Vinyl Me Please Anthology

AnthonyI said:
Agreed, that was my main point, if they made the experience truly special, it wouldn't matter if they did get reissued later. The Anthology series "seems" to be for the true die hard's of the genre or label, to which that "experience", done correctly, would have been well worth the price tag alone.
Click to expand...

I agree, and the very format of the anthology was meant to push the idea of an experience. Getting two records at a time forces you to only listen to those two records in a given period. I love that idea, I think they were smart to come up with it. I just think they dropped the ball on pretty much everything else. And maybe they just overpromised and overhyped a little, which, fine. Maybe they'll tone it down for the next one (and maybe even price it more reasonably). I've been very annoyed throughout this whole thing, but at the end of the day, the worst problems with the box (Gordon sleeve, Wayne label) are both going to be fixed. I'd still get future boxes, but it's going to be pretty dependent on price and what exactly is in it. The "experience" definitely won't be a factor for me in the future.
 
Lee Newman said:
I think VMP needs to understand that creating a Facebook page and having a staggered release schedule is not an experience. As usual, everything that they own, I.e. execution, was lacking. You can’t create a Facebook group and assume someone like @seeirwin was going to come in and do your work for you. Just like they shouldn’t expect the community they had to return when they build their new thing, nor should they expect a community like they had to be built under parameters. Honestly, they should let the community and experience line die with the old VMP. Let the new VMP do what it is.
Click to expand...
Agree with ya on that. They dropped the ball on a ton of things. I actually don't hate the staggered release schedule but I do hate not having the liner notes they promised until the end. Would have been great to read the liner notes as you are listening to the albums. They also should have gotten somebody to write actual articles like @seeirwin like you said instead of just posting some links every once in awhile or doing a spotify playlist. Had they done some sort of microsite with more background, history, music theory, etc it would have been amazing. Instead, nothing.
 
MikeH said:
Agree with ya on that. They dropped the ball on a ton of things. I actually don't hate the staggered release schedule but I do hate not having the liner notes they promised until the end. Would have been great to read the liner notes as you are listening to the albums. They also should have gotten somebody to write actual articles like @seeirwin like you said instead of just posting some links every once in awhile or doing a spotify playlist. Had they done some sort of microsite with more background, history, music theory, etc it would have been amazing. Instead, nothing.
Click to expand...
Wait - I don't understand this. You are getting liner notes AFTER you get the albums the liner notes are about?

That's strange, right? I'm not the only one that thinks that is strange? Isn't the point of liner notes to listen to the album while you read the notes?
 
Teeeee said:
Wait - I don't understand this. You are getting liner notes AFTER you get the albums the liner notes are about?

That's strange, right? I'm not the only one that thinks that is strange? Isn't the point of liner notes to listen to the album while you read the notes?
Click to expand...
So the albums themselves have the original liner notes on the back of the albums (except for the Dexter Calling which is getting reprinted). But VMP has done a book of additional liner notes by Ben Ratliff that come with the last shipment. I get that they wanted the albums to be a bit of a surprise and sending the book of liner notes up front would have spoiled the surprise, but most people already knew the releases and I would have rather had the book of notes up front instead of being "surprised" by what the releases were.
 
Teeeee said:
Wait - I don't understand this. You are getting liner notes AFTER you get the albums the liner notes are about?

That's strange, right? I'm not the only one that thinks that is strange? Isn't the point of liner notes to listen to the album while you read the notes?
Click to expand...
I don’t mind liner notes after. I actually never read liner notes until I’ve listened to the album.

Since this is gonna be a floppy book like every other booklet they’ve done (I assume), I would have divided it into three. You would have gotten set one. Set two plus set one liner notes. Set three plus set two liners and a fourth shipment with the box and last liners.

I’m weird though. Now if it was gonna be a hardcover book like Beatles Mono or a Bowie box. That would have been cool to get afterwards as one item.
 
