discogs marketplace?

*depressingly adds Discogs to the list of online sites I make a monthly data download from*

The internet gets better every day.

ms
@MikeSimonetti
·
4h
"Also, whether you like to admit it or not - Covid is over. People are leaving the house now and spending their money on other things- like $25 cocktails for example. There isnt as much disposable income out there for records like there were post covid"

uh, i beg to differ. but maybe this will change.

their walls are all full now

i haven't had any recent problems with selling on discogs but again time will tell. i don't sell on ebay anymore - the venture capital people running that site are arguably worse to sellers than discogs if not worse than the most hated amazon. i REALLY don't want to go back to ebay. like rilly rilly rilly. i mean i might just find another way to make a living than go back on ebay.

plus, its summer and people go away and on vacation and don't do as much online shopping in general. that happens every year. as far as "there isn't as much disposable income out there..."

i don't sell overseas. i can't charge someone $25 shipping for a record! or whatever it is now. it made my life so much easier. don't care if i am annoying northern soul fans by not shipping to brighton or wherever.

as rocky as discogs might seem, there is nothing on earth as bad as selling on amazon and they are the biggest company on earth outside of apple. so, i dunno, all online marketplaces suck? which is why so many people are doing FB marketplace, whatsapp auctions, etc.

all current online marketplaces do suck. you'd think that would make the market ripe for some disrupter, and maybe there is one brewing, but I also think that perhaps the margins for such a marketplace are likely so small that this is not really a compelling business for investors to set up and back, while ebay is still around.

I have DEFINITELY noticed a slowdown in sales, pretty much from February or so through to now. There was a period of a month or so when I sold nothing, nada, zip, zilch — I had to go check whether my store was actually visible.

Have also noticed a drop in sales at the bricks & mortar place, maybe 15-20% over last year (altho curiously March was an exceptional month this year).

i would give up on online selling entirely but it would mean too many things would sit around in my store and in order to sell them i would have to mark them way way down for in-store sale. or start doing record shows again.
for instance, i put a Gotye record up for $100 the other day and it sold in an hour on discogs. it might never sell in my store for $50. just because of where i am. unless some dealer came in who knew the going online rate for gotye records. that quick $100 helps me keep going/staying open/buying/etc.

"you'd think that would make the market ripe for some disrupter"

there was some place people were flocking to for a minute and now i can't remember what it was. a place to sell instruments but also records...

honestly, all i need is bare bones discogs! i never need their help with anything. i just need the site to exist. that's a pretty low bar.

i do sell more expensive records in the store than i ever did before. one of the benefits of all new records being wildly overpriced. people don't blink at ANY price anymore.

The other place was Reverb, but they stopped allowing record sales around the start of the pandemic.

(in fact i would say the cheaper stuff sticks around forever and people really do want more pricey "collectable" type things in general. which means there are probably lots of great cheap records out there in stores everywhere! i am always amazed at stuff that sits all day at record shows when i go to them. just huge amounts of goodness that are not cure/smiths/zep/dead/beatles/blah/blah/ugh/barf...)

ah right Reverb! well, no wonder i stopped hearing about people going there to sell.

maybe people will move to Musicstack. i think they are still there. i know Gemm is gone.

we are actually changing the name of our store so maybe its time for a total rebrand. *THE ONLY USED RECORD STORE IN MASSACHUSETTS THAT DOES NOT SELL ONLINE!*

i would LOVE it if it weren't for that pesky $100 Gotye conundrum...

there’s a store near me that also doesn’t do discogs, the owner is like “the second I have to open a discogs account to survive is the day it will stop being fun for me”. it’s small and they move a lot of discs, lots of enthusiastic young folk clientele, frequent special sales to make room for incoming collections they bought, good vibes <3

nice!

i mean its nice if you can make it work. i sell every day on discogs. not having that money would be very noticeable. years ago i didn't sell as frequently. i also put stuff up for sale every day now which i didn't do in the old days. i have made a conscious decision to make my life less fun and try to make more money.

(i used to have amazing records sit for months on my walls back then...i felt like an idiot but i wanted people to walk in the door and be blown away by all the cool records and now...yeah, i just want to sell them. by any means necessary.)

(in fact i would say the cheaper stuff sticks around forever and people really do want more pricey "collectable" type things in general. which means there are probably lots of great cheap records out there in stores everywhere! i am always amazed at stuff that sits all day at record shows when i go to them. just huge amounts of goodness that are not cure/smiths/zep/dead/beatles/blah/blah/ugh/barf...)

In UK we’re also fucked by Brexit. I was never a volume seller but would get £50-100 a month from EU buyers. Enough to get new stuff, but that’s fell away to almost zero.

