R.I.P. VMP Forum

Indymisanthrope said:
Part of me still thinks none of us has hit on the “real” reason, the true catalyzing event, for shutting down the old forum. A lot of the theories make sense, but none of them completely hold together for me. I suppose that this part of me just thinks that if I reflect on how VMP has done business in the past, there may very well not BE a single reason. They just...decided to do it, then started forming a rationale, whatever that happens to be, to support it, after they’d already concluded it was a good idea.

What’s incredible to me is that, if people are even halfway correct that it was an attempt to stop hosting and/or to decentralize criticism of their business, then not only did that fail when this forum got started, but they also VOLUNTARILY GAVE UP THEIR OWN ABILITY TO RESPOND TO IT. Now all of that criticism is in a place where they may not even be welcome, much less have control over the messaging (to be clear, I’m personally cool with any staff who were active on the old forum joining up here to be part of the community, just not cool with them joining up to act as official reps of the business).

That’s what makes this decision so terrible to me. The Google results won’t bring up VMP hosting its own bad PR anymore, sure, but what they get instead may be even worse for them: wild theories, extremely critical reviews, some (speaking frankly here, including myself in this) bitterness from former members who resent what they’ve done, and...absolutely no response from VMP. The only party they’ve successfully silenced is themselves. Truly baffling.
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Very well put as usual @Indymisanthrope. And to your point on vmp staff, I must admit I can't help feeling a little bad for Storf in particular. I know by his own admission he could come across a little dickish at times and other's views on him will vary but I felt like he contributed in an overall positive way. He seems like a nice young guy with a healthy dose of social awkwardness, like many of us, who was able to engage as a fellow music lover and provide some behind the scenes insights. I'm sure he enjoyed the playful input on guess threads etc, all of which added to the community sense that vmp was supposedly trying to foster. So yeah, I'd welcome any staff to join us here, I'm not sure if their HR/management would agree.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
Part of me still thinks none of us has hit on the “real” reason, the true catalyzing event, for shutting down the old forum. A lot of the theories make sense, but none of them completely hold together for me. I suppose that this part of me just thinks that if I reflect on how VMP has done business in the past, there may very well not BE a single reason. They just...decided to do it, then started forming a rationale, whatever that happens to be, to support it, after they’d already concluded it was a good idea.

What’s incredible to me is that, if people are even halfway correct that it was an attempt to stop hosting and/or to decentralize criticism of their business, then not only did that fail when this forum got started, but they also VOLUNTARILY GAVE UP THEIR OWN ABILITY TO RESPOND TO IT. Now all of that criticism is in a place where they may not even be welcome, much less have control over the messaging (to be clear, I’m personally cool with any staff who were active on the old forum joining up here to be part of the community, just not cool with them joining up to act as official reps of the business).

That’s what makes this decision so terrible to me. The Google results won’t bring up VMP hosting its own bad PR anymore, sure, but what they get instead may be even worse for them: wild theories, extremely critical reviews, some (speaking frankly here, including myself in this) bitterness from former members who resent what they’ve done, and...absolutely no response from VMP. The only party they’ve successfully silenced is themselves. Truly baffling.
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I don't think there was one thing that made them close it, I think it had to do with people pointing out the errors/problems with the service, tagging leadership in posts, staff probably getting tired of being asked questions they couldn't answer, and the community growing way outside of just being about VMP (and as mentioned above there had been an increase in the negative).
 
pijo said:
Very well put as usual @Indymisanthrope. And to your point on vmp staff, I must admit I can't help feeling a little bad for Storf in particular. I know by his own admission he could come across a little dickish at times and other's views on him will vary but I felt like he contributed in an overall positive way. He seems like a nice young guy with a healthy dose of social awkwardness, like many of us, who was able to engage as a fellow music lover and provide some behind the scenes insights. I'm sure he enjoyed the playful input on guess threads etc, all of which added to the community sense that vmp was supposedly trying to foster. So yeah, I'd welcome any staff to join us here, I'm not sure if their HR/management would agree.
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100%. I can attest that in person, Storf is a very nice guy, very excited about this career and the opportunities it affords, and actually comes off as quite shy and humble. Forum Persona Storf is just that, a persona (like many of us wear in here to varying degrees), and unfortunately VMP just never did a great job of supporting him in finding the boundaries of artist selection and editorial stuff, which is his area of expertise, and the business/product side, which isn’t. Sometimes a combination of those factors would result in him saying some things that as the default company spokesperson, he probably shouldn’t have, but it’s not like anybody else was leading by example, either. That the editorial staff are collateral damage in this whole thing is unfortunate, IMO.

They explicitly and categorically denied this was the case in the Endtimes thread of the old forum, but I still think this all has its roots in the departure of Severan. By all accounts, the vision for the forum was his baby; once he was gone, nobody picked up that ball and ran with it. Years later, it’s an obvious casualty: some former exec’s pet project that nobody but Storf and Paul like engaging with at all? Pull the plug, that’s low-hanging fruit if you want to cut expenses.