MikeH said:
So the albums themselves have the original liner notes on the back of the albums (except for the Dexter Calling which is getting reprinted). But VMP has done a book of additional liner notes by Ben Ratliff that come with the last shipment. I get that they wanted the albums to be a bit of a surprise and sending the book of liner notes up front would have spoiled the surprise, but most people already knew the releases and I would have rather had the book of notes up front instead of being "surprised" by what the releases were.
Click to expand...
Lee Newman said:
I don’t mind liner notes after. I actually never read liner notes until I’ve listened to the album.

Since this is gonna be a floppy book like every other booklet they’ve done (I assume), I would have divided it into three. You would have gotten set one. Set two plus set one liner notes. Set three plus set two liners and a fourth shipment with the box and last liners.

I’m weird though. Now if it was gonna be a hardcover book like Beatles Mono or a Bowie box. That would have been cool to get afterwards as one item.
Click to expand...
OK, this makes more sense. Not ruining the surprise. Lee's idea is a good one. And now that I have the explanation of why - I can see how this makes the "experience" last a bit longer. Hopefully it prompts people to re-listen while reading.

That book has the potential to be stunning! I hope they execute it well. Fingers crossed for you all!
 
Received the email for the final shipment, still haven’t received the 2nd shipment. A replacement for the 2nd shipment is coming according to customer service. I wonder if I’ll receive the Hutcherson and Akinmusire records before the Shorter and Donaldson records at this point.
 
Did they really pitch the release delay as a feature? I am surprised to read that some people think that's something that was a good idea or at all VMP' s "idea." The only reason companies do that is so they can get all the money up front while they can spread their expenses out. Pure win for them, no tangible benefit to the consumer. At least subscriptions usually give you the option to spread it out monthly.
 
dhodo said:
Did they really pitch the release delay as a feature? I am surprised to read that some people think that's something that was a good idea or at all VMP' s "idea." The only reason companies do that is so they can get all the money up front while they can spread their expenses out. Pure win for them, no tangible benefit to the consumer. At least subscriptions usually give you the option to spread it out monthly.
Click to expand...
I actually don't mind it, especially if it had been done well. The idea was you'd get a podcast plus two albums every two weeks for 6 weeks. Podcast would give some historical context, you'd learn about that era of Blue Note, get to sit down and listen to those two albums a lot and learn about the music and sub genre. Then your next batch would come. In theory, I like the idea because if I got 6 records at once, I likely wouldn't sit down and pay enough attention to them all individually to give them a deep listen. In practice, not getting the full liner notes up front and not getting a super informative podcast or any other additional materials to learn from has made it feel disjointed and not well thought out.
 
I still compare these to a Music Matters releases so the prices were right (if the execution was there)
wmeugene said:
Thought I saw some post on reddit or here that teased a Fania Anthology as #2 around October.
Click to expand...
I think a few things have been teased (Storf made it sound like two boxes were in the works)
wynn72 said:
Still waiting on my replacement for Silver from weeks ago. Ridiculous....
Click to expand...
I just received my Dexter replacement
dhodo said:
Did they really pitch the release delay as a feature? I am surprised to read that some people think that's something that was a good idea or at all VMP' s "idea." The only reason companies do that is so they can get all the money up front while they can spread their expenses out. Pure win for them, no tangible benefit to the consumer. At least subscriptions usually give you the option to spread it out monthly.
Click to expand...
The "delay" between has been a small window, it is not like we are waiting a month or more (unless you international)

My suggestion will be for them to announce all the selections prior to going on sale and what exactly the "extras" will be.
 
Lee Newman said:
I don’t mind liner notes after. I actually never read liner notes until I’ve listened to the album.

Since this is gonna be a floppy book like every other booklet they’ve done (I assume), I would have divided it into three. You would have gotten set one. Set two plus set one liner notes. Set three plus set two liners and a fourth shipment with the box and last liners.