Recent hike in Royal Mail prices and now fees on shipping have made it super expensive to ship to EU and that’s before we factor in customs charges.

xp went into a new record store yesterday that had probably ~20% of its stock priced for $5 or less. some good stuff, too. I was floored. most of the stores around me have nothing <$10.

i have raised prices since the pandemic. not a ton. but i definitely have streamlined my prices. people - other than a few crusty old men - do not want dollar records. where i am anyway. or 2 or 3 dollar records. so, i mostly start at $5 now. 5/10/15/20. those are my common prices. post-pandemic $8 records became $10 records. i'm cool with it. i was probably way past due for an increase anyway.

and since the pandemic i also started selling new stuff. because i got covid money. and i still do when i feel like it. they sell well. i just hate paying for them. it goes against my flinty new england cheapskate record dealer ethos. used to feel like i was ripping people off selling those expensive things! now i don't. give me all your money. i need it.

people are STILL just getting into the vinyulz. it seems crazy but its true. i always forget that sometimes it takes people years to get in on a trend or fad. you would think it would be played out as a normal people fad. but it isn't. two people just left here who got their first crappy plastic turntable a few days ago. and they all want what every other new vinylz person wants. which is why they can get discouraged easily when they don't find every grateful dead album in my store for a dollar apiece. they just don't know what has been happening. which is why it was nice when one of the people asked if we had any roy buchanan records because his records are as common as dirt around these parts.

Wait what exactly is happening that is being referred to as "the fall of discogs" as if the reasons are common knowledge? The scams? Let me know what I'm missing because I'm not hip to this.

that guy's twitter thread has lots of his reasons. biden needs to pass the info superhighway infrastructure bill. too many tired old sites covered in rust.

Also I feel like new vinyl buyers are the ones willing to dish out $40+ for led zep reissues and Childish Gambino albums etc. (vs. expecting to find cheap OG copies of things)

Oh I don't have twitter so I couldn't see it.

xps to Evan the newest outrage is mostly about their attempt to take a cut of shipping charges aiui

this is apparently b/c dealers are listing like $1 records with $10 shipping

people on those threads are wasting their time crying about how the discogs database was created from the hard work of thousands of unpaid people over a period of years. this america! that is how we....roll. tell it to goodreads, hippie!

this is apparently b/c dealers are listing like $1 records with $10 shipping

yes and also discogs now takes fees for the shipping price. so you lose quite a bit in fees selling there (when you add in the paypal fee too)

oddly looks like that twitter thread has been taken down. big discogs???

https://discogs-data-dumps.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/index.html

Download Discogs Data

Here you will find monthly dumps of Discogs Release, Artist, Label, and
Master Release data. The data is in XML format and formatted according
to the API spec: http://www.discogs.com/developers/

This data is made available under the CC0 No Rights Reserved license:
http://creativecommons.org/about/cc0

Now do it with sales history/stats!

it's weird he deleted that, I wonder if he got piled on for saying "like it or not covid is over"

considering two ILXors I know (ian and 69) both got covid like a week ago and both are discogs power users, I could see that

i haven't had any recent problems with selling on discogs but again time will tell. i don't sell on ebay anymore - the venture capital people running that site are arguably worse to sellers than discogs if not worse than the most hated amazon. i REALLY don't want to go back to ebay. like rilly rilly rilly. i mean i might just find another way to make a living than go back on ebay.

i haven't had any recent problems with selling on discogs but again time will tell. i don't sell on ebay anymore - the venture capital people running that site are arguably worse to sellers than discogs if not worse than the most hated amazon. i REALLY don't want to go back to ebay. like rilly rilly rilly. i mean i might just find another way to make a living than go back on ebay.

So, what's this "partner fee" I'm seeing on my PayPal receipt (after having sold something) ?

I believe that's the fee paid to discogs

I take that back, I don't know what the fuck that is.

I recently sold my clear vinyl copy of Blackstar on discogs for $170. I only charged $3.50 for media shipping at the time. Add CA sales tax: 14.88.

Here's what the paypal receipt is:

Shipping$3.50
Tax $14.88
Purchase total $188.38
Fee −$7.06 (this is the paypal fee)
Partner fee −$30.50
Total: $150.82

Fuck me if I know where that comes from or who it's paid to.

I guess it's actually just the tallied fees and taxes. I don't know why they break it out like that.

What's the deal with the new exorbitant Discogs-PayPal Partner Fees

wow

And what do you know....When you and the buyer decide to cancel an order so you refund the buyer...Discogs keeps their partner fee?? Total BS.

yes, that also just happened to me, it's fucking annoying

I got that charge on something I sold and despatched within the UK. Taxes should not apply.