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

(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

I got into vinyl briefly last year as a coping mechanism for the pandemic, I was living alone and very depressed and every time I'd buy a new record and it came in the mail, I had something new to look forward to, I had the big artwork to look at, and I was more likely to finish each album I was listening to if it was a record than if I was listening to mp3s.

it was a fun little activity for a while but then the damn things just took up too much space, probably because I bought 150 or so in 6 months

Oh hey yeah believe me I'm deep into it and I don't really need to be buying these things either. I do love looking forward to them in the mail, or what might be hiding in the next bin. I was making an observation about a particular genre of music and the demographic that collects it, and not from a perceived position of superiority either. Just thoughts and curiosities about a particular market.

Hope you're doing OK now Neanderthal. Anything among those 150 that you really treasure still?

it was a good observation! I appreciated it.

I'm doing well, thank you. Yeah, I got some nice rekkidz last year, like Sarcofago's "I.N.R.I.", and managed to get some nice Judas Priest vinyl, and a nice used copy of Genesis's Selling England by the Pound.

I do want to start listening again soon, but I'm lazy. def be a fun weekend activity to veg and play some rekkidz

i sold my entire collection en masse on saturday. filled the entire back of a subaru with the seats down and off it drove. i couldn't deal with feeling guilty listening to mp3s with an entire wall of LPs staring plaintively at me. so now they can go live on a farm and i can soulseek in peace.

bold move. how does it feel now?

good! i get a little wistful when i see the empty shelves but then i realize i actually have empty shelves for once

I remember seeing an interview with King Ad Rock where he explained how he doesn't listen to new music because he feels too guilty neglecting his vinyl. Sounds like you took the opposite solution.

a cautionary tale
when the fly spot where they got the champagne
is your home

I bought a guitar pedal/12" single combo (Boris), which is a new low for me

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.

Speaking as someone with a fair bit of retro gaming tech this seems wide of the mark tbh. I have no romantic ideas about older games being superior, I just like playing them! And if you can afford original hardware why wouldn't you go for the most authentic experience?

It's just a hobby that's given me a certain amount of joy in shitty times, and for that I don't see that I deserve to be put in the same bin as all the rubes that get conned into buying awful records because they don't know what they're doing.

I'm not even sure if an exploitative industry exists around the retrogaming scene in quite the same way that it does for vinyl, because I don't see there's a ripe market of naive young collectors desperate to get in on a fad. You might get price gouged by eBay sellers if you're into collecting physical copies of old games, but that's why flash carts exist.

Let me clarify that because I think you misunderstood a little. I was comparing someone who is content with emulation vs. those that feel they'd prefer the "authentic" experience by seeking out the hardware that provides it. The latter scenario requires an investment in money, time, and space in your home. The former just requires a little research (what emulator do I acquire and where do I get ROMs?). Therefore the incentive to go the authentic route is either because you feel, like many vinyl enthusiasts, that the original hardware is technically superior to the digital option. Otherwise, the only other incentive is the romanticized experience- the ritual, the physicality, the nostalgia etc.

Beyond that I was speaking generally. There is definitely a market for video game themed nostalgia gear, and even if you personally aren't seduced by those things by and large, the demographic that shares your interests are enough that those things exist. As applied to naive young collectors specifically, yes, it may not be at the level that that is happening in the vinyl market (more attractive to older gamers overall given nostalgia is the main selling point), but I still think it is similar enough for me to make these comparisons.

I would just say that the language of "romanticized experience" maybe carries a pejorative connotation for some readers. It doesn't have to be "romanticized" to be an experience that's more pleasurable for some folks - whether it's the physicality of inserting the media, or the enjoyment of the box art or how they make a collection on the shelf. As a way to spend disposable income, it's just as unnecessary as all the other ways, obviously.

(To be clear, I don't have any original gaming hardware and my collection is limited these days to the NES and SNES mini-emulator gadgets.)

True yes I definitely did not mean that in such a negative sounding way. I was referring to the novelty of that pursuit... the aspect of recreating the experience of retro gaming for the sake of it and not through necessity or convenience. And I too engage in all of these hobbies to varying degrees.

The thing about it for me is I was born in 1986, my parents actually never had a record player in the house that I can remember (they adopted CDs quite early), so for me it's not even real nostalgia. I do think analog *can* sound better than digital, in fact I have a number of albums where I'm convinced the LP is better, but I think it's more often the other way around - records get scratched, they skip, and I think with modern pressings there's like a chance that you're getting just a bad digital transfer (which, to be fair, at least will sounds as good as the MP3s).

To me there is something that just appeals to my human side about it. For one I still like the idea of "art" as a tangible thing, something you can hold and file away, because I think having an actual object makes it more meaningful to you than something that's just stored on a hard drive. You paid money for it, you found a place to store it, therefore it's got some actual value in your life. Therefore when you listen to it you get a little more out of it. I mean I am not really the type to play things on repeat on my computer, I just have way too much music on there, and so it becomes more of an exercise in just listening and rating as much stuff as possible. Whereas an LP I'll play 4-5 times in a few days just cuz I'm into it. For two the artists themselves often design these things from the ground up and there are little bits of personality that you lose when you go all-digital...a lot of my nostalgia for old CDs I had (or my parents had, more accurately) is rooted in say, the typeface on the cover, or what photos they put on the inside, things like that. It's easy to forget that most albums aren't just intended as a pile of songs. For three I think used vinyl has this appeal of having a previous owner...I know people hate when people write on the cover or scuff it up but all that tells a little story of the person who had it before. It's cool to own something that meant a lot to someone else before. Like with retro video games to me the coolest thing was when I'd buy a SNES or Genesis cart and it would still have someone's save file on it.

