Shady scams and other silly business ideas to take advantage of earnest new vinyl collectors

Dying:

Frontman Josh Todd said: “Buckcherry is unique, complex, simple, passionate, explosive, original and always a good time. BC has been my love, my pain, my passion and I’m so proud of what we have accomplished. Our ninth record Hellbound marks 22 years since our debut self-titled release and what an amazing rollercoaster we have been on. From hit songs to platinum and gold records and millions of fans worldwide – all during a time period when traditional sounding hard rock bands didn’t exist – except for Buckcherry. We beat the odds and built our reputation on the live shows, and our one-of-a-kind approach to every opportunity”

lmao - even fucking JACKYL still kept releasing records while Buckcherry was still around, what a fuckin choad

hOw MaNy CrAzY bItChEs We GoT oUt HeRe¿?

WARNING: DO NOT CLICK THAT

so weird for me to think of Buckcherry as representing a nine-album, 22-year career for its members and other protagonists. i remember a week or two when i thought "Lit Up" rocked pretty hard.

They had one of those weird arcs where they did a couple albums, broke up, reformed with mostly different guys, and then had their biggest hits in the late '00s ("Crazy Bitch" & "Sorry").

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuck_(EP)

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/224133002870

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/k2wAAOSwJ5VfRSmy/s-l1600.jpg

"RECORD STARTER COLLECTION 9 X 12” VINYL MIXTURE Rock, Jazz ,classical music Mix Vinyl Records
WILL RANDOMLY PIC OUT 9 RECORDS FOR EACH BATCH
all used"

From the feedback, buyer with a winning bid of £25.58:

Not rock or jazz, awful selection of awful albums in awful condition, avoid.

I think the phrase 'caveat emptor' applies here.

‘Genre: Dance and Electronica’

Genre: Shit I got at the thrift store when they dumped their unsellable crap.

vnyl tactics.

A new one of those subscription “clubs”: https://vinylmoon.co/

Plans from $31 A Month!

Sounds like a massive waste of wax to rival even the RSD reissue of the "Coneheads" movie OST.

When artists who could really benefit from having their music on vinyl are having to wait months or years for pressings because of this BS and endless classic rock reissues...

It's terribly sad that the punk/indie/dance labels and artists who were responsible for vinyl not dying out completely are being squeezed out by this claptrap.

Also their logo kind of somehow looks like "Vinyl Mom" when you first glance at it

haha it does.

They've been around a while. I noticed some YouTubes about them. Kind of fascinating for being completely about the vinyl art/presentation. All of the releases are on Discogs, 74 so far. I wonder if bands pay to be on these things.

if they are, they're sponsoring what looks like a lot of talented MFA grads. at least i hope the visual artists are well compensated in this scheme since their work seems to be 95% of the appeal. anyway i prefer that scenario to Dan Aykroyd or whoever getting a few extra Conehead bucks.

I didn’t recognise any of the bands. indie landfill it looks like.

The only one I recognized was King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. They have a pretty significant following and they are already known for their prolific, but limited iirc, vinyl releases. I'm not too familiar with them (have not been able to appreciate their music that so many others do) but it seems weird that they would be the most prominent "name" band on this sketchy compilation label. They seem to have a pretty robust vinyl distribution arm on their own.

Some or all of the compilations are on Spotify. Looks like one or two tracks with loads of plays and the rest in the low thousands. Bringing in a ringer for each? I know King Giz but not the other "big" ones I'm seeing.

yeah I'll give it to them the designs look really neat but the fact that you have to click several times to find out which artists are on it is not an encouraging sign. clicking around on the Spotify lists the music seems okay but they really are just compilations of unrelated tracks from unknown artists, its like they're not really meant to be played

to Chinchilla's point I've lately been getting a bunch of ads for this:

https://www.vinylmeplease.com/products/adam-sandler-eight-crazy-nights

it would be one thing if it contained fairly well-known tracks from 2002 but it's literally all original soundtrack material from a movie that nobody remembers shit about. such bottom of the barrel stuff and it sucks because I know there's so much stuff waiting to get pressed right now

that said I guess this stuff hasn't been all bad, the vinyl resurgence has caused a lot of things I never thought I'd get my hands on to get reissued. like I never imagined in 2005 that I'd wind up with a collection full of stuff by the likes of Cluster and Haruomi Hosono

sad/hilarious/telling that the quotes from satisfied customers on the vinylmoon page are exclusively people talking about the packaging.