I’m weird though. Now if it was gonna be a hardcover book like Beatles Mono or a Bowie box. That would have been cool to get afterwards as one item.
Click to expand...
I agree with ya...wish they had either done some digital liner notes up front or divided it into 3 floppy books. I tend to read liner notes as I listen to the album and it often makes me enjoy the first listen more. Overall, I just wish they did a better job contextualizing each album, whether that was with liner notes up front of additional information about the records or time period in Blue Note's history, etc. The podcast is fine and it's cool to listen to Don Was, but overall it's just somewhat amateurish and doesn't add much to the whole experience.
 
MikeH said:
I actually don't mind it, especially if it had been done well. The idea was you'd get a podcast plus two albums every two weeks for 6 weeks. Podcast would give some historical context, you'd learn about that era of Blue Note, get to sit down and listen to those two albums a lot and learn about the music and sub genre. Then your next batch would come. In theory, I like the idea because if I got 6 records at once, I likely wouldn't sit down and pay enough attention to them all individually to give them a deep listen. In practice, not getting the full liner notes up front and not getting a super informative podcast or any other additional materials to learn from has made it feel disjointed and not well thought out.
Click to expand...
I'm not saying it is bad and I totally get the perceived benefit to the consumer. I would probably do the same with 6 at once. But yeah, it fails with the booklet. It would be more of a win-win if they staggered the charges accordingly.

My main point was just that VMP did not choose to do it that way to benefit the consumer even though people may prefer it. No one would have been less happy if they sent them all with the first shipment.
 
Enoch said:
I still compare these to a Music Matters releases so the prices were right (if the execution was there)
Click to expand...

Yeah these were priced about the same as Music Matters and Analogue Productions, $35 for single and $45 to $50 for double LP albums which I don't think was unfair. It just so happens that Tone Poets is a killer value that is made even better by Amazon's cutthroat pricing.

I think once the sleeve and Wayne Shorter LP are fixed, I'll be pretty happy with the overall package. I think the 2ish week split in between packages kind of came back to bite them as I assume VMP would've gone back and checked packages two and three if they were not in production one after the other.
 
dhodo said:
Did they really pitch the release delay as a feature? I am surprised to read that some people think that's something that was a good idea or at all VMP' s "idea." The only reason companies do that is so they can get all the money up front while they can spread their expenses out. Pure win for them, no tangible benefit to the consumer. At least subscriptions usually give you the option to spread it out monthly.
Click to expand...

I don't know, I can't see how this is a cheaper method for them. Instead of having to do a single batch shipment of every anthology box, they're paying 3x the shipping cost, plus all the time it takes to do three different shipments packaged and all that stuff. I still like the idea in theory, but in practice they really bungled it.

Enoch said:
My suggestion will be for them to announce all the selections prior to going on sale and what exactly the "extras" will be.
Click to expand...

Yeah I think this is what they need to do. They set really high, vague expectations with this first box and didn't come through at all. If they had just been up front about the whole thing and told us exactly what the "experience" would be, then fine, that's reasonable.
 
Enoch said:
My suggestion will be for them to announce all the selections prior to going on sale and what exactly the "extras" will be.
Click to expand...
The Fania release post from Storf made it sound like VMP ROTM for essentials and classics might both be Fania. But who knows at this point...we know they are aiming to do more Anthology releases and I bet they are already very deep into production on at least 1 of them.

I think your suggestion is spot on--either announce all of the selections, or lower the price. If this had been like $150 for a mysterious 6 album release for a label that I'm a fan of, I would likely go for it, even without the promise of other extras. I went in on the Blue Note box because I knew the albums (some of which I had been hunting down for years) and VMP had a previous track record of really great sounding Blue Note pressings that were on par with MM for me. Based on the cost of A) earlier pressings of the guessed albums and B) cost of MM pressings, I felt this was an okay price--definitely not a steal, but fair. The Tone Poet pressings are spoiling me though...