Come to think of it, the ouster of Severan for undisclosed reasons is probably the ur-moment for when the “community” was put at odds with the company hosting it. I know some people on here are personally friendly with Sev to this day, so that might be uncomfortable to rehash, but it was probably the first external signal that all was not well in VMPLand.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
100%. I can attest that in person, Storf is a very nice guy, very excited about this career and the opportunities it affords, and actually comes off as quite shy and humble. Forum Persona Storf is just that, a persona (like many of us wear in here to varying degrees), and unfortunately VMP just never did a great job of supporting him in finding the boundaries of artist selection and editorial stuff, which is his area of expertise, and the business/product side, which isn’t. Sometimes a combination of those factors would result in him saying some things that as the default company spokesperson, he probably shouldn’t have, but it’s not like anybody else was leading by example, either. That the editorial staff are collateral damage in this whole thing is unfortunate, IMO.

They explicitly and categorically denied this was the case in the Endtimes thread of the old forum, but I still think this all has its roots in the departure of Severan. By all accounts, the vision for the forum was his baby; once he was gone, nobody picked up that ball and ran with it. Years later, it’s an obvious casualty: some former exec’s pet project that nobody but Storf and Paul like engaging with at all? Pull the plug, that’s low-hanging fruit if you want to cut expenses.

Come to think of it, the ouster of Severan for undisclosed reasons is probably the ur-moment for when the “community” was put at odds with the company hosting it. I know some people on here are personally friendly with Sev to this day, so that might be uncomfortable to rehash, but it was probably the first external signal that all was not well in VMPLand.
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I barely got to know Sev, he left just after I became a regular on the forum, that seems to add up about the loss of focus on community. I have met Storf irl, he is personable but I think like me he is reserved irl, I am way more social on here than I have ever been elsewhere except work because part of my job was to be so
 
I am no longer angry with VMP for killing the forum is such a stupid and vindictive way. Now I am just perplexed with the company as a whole.

I am obviously not a business person. If I was I would not be a librarian working in the public sector. But I cannot understand how VMP seems to be going out of their way to alienate their core, heavy purchasing customers.

In 2018 I bought 93 exclusives (ROTM and others). This does not include curated titles that I picked up as well (easily another 25 there). I was getting 10-12 records on average each month. So far to the end of this month I have bought 12 exclusives. This now averages at less than 3 a month. At this rate to the end of the year, I doubt I will buy much more than 30 titles for the year when my 12-mon subscription ends. This does not include the Anthology boxset, but I serious doubt I will sign up for the next one (unless it is a boxset of Touch&Go records curated by Albini).

I cannot be atypical. Their business practices over the last 12 months are head scratching. They have pushed heavy buyers to cut their purchases easily by 1/2, if not driving them away completely. I get we are a small portion of their customers but every one of us, their must be a dozen subscribers of a single stream who only received their subscription as a gift and will be hard pressed to remember to renew it after the 6 months.

This is why companies like Apple try to develop a rabid user-base. These are the people that buy everything the moment it is available, waiting in line outside the store for a chance to say “first!”.

Oh well. At least VMP reminds me of so many of the startups from the HBO show Silicon Valley, it puts a smile on my face. I wonder if they sit around board meetings discussing the most efficient way to jerk-off 2 guys at the same time?
 
jamieanderson1968 said:
I am no longer angry with VMP for killing the forum is such a stupid and vindictive way. Now I am just perplexed with the company as a whole.

I am obviously not a business person. If I was I would not be a librarian working in the public sector. But I cannot understand how VMP seems to be going out of their way to alienate their core, heavy purchasing customers.

In 2018 I bought 93 exclusives (ROTM and others). This does not include curated titles that I picked up as well (easily another 25 there). I was getting 10-12 records on average each month. So far to the end of this month I have bought 12 exclusives. This now averages at less than 3 a month. At this rate to the end of the year, I doubt I will buy much more than 30 titles for the year when my 12-mon subscription ends. This does not include the Anthology boxset, but I serious doubt I will sign up for the next one (unless it is a boxset of Touch&Go records curated by Albini).

I cannot be atypical. Their business practices over the last 12 months are head scratching. They have pushed heavy buyers to cut their purchases easily by 1/2, if not driving them away completely. I get we are a small portion of their customers but every one of us, their must be a dozen subscribers of a single stream who only received their subscription as a gift and will be hard pressed to remember to renew it after the 6 months.

This is why companies like Apple try to develop a rabid user-base. These are the people that buy everything the moment it is available, waiting in line outside the store for a chance to say “first!”.

