My box of all 4 ROTM is still listed as In Transit, Arriving Late. I filed a find mail with local post office and they said last scan was in Virginia and since its media mail it could take a long time. I was like yeah i buy and sell a lot with media mail but this is ridiculous. last scan i can actually see is leaving greensboro on sept 8
Just spun 36 Chambers… Only got a chance to spin disc 1 and it sounds excellent! Very happy with this one! Only pressing issue is a slight edge warp that doesn’t effect play. Will spin disc 2 after work tonight. Also got the Lee Morgan title of the month. Should be a great one as well!
The Vinyl Flat never worked for me. It either did nothing or ruined records. After a handful of bad experiences and having followed their guidelines followed by the ones listed by members here, I concluded it wasn't worth the trouble and sold it at a slight loss; no regrets whatsoever and it has never been missed.
At the risk of derailing...how long ago was your bad experience? I'm skittish still about getting one based on older stories, but I think the results have improved with recent models.
Well as usual, todays TBT was stupid and everything sold out before could even check out. Wanted Eddie Gale and Lateef
Sat at my computer this morning at the exact moment I got the TBT email and was somehow able to grab Lateef.
Man VMP is so frustrating. 90% of their stuff I can do without, but the other 10% goes in minutes. Not a great business model IMO
And how exactly are they supposed to tailor their releases exactly to your 10% niche interests without alienating the other 90% of their customer base? I couldn’t care less about the Wu-Tang Clan, but many other people do, and I get and respect that. Good for them that VMP is putting out a rap album I personally care nothing about. I focus on the country track and the jazz/soul releases that interest me, but I get that their record of the month club isn’t catering solely to me and my idiosyncratic interests.
Instead of trickling out the desirable albums in some BS “throwback Thursday” fashion, repress enough to meet demand for more than a few minutes? It’s a novel idea in the current market to actually have the albums you’re reissuing for sale, I know. It’s all about manufactured scarcity and capitalizing on FOMO. Then all the copies go to flippers every single time.
When people report receiving theirs, I'm going to email VMP and tell them mine is damaged. Hopefully they'll send me a new one even though I didn't get to order one. Amirite?
So tired of this discussion, but, if VMP or any other record company could repress every album in their back catalog instantly whenever they wanted, Wilco’s Kicking Television wouldn’t be going for $300 on Discogs, because you could buy new copies of it from the dBpm records online store. Yesterday I bought a used record from my local indie shop, after which I chatted with the owner for a few minutes about the upcoming Black Friday Record Store Day list, which was just revealed. I noted that it seemed like kind of a small list compared to past years, to which he replied, “It is, but no one can get space at the pressing plants.” He is working on an indie vinyl release with a local indie artist, and he told me that, if he submits a finished master today to the pressing plant they use, the record will not be pressed until July of 2022. That’s how backed up the pressing plants are. That’s the lead time he’s working with to get his vinyl project out. Sturgill Simpson’s new album came out on streaming and CD last month, and isn’t coming out on vinyl until December. VMP can’t just magically wave Harry Potter’s wand and repress every back catalog title you wish they would repress, while still pumping out thousands and thousands of copies of new Records of the Month in each of their four tracks. And when they scrounge up some unsold copies of back catalog from their warehouse and put them online to give at least 20 people a chance to beat the flippers, they get crucified for that, too. It’s whatever. Sorry the world doesn’t cater exactly to your every wish.
well if they only have 20 copies of something, they shouldnt be pushing out an email to 80,000 customers that they have these titles back in stock when they clearly dont.
If you don’t like VMP or the records they put out, and, on top of that, think they are catering to flippers, why are you hanging out on the VMP thread whining about not being able to get copies of their records?
Who knows whether they have 20 or 200 copies of these warehouse finds? They clearly don’t have thousands of copies of them. And, in the real world we live in, they can’t press thousands more copies of every sold out catalog title while still pressing tens of thousands of copies of next month’s four Records of the Month. I guess they could somehow winnow their e-mail blasts down to “people who’ve bought other albums by this artist before” or “people who vocally complain on SHtv,” but that would in turn produce more complaining and whining. VMP finds some old stock, or they stop issuing replacement copies of Album X to the obsessive compulsive customers who can’t live with the quarter inch seam split on their precious album, and have 50 replacement copies left over, and they put them up for sale. Unlike Music Matters, and, increasingly, Mobile Fidelity, VMP doesn’t jack up the prices of their own limited stock of nearly-out-of-print titles to flipper prices, either. They put them up at the original list price. If they sell out in 3 minutes, so be it. Move on to the next thing in your life. I got the Buck Owens e-mail blast yesterday and grabbed one of the 500 copies of that album they’re making. If I’d been at a haircut or at work and missed out on it because I didn’t see the e-mail in time, oh well, life goes on.
Good lord man, are you really so thick as to not be able to understand why people get frustrated when every single time they receive an email that something they’ve wanted for a while is back in stock, they miss out by the time they complete the check out process? And more frustrating yet - these copies become immediately available on discogs or eBay for 3x the price? And guess what - if you don’t agree with their frustration you can just move on instead of arguing with every single person that has anything negative to say about your daddy, err, I mean, Vinyl Me Please
Yes, I get the frustration. I also get that, as Mick and Keith explained to us many years ago, you can’t always get what you want. They’re pretty clearly not repressing these, they’re finding 50 copies here or there, or they’re closing out the return/exchange process for a given title, and suddenly have 50 copies once earmarked for return/exchange that they can now sell. One way they could stop the flippers from buying up these warehouse finds and flipping them would be to price them at $100 to $150, as Music Matters does for the final few copies of their limited run titles. Obviously, that policy generates its own huge backlash. There is no easy answer, no magic bullet here. In 2021, there isn’t enough vinyl pressing capacity to meet demand and keep every LP in print all of the time. End of story. If you miss a VMP title when it’s the Record of the Month or part of a store drop, you might be out of luck if you don’t act right away. You might be out of luck if Flipper Nation beats you to the punch at checkout. Every label deals with the same problem right now. There are Tone Poets “awaiting repress” or “back ordered” right now that I missed out on. I can either pay the flipper prices, wait for who knows how long for a restock/reissue, or move on with life. Why would VMP purposely dribble out 50 copies at a time of out-of-print albums just to make you angry, if they could simply magically press 500 or 2,000 more copies of every out-of-print title in their back catalog, and simultaneously keep up with the demand for their current tracks, anthologies, and store drops? Maybe they should scale back their future projects and only focus on keeping their back catalog in print in perpetuity, but, like a shark, a business has to keep moving forward or die.
I understand that the way licensing ($$$) works keeps this from happening, but VMP really should keep all their ROTMs in print if possible. You shouldn't miss out on a ROTM based on what month you join. The back catalog should be available to new members continuously. They shouldn't be limited for the sake of being limited.
