trip to the post office to drop them off. I'm not trying to be an apologist but when I visited there to pick up Vickie's copies of Ectrophia there was one person in the mailroom, one person in the warehouse and one person upstairs. This is a tiny little business.

 

lol. Will do.

I realised yesterday that despite the great prices, once I add shipping costs to Canada and convert to Canadian dollars, the deal isn't really that great of a deal. On 12 items I'm paying at local retail for 6 of them. The others show savings of up to $5 so still some savings. But not really the huge bonanza like it might be for those in America, especially since with a little patience I could find many for less than current retail, which would diminish any savings.

So I don't really want to spend too much time dealing with this non shipping issue. I figure giving them to Friday is fair game before I cancel my order. If I was saving a lot more money I'd probably stick it out, but as it is, it's not a big deal saver for me so I'm not that fussed. I can stream all this stuff on Spotify anyway which will tide me over till I find it locally for a good price. At the last couple of record fairs I picked up a couple of LP sets and a couple of the Eccentric Soul series on CD for cheap.

 

My order hit my front porch this morning. Received everything I ordered. Some of the discs appear to have been returns form stores as they had price stickers on them( Some priced well below the $6 per disc price.) I put my order in on 7/29. I sent a message last week and they replied that there only 2 people working the entire operation. So, if you're still waiting for your order please realize these guys must be busting it t get this stuff out to us as well as work the normal day to day. All in all happy with my haul.

 

Your experience with the price tags makes my “returns might still be forthcoming” theory above sound even more credible!

 

Here's the shots I took when I visited Numero:






Again, not to be an apologist, but Universal Music Group this ain't.

 

Got my order today, or should I say most of it. Everything is listed as having shipped on the site, but the package that came today had 12 of the 16 titles I ordered, and only 12 were on the invoice. Going to assume the others shipped separately.

 

I wouldn't necessarily assume that. The same thing happened to me after the last big sale they had (order arrived incomplete, but showed all titles shipped on the site), and I had to send them an email to find out that they'd oversold some titles. They offered me a store credit or a refund, and I opted for the refund.

 

I'll email and ask.

 

Point of reference on shipping situation when checking my shipping tracking number:
"A shipping label has been prepared for your item at 4:xx pm on August 13, 2019 in CHICAGO, IL 60623. This does not indicate receipt by the USPS or the actual mailing date. "
As of one minute ago, the above message from USPS. Maybe the USPS truck got broke down or only pickups every other day. Maybe USPS will pickup today, 8/15?

 

Pretty cool they let you take photos. I've always wanted to hit up their warehouse but the one time I was in Chicago I didn't get the chance.

 

My wife Vickie was interviewed for the booklet for the Happy Rhodes collection
Ectotrophia, so when they announced it was available, I made the trip to their offices to get her copies - (because that's what loving husbands do.) So while I was hanging around, I asked the guy in the mailing room if I could take a couple of snapshots.

 

I totally get that they are a small operation and I'm willing to give them plenty of slack, believe me. I haven't even sent a single email to bug them just yet.

On the other hand, I placed an order with another Chicago small label with a tiny footprint (Drag City) on Friday. Got my shipping notice on Monday and my discs showed up yesterday. Granted, it wasn't part of a huge sale, but that's a far cry from going on two weeks plus without any update at all, while others that ordered after me already have their items.

 

They finally replied and told me it was ready for shipping and should be picked up today. I checked my account and although no tracking info it has been update to reflect that it is getting shipped.

They did mention in their reply to me that orders are filled as stock is ready (as another member was also told) but I'm not really sure what they mean by that. Maybe they're waiting for stock to come back from stores or something?

 

That's probably the case.