Oh well. At least VMP reminds me of so many of the startups from the HBO show Silicon Valley, it puts a smile on my face. I wonder if they sit around board meetings discussing the most efficient way to jerk-off 2 guys at the same time?
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I assume many of their customers are mostly if not completely unaware of the issues, they are probably most aware of the changes to curated titles
 
jamieanderson1968 said:
Their business practices over the last 12 months are head scratching.
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This is really why I'm bailing on them once my current sub expires in July. I'm no business guru, either, but it's obvious their leadership is totally clueless about what's going on.

To me it seems like the people in charge think we're in a vinyl bubble that is going to burst soon, and they're just trying to milk as much cash out of it while they can before the whole thing goes under.
 
Enoch said:
I mean we could be
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Yup, agreed. The gamble that VMP is taking now is how hard the crash will be... I would bet a lot of people on this forum will continue to buy and play records once the hype dies down again. Would our business (at the rate that we all used to buy from VMP) have been enough to sustain their business once all of the people just buying records to be cool have moved on to the next fad? They apparently don't think so...
 
jamieanderson1968 said:
I am no longer angry with VMP for killing the forum is such a stupid and vindictive way. Now I am just perplexed with the company as a whole.

I am obviously not a business person. If I was I would not be a librarian working in the public sector. But I cannot understand how VMP seems to be going out of their way to alienate their core, heavy purchasing customers.

In 2018 I bought 93 exclusives (ROTM and others). This does not include curated titles that I picked up as well (easily another 25 there). I was getting 10-12 records on average each month. So far to the end of this month I have bought 12 exclusives. This now averages at less than 3 a month. At this rate to the end of the year, I doubt I will buy much more than 30 titles for the year when my 12-mon subscription ends. This does not include the Anthology boxset, but I serious doubt I will sign up for the next one (unless it is a boxset of Touch&Go records curated by Albini).

I cannot be atypical. Their business practices over the last 12 months are head scratching. They have pushed heavy buyers to cut their purchases easily by 1/2, if not driving them away completely. I get we are a small portion of their customers but every one of us, their must be a dozen subscribers of a single stream who only received their subscription as a gift and will be hard pressed to remember to renew it after the 6 months.

This is why companies like Apple try to develop a rabid user-base. These are the people that buy everything the moment it is available, waiting in line outside the store for a chance to say “first!”.

Oh well. At least VMP reminds me of so many of the startups from the HBO show Silicon Valley, it puts a smile on my face. I wonder if they sit around board meetings discussing the most efficient way to jerk-off 2 guys at the same time?
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The thing is, VMP had WAAAAY more subscribers than those on the old forum as far as I could tell. We were the most dedicated and it’s stupid to alienate us since we were likely helping sell all the exclusives out. I bought quite a few because people on there recommended them to me. From the sounds of it and based on the Anthology Facebook page, they don’t want to deal with public criticism. As others have said, it’s likely that they are looking to sell the company or get more VC investors and the bad publicity of the forums wasn’t helping that.
 
plamtjeti said:
Yup, agreed. The gamble that VMP is taking now is how hard the crash will be... I would bet a lot of people on this forum will continue to buy and play records once the hype dies down again. Would our business (at the rate that we all used to buy from VMP) have been enough to sustain their business once all of the people just buying records to be cool have moved on to the next fad? They apparently don't think so...
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If it is a bubble I wonder what will happen to the prices of new releases
 
Let's be clear, this is a bubble. It is an impossibility that people will keep spending $30+ a time to play on a $100 record player in a box that will kill those records in a worryingly short amount of time. What matters for my corner of the industry is the 'conversion rate'- the number of people we persuade to keep at it with higher quality gear.

I'd be staggered if VMP weren't running the numbers on a similar calculation but with media.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
to be clear, I’m personally cool with any staff who were active on the old forum joining up here to be part of the community, just not cool with them joining up to act as official reps of
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I wouldn't even mind the generic vinylmeplease to join this forum and weigh in in the vmp related threads. We now have other subs like secretlysociety and lovevinyl doing that as well. But here they would be common users without a special status. But in their current circle-the-wagons mentality icannot see them doing that
 
Jan said:
I wouldn't even mind the generic vinylmeplease to join this forum and weigh in in the vmp related threads. We now have other subs like secretlysociety and lovevinyl doing that as well. But here they would be common users without a special status. But in their current circle-the-wagons mentality icannot see them doing that
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Y’know, if circumstances were different I’d be totally okay with that, but now...speaking for myself only...I see no justification to give them a direct voice here. That is the one consequence I’d prefer to see at the site level: no rewarding them with a voice for their business after they demonstrated exactly how important our voices were to them.

If someone were of like mind, they might even go ahead and register that username just to squat on it...
 
Indymisanthrope said:
(to be clear, I’m personally cool with any staff who were active on the old forum joining up here to be part of the community, just not cool with them joining up to act as official reps of the business).
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Indymisanthrope said:
I see no justification to give them a direct voice here. That is the one consequence I’d prefer to see at the site level: no rewarding them with a voice for their business after they demonstrated exactly how important our voices were to them.
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WHICH ONE IS IT INDY?????
 
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