always baffling to me how many of these reissues are of non-notable hollywood movie soundtracks from the last 30 years, crates and crates of them clogging up my local stores, $34 for the original score of Not Another Teen Movie or The Faculty. my assumption has always been that these are aimed at holiday/birthday gift buying by clueless relatives. i was in my local the other day and saw my first one of the season actually, a confused older person wandering in going "i need a christmas gift, he likes heavy metal, do you have heavy metal records?"

i used to be happy at the idea of these people subsidizing weird local record stores, but the fact that theyre now clogging the system to the point of preventing actual new records from being pressed by actual working musicians, my feelings have... changed

tbh im getting to the point of being annoyed at stores for stocking shit like that, seems like theyre sowing the seeds of their own demise. theyre making short-term cash at RSD and the holidays, but when thats the only shit that can get pressed, theyre just going to slowly turn into "Music-Themed Gift Shop: Come In And Buy A Music Vinyl for the Rocker In your Life!"

how much of it is, like, non-specialty chain stores are stocking this shit so if you're an honest to god record store, you better be stocking it too? like you def wouldn't want that type of customer to come to your store, *not* find eight copies of the Stranger Things Vol 3 deluxe pressing or the glossy gatefold edition of the Short Circuit II soundtrack, and head for Best Buy or Barnes and Noble or Urban Outfitters and never come back. plus, some sliver of people who collect other types of vinyl do occasionally get a video game soundtrack or something. based on my friend's collection i was browing last night, there's some overlap with classical and jazz listeners.

worth mentioning that a significant part of the vinyl shortage is due to there being like a million copies of that 7xLP Garth Brooks set getting pressed

admittedly (thankfully) i have the privilege of not having to figure out how to run a record store in 2021. but it seems like after a certain point serving the demand for that type of product is a race to the bottom, insofar as it becomes a zero-sum game that prevents other records from getting made and hastens that day when your store will just be for christmas gifts

(discreetly moves Stranger Things soundtrack to back of pile)

Re: Mom Moon Records, this is what is looks like when a greeting card company decided to form their own record label.

The only one I recognized was King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard.

as i suspected- that KG album is one that the band gave away with permission for anyone to press up onto vinyl/cd/cassette etc.

Yeah there are record stores that feel like their demographics might be interested in that sort of thing. The cool record store in BK does not have this demographic. Stores in less hip locations? Maybe they feel like this is something a portion of their customers are looking for and they have sales data to prove it at this point. So they stock novelty reissues and POP figurines and straddle the line between "actual record store" and "place to buy gifts like edgy bathroom readers, coasters & magnets for tier C people on your Christmas list".

Then there is the thread theme demo to consider: earnest new vinyl collectors. These people often get seduced by 1) flashy packaging and pretty vinyl & 2) name recognition. The excitement of the object and presentation is at least 80% of the incentive. In general you're investing your time and effort into vinyl collecting because you have feelings about the superiority of or at least a strange attraction to that antiquated listening experience or you like to collect "yourself" (things that represent your interests) via the objects, or both. Retro video game collectors are exactly the same. They sink money into old technology to recreate a romanticized experience or they are also geeky enough to have opinions about why it is superior. They are also really susceptible to all sorts of related collectibles that clutter the marketplace.

Record labels like Polyvinyl for instance (and lots of pop punk labels too) also have strong overlap with the demographic on the object-worship end of the scale. Color vinyl is huge with them, heavy packaging with lots of goodies. However somewhat predictably pressing quality seems sort of shitty from the examples I've heard and/or picked up. I think they know they're selling exciting flashy looking things, and my guess is that most of that audience gets seduced by the novelty of it all and turns over quickly. So they put their energy into the attributes that move units with their consumer.

Oh wow! I didn't know about that wrinkle. xp

it's wild to look at collectors on Reddit who pick up all colour variants and such. idgi.

The new Wolf Alice album campaign really turned me off by having something like 5 variant pressings, none of which were particularly special. Red, Yellow, Blue, Green, Black, and a picture disc. They were also not all announced at the same time, so if you had already pre-ordered the regular version but were more interested in the Blue edition or whatever, I imagine that enticed some people to shell out more than they ordinarily would have.