Overall, being up front instead of vague on all the details would be lovely. But VMP is mastering the art of FOMO and I think that is largely why this sold out. The other part, and I'm basing this on the types of people that are in the FB group, is that I'm not entirely sure that most of the people who bought this are VMP subscribers. I think the Blue Note crowd make up a fairly large portion of the buyers of this Anthology. I have been really surprised at the number of people who had no clue what albums were being pressed. I think we are in a bit of a bubble in terms of being very involved VMP members and participants, so it's very likely that VMP doesn't even care about us and our feedback on this because we might not make up a big proportion of their consumer base on this. It will be VERY curious to see how they market the next non Blue Note box. BN has a huuuge built-in fanbase that made this one easy to sell out.
 
botherly said:
Yeah I think this is what they need to do. They set really high, vague expectations with this first box and didn't come through at all. If they had just been up front about the whole thing and told us exactly what the "experience" would be, then fine, that's reasonable.
Click to expand...
I still would have been fine with the split up shipping if I knew what I was getting and then they could have sent the booklet at the beginning
 
MikeH said:
The Fania release post from Storf made it sound like VMP ROTM for essentials and classics might both be Fania. But who knows at this point...we know they are aiming to do more Anthology releases and I bet they are already very deep into production on at least 1 of them.

I think your suggestion is spot on--either announce all of the selections, or lower the price. If this had been like $150 for a mysterious 6 album release for a label that I'm a fan of, I would likely go for it, even without the promise of other extras. I went in on the Blue Note box because I knew the albums (some of which I had been hunting down for years) and VMP had a previous track record of really great sounding Blue Note pressings that were on par with MM for me. Based on the cost of A) earlier pressings of the guessed albums and B) cost of MM pressings, I felt this was an okay price--definitely not a steal, but fair. The Tone Poet pressings are spoiling me though...

Overall, being up front instead of vague on all the details would be lovely. But VMP is mastering the art of FOMO and I think that is largely why this sold out. The other part, and I'm basing this on the types of people that are in the FB group, is that I'm not entirely sure that most of the people who bought this are VMP subscribers. I think the Blue Note crowd make up a fairly large portion of the buyers of this Anthology. I have been really surprised at the number of people who had no clue what albums were being pressed. I think we are in a bit of a bubble in terms of being very involved VMP members and participants, so it's very likely that VMP doesn't even care about us and our feedback on this because we might not make up a big proportion of their consumer base on this. It will be VERY curious to see how they market the next non Blue Note box. BN has a huuuge built-in fanbase that made this one easy to sell out.
Click to expand...
Yeah but if word gets around to both future potential customers and labels/artists how this one went down it hurts VMP's credibility and standing (I know, I know).
 
Enoch said:
I still would have been fine with the split up shipping if I knew what I was getting and then they could have sent the booklet at the beginning
Click to expand...

I kinda like the split shipping honestly, I agree with the idea that it made me listen to the albums more closely.

I also really like getting stuff in the mail, so........
 
Enoch said:
Yeah but if word gets around to both future potential customers and labels/artists how this one went down it hurts VMP's credibility and standing (I know, I know).
Click to expand...
I'm actually curious about that...because with the tons of bad press (no pun intended but kinda pun intended) around VMP lately, I wonder if this will all bite them in the ass. VMP can still claim to labels/bands that they sold x amount of copies and sold out, but stuff like the Outkast issue seems to becoming more and more prominent. I'm also pretty shocked to see so many exclusives not sell out. I thought that Comet is Coming would have sold out pretty instantly at only 500 copies but it seems to still be around. Maybe it is because that album is older and most people who wanted a copy have one...but it's still bizarre to me. It would have sold out really quickly with the old forum still around.

Will some other big label want VMP to do a box set further down the line with all these issues with the BN one? Represses, quality control, people complaining, etc. I suppose the complaints aren't super public now since they are on the private FB group only...but still.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top