While you're waiting, I recommend this really excellent article from NPR in 2017 where they interviewed the heads of Numero:

"Our business is changing away from being a record company to being a copyright company, which is kind of ugly," Shipley said. From primary to secondary. "But: You make these records, they're really beautiful, and the record audience is actually really minimal. I don't care who you talk to" — here he named four other pre-eminent "reissue" labels — "Light in the Attic, Ace, Rhino, Now Again. Physical business is not the business any more, it can't survive on selling CDs and LPs. It's not a sustainable way of thinking about copyrights. The sustainable way is to figure out: One, how can you get something to stream as many times as possible? Two, how can you put it in a film, television show, or advertisement? Those are the two avenues for historical music that are available to finance it."

They hope that the '60s Girl Group playlist they made for Spotify, full of obscurities, called "Basement Beehive," will become more widely listened to than the mainstream-oriented one created by Spotify. (It's making gains. It could happen.)

Actively reframing the past is another way. Shipley and Sevier, who are putting their fingerprints on currents in music of the past that did not have a name or genre: "Kid Soul" (little-known Motown-era bands with pre-adolescent singers), "Black Vietnam" (war-haunted '70s soul and funk). They're taking many approaches: national-library, garage-cult, critical reframing and playlisting. They are sharing minute obsessions for fun, because obsession is fun, and it is communicable. But they are also challenging theories of relevance.

"We're reframing in a way that corrects for hits," Sevier told me. "Look at what the history of popular music is at any given point. What's focused on are the hits. We're getting into what happened at the time and creating a restructured version that just looks at what happened in the scene, but doesn't have anything to do with hits. Isn't interested in it." The restructured version doesn't just rule out big, dumb pop music; it might rule out B. B. King, too. But their theory is still legitimate. The American imagination, and American media, can stand to devote more time considering what was not made successful by the usual commercial forces.

 

Respectfully, sending them an e-mail to find out if they're actually going to send you what you paid for isn't "bugging" them. If you shell out, you have rights and reasonable expectations. Whether it's a company of 5 or 5,000 employees, if a business makes a promise, they should follow through on that promise.

 

It is true that those buying physical media is becoming a tiny fraction of the "business" part of the record business. Sad, but true. I hope that the Numero guys can make some actual money through licensing and streaming. That way, they can survive and keep putting out these cool collections of interesting, discarded music from the past.

 

Hopefully they're going beyond just licensing and becoming basically music consultants. One of the things people have been praising Once Upon a Time in Hollywood for is not having the same 10 songs that are in every movie set in the 70s.

 

Numero is a small shop and I think they and their system can get overwhelmed when they have a sale.

During the last sale, I put in an order and was thereafter informed that a certain CD was not available despite my online order going thru' without hiccups. I then opted to replace the unavailable album with another. The processing was a bit slow but after some email exchanges, the purchase was delivered a few weeks later. Everything was in order including the replacement CD. Then shortly thereafter, another box was delivered, this time with the full original order complete with the CD that was 'sold out' earlier.

I cut them a bit of slack. They could do a lot better on their physical order processing but they are probably operating on a shoestring budget, so they get snowed under when they run a big sales promotion. I hope they survive fine.

 

Interesting. One of my two orders arrived today, and the point of origin on the USPS tracking history is Ann Arbor, MI.

 

Well, Elvis Costello tried once when "Momofuku"first came out. Obviously, it didn't work that way. I love my CDs

 

It's one thing that does annoy me a bit; the use of the typical songs in movies or tv. I think Numero will still be selling physical releases but they'll be taking less risks. I get the feeling they'll be trialing things on streaming first in a lot of cases. I don't think they'll be exclusively a licensing company but it will be an important part of their revenue.

One thing I like about Numero is that it gives me a chance to delve into the genres I like but that I've sort of worn out with the usual suspects. In addition, unlike some of the other rare soul albums out there, Numero releases are far more affordable. Some of the records I'd like to get are in the hundreds and it doesn't always correlate with how much I like the album either.

 

Thank f**k! I hate Universal now.

 

You really think so? One of the things I like so much about streaming is that it's infinite. No physical stock, no shipping, no returns. as long as they can produce a file and upload it onto a server, there's no limit to how many collections they make.

If they can shift into streaming and licensing, they can continue to do what they do so well - finding overlooked musicians and genres and placing each into context.