I see tons of bands with tons of color pressings like that upon release or 2nd/3rd pressings shortly after, so it's a bit confusing to see amongst news about backups at pressing plants.

yeah I wonder if certain labels just have contracts where they can get things pressed quickly or what because I see 100% Electronica do stuff like that where they can keep repressing stuff in print runs of 500 (always with a new color variant or pattern of course) while other bands I follow complain about how they can't get anything out until November 2022.

Yeah it's weird!

BTW my big post was responding to One Eye Open/DC posts. I forgot to "xps"

frogbs at 12:37 28 Oct. 21
worth mentioning that a significant part of the vinyl shortage is due to there being like a million copies of that 7xLP Garth Brooks set getting pressed

he needs to be stopped

yeah I wonder if certain labels just have contracts where they can get things pressed quickly or what because I see 100% Electronica do stuff like that where they can keep repressing stuff in print runs of 500 (always with a new color variant or pattern of course) while other bands I follow complain about how they can't get anything out until November 2022.

from what i have seen, if a label has a deal set up with a pressing plant, then things can get done, but a lot of pressing plants are 'not taking on new clients'.

Garth Brooks is obsessed with the technical victory of "selling more albums than the Beatles".

the box has CDs for everything too so each box counts as like 14 albums sold lollll

surprised he didn't create Chris Gaines variants of the album and sell those too

I'm learning on the Hoffman forums that the analog was cut from digital files... but there's more chatter about how the prices went as low as $18 for a three box set on Amazon, which as one poster points out is only a dollar more than paying for a bag of empty poly liners, so not a bad deal.

this is what is looks like when a greeting card company decided to form their own record label

had been wondering if these guys had any relation to the card people since seeing a bunch of recent budget moondog releases, but doesn't appear that's the case!

Was reminded of this perfect example of what was being discussed upthread. Of all the albums that didn't need to be repressed at all, Nothing's Tired of Tomorrow (more like tired of color variants) gets a 5 year anniversary repress? Can't just do one version either! No, that would be insufficient. What is with the indie post-hardcore/punk/emo scene and this sort of fetishism? Does any other scene out there produce more unnecessary iterations of every kind of merch that can possibly be imagined? Does this one album have its own pressing plant?

Deluxe/Special:
500 x Hot Pink Inside Electric Blue + Shaped Picture Disc *Relapse.com Exclusive*
100 x Highlighter Yellow w/ Rainbow Splatter ("Vertigo Flowers" edition)
100 x Black in Neon Yellow w/ Applebee's label *Record Release edition*
10 x Clear w/ Hand-painted Cover *Charity Edition*

Standard:
10000 x Black
2000 x Baby Pink / Bone White Merge *Relapse.com Exclusive*
1000 x Electric Blue *Relapse.com Exclusive*
1000 x Olive Green *Indie Retailer Exclusive*
1000 x Blue Inside Milky Clear *Band Tour Exclusive*
500 x Baby Blue / Bone White Merge *Relapse.com Exclusive*
500 x Blood Red *Vinyl Me Please Exclusive*
300 x Grey *UK Exclusive*
150 x Orange Krush *European Exclusive*
90 x Clear (not available to the public)

Doesn't explain all the exclusives, but I imagine bands in these genres/scenes have a really strong merch-table relationship with their fans, and maybe that has something to do with it? Like it's just really well-established that after the show it's normal to wait in line to buy a T-shirt or whatever, so a wacky colored vinyl of an album appeals to that too...? i have no idea, though, this is just speculation.

idk I think exclusive color variants for the merch table are pretty neat, so long as the album in question is available otherwise

Perhaps, there just seems to be an emphasized materialistic allure to it, where the cool object factor vs. functional item ratio is like 80/20 more so than other demographics. The emo/punk vinyl is the second most common type of collection being sold off after dad rock in my anecdotal experience, I believe, due to the impulse-buy attractiveness and emphasized novelty of the format in that (vaguely defined) music scene.

sorry for the sloppy post; hopefully I make some sense

Totally…I mean, I work from home so I’m listening to records constantly, but I definitely see how a huge chunk of the market is just the collectible novelty factor