None of this is really rational of course, but it all appeals to me in the same way that NFTs really fucking don't...we inhabit the physical realm, our bodies and brains understand and value physical things

Agree with all of that!

Booming Post!

right on frogbs, I share nearly all of that i think!

Also frogbs, you realize in my thread revive I was talking about a particular genre of music and their propensity to create tons of versions of albums (and other merchandise) right? You kept responding as if I was making a comment about vinyl collecting in general. Just making sure!

Totally disprovable personal observation of what I generally see:

-Jazz artist: 1 black vinyl version
-Electronic artist: 1 color vinyl version, 1 black vinyl version
-Shoegaze artist: 2 color vinyl versions, 1 black, maybe a repress
-Emo punk artist: 35 color vinyl versions, 6 repressings
-Most other indie artists: 1 cassette, an email in their inbox that says they will need to wait a year and a half to get their record pressed

I definitely grew up in the waning hours of the record age, by which point tapes had largely become the rage, so I was a cassette tape guy. I had a turntable (it was my first music device) and my dad dumped 40 records on me but I ultimately didn't like records because they skipped and I hated having to handle it so delicately and flip it every time.

tapes I grew to hate due to the warping issues, machines eating them, and also flipping the side (which is why I liked those walkmen that did it for you). CDs were a godsend to me. and dad got a CD player in like 1987 (first CD - La Bamba soundtrack). so I had a limited time with records.

my re-interest in them was more that of a consumer wanting a physical product rather than nostalgia. I feel little to none with my turntable because dad moved us to CDs so early

well Evan it's definitely a thing with certain vaporwave labels though idk if there's necessarily a cash grab aspect to it, I think it's more "ok we're doing another run of 500, might as well do another variant". one thing I hear a lot is that it's very difficult to gauge how much vinyl you're gonna sell, your Spotify or RYM or Billboard numbers don't really correlate to actual sales the way you might expect. sometimes they'll make 1000 and take a huge loss and sometimes they all sell out within an hour and everyone gets pissed that they didn't make more

btw just to clarify my point above a bit, there's only so much time you get on this Earth as a human being, right? There is probably like, 150 hours of new music released on a daily basis that might be somewhere in your wheelhouse. I used to fantasize when I was young about having the ability to just listen to every CD in the store and how cool it would be to be able to just think of a song title and get to listen to it. Which obviously you can do now. But I think when you do that it leads to you getting RYM-brain, where you're obsessed with rating and ranking everything under the sun in order to curate the perfect Top 50 list of albums which you actually haven't listened to in the last 7 years

I know people hate when people write on the cover or scuff it up but all that tells a little story of the person who had it before. It's cool to own something that meant a lot to someone else before.

i bought a second copy of kraftwerk's man machine because i saw that someone had —in ballpoint pen— done a strikethrough of "kraftwerk" and changed the band name to "the geeks."

so yes, obviously greatest post of all time, frogs. well said.

:)

my story with this is a lot of the vinyl I got in Green Bay was from the collection of a guy named "Juliano". I know because he wrote his name on all the covers. judging by the wear of the various albums you could tell exactly what he was way into (King Crimson) and what he wasn't. dude obviously had good taste (according to me) but if I ever encountered him I feel like I would yell at him "what, you don't like SPARKS!?"

also I have my grandma's original copies of several Moody Blues albums (lol, I say "original" as though they're worth more than three bucks) and when she gave them to me she told me about how she and her friends would come over and get high and listen to them. in fact one of them had something in the gatefold that might've been 50-year old dried out weed. so if I get high and listen to them myself I can't help but picture her in her mid-20s sitting on some ugly sofa with her hippie friends smoking shitty weed and talking about how they want to marry Justin Heyward

omg, amazing. that's really special imo. i've held on to a select few of my parents' records that I also enjoy listening to, but i wish i'd used music to open more conversations with them. a lot of their life stories are a little bit obscure to me, and even the photo albums are vaguest about their like, teen and young adult years when they were Beatles fans (mom) and folkies (dad). I don't even know if my mom had a favorite Beatle! the records still feel like a real connection, though.

yes, i love when i find a gambit of albums all marked with the same initials/name. shoutout to keith jackson and g.seguin. i'm keeping a lot of ya'll's stuff safe.

hey here's a shady scam or other silly business to take advantage of earnest new vinyl collectors:

remember some years back in the guitar scene, the big deal was "reliced" guitars? we should start a VNYL type dealie, but all the albums we send out will be "reliced" (raisey eyebrows). we only take pre-payment for a minimum of two years worth of subscriptions, and hell yes we do custom orders. BUT IT'LL COST YA!