Vinyl Me Please (store, exclusives, swaps, etc)

Company tried to get too big without doing any of the necessary foundational work. Should have stuck to their bread and butter. A few great tracks and minimal exclusives. Anthologies and all of the fluff (remember when they would shoot like music videos for certain tracks???? Jesus what a waste of money).
 
Remember that bonus credit for swaps that they gave everyone last month hahahahaha.

also how is a $33 swap going to work for all the titles they can’t sell that are worth far less.
 
radiodead said:
Really bummed this is coming to an end. I almost want to do the 12 month sub just to hang around for as long as possible (I’m a masochist I guess).
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Do it we can watch everything burn down around us together! but seriously at this point if you want to stay a member it seems the smarter thing to 25 a month vs 43 is a big deal, but they wont offer that forever.
 
radiodead said:
Company tried to get too big without doing any of the necessary foundational work. Should have stuck to their bread and butter. A few great tracks and minimal exclusives. Anthologies and all of the fluff (remember when they would shoot like music videos for certain tracks???? Jesus what a waste of money).
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One of my faves:

 
It may not be just VMP with price increases I've noticed that prices have been creeping up in general. The records in my Amazon cart have been sitting there around 33 dollars for a while. I usually keep them in the cart and buy when they're discounted. It just seems like the deals are coming less frequently also.
 
Imagine this:
You love VMP, you love those stupid pseudo-obis and the colors and the emotion of not having any idea when your albums will arrive. You love VMP because it's the best damn records club.
But you also don't have a lot of money, so you subscribe for three months.

And in those three months, you pay 40 dollars for Lapsley. Or Tennis.

Yeah, I love this.
 
I can't imagine they didn't calculate exactly this reaction. I guess they want far less customers on the one hand, but such that are willing to pay upscale prices for an average product compared to audiophile pressings. Also they want to thin out monthly and 3 months subscriptions and try to get everyone subscribed for a yearly subscription. This means they would need to put less effort into their RotMs and could sell more records with cheap rights that cost less money. If most people join on a yearly basis it's less important to present great RotMs to win customers.
So the more I think about it, I believe they really think that loosing many members while raising prices must give them more profit in the end.
 
The more I think about the numbers, the more I think that VMP is just actively trying to lower their subscriber base. Hike prices up 40%...if you lose a bunch of members, you could still be hitting the same numbers you're hitting in gross sales while also lowering your production and inventory costs (less members = less ROTMs pressed = less copies of Patrice Rushen sitting on the shelves). Less members theoretically means less CS issues to deal with. Everything becomes simpler. It's a crazy business idea though IMO...to actively piss off your customers and hope that enough won't be mad (or won't notice) and will stick around blindly.

edit: jinx @Bluecloud777
 
radiodead said:
Company tried to get too big without doing any of the necessary foundational work. Should have stuck to their bread and butter. A few great tracks and minimal exclusives. Anthologies and all of the fluff (remember when they would shoot like music videos for certain tracks???? Jesus what a waste of money).
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They have at least one decent record across 3 subs most months and if they cut back and consolidated to one club offer then theyd have a solid slate of releases for the year. I wonder if they wouldn't be better focusing on Classics and in the months where they've only got a Patrice Rushden, low bar Bar Keys or, as much as I enjoyed it, a throw away Albert King then they chuck in a Spiritualized, White Stripes QotSA affair... Which would have covered them for 6 months of totally solid offerings. I'd pay reasonable cash for a 8 month run like Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Spiritualized, Tyler McCoy, BVSC, Herbie Hancock and BB King and The Stooges. Makes more sense than bankrupting themselves trying to be something to everyone.
 
I really think the biggest mistake they made here (and Paul admitted this on Reddit), was hiking it up 50% at once instead of gradually which understandably comes across like greed.

I know many will disagree me but they've clearly been wanting to move to that more audiophile niche space, like Speakers Corner, Analogue Productions, Mofi, etc and this is bringing pricing in line with that. Whether they actually put out a product in line with that quality or worth that money is completely subjective. It's your money for discretionary purchases and you can choose to support the company or not, and support a company like this or not.
I think it's absolutely wild that people spend so much on MMJ releases which, despite amazing quality, I feel are way more overpriced than VMP and are a much shittier company when it comes to gouging customers. But to each their own

Don't get me wrong, the price increase sucks, and they went about it wrong. And I feel bad for those who really enjoyed the service and can't afford it anymore. But at the end of the day, it's just records and if you don't think it's worth it anymore, it's definitely easy to take your money and buy elsewhere. And if that's the case, VMP likely wasn't giving you the albums you really wanted for your collection anyway.
 
MikeH said:
Did I miss something where Pauly responded with :/ on reddit? I keep seeing it pop up everywhere now and saw something about how he messaged a mod to apologize for it?
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He uses that after his responses alot and has for while, just a way to bring a little levity to a situation. But people were obviously riled and now throwing it in his face. We'll probably see it for years now. It's going to be the new "what would you do with more time?".
 
wynn72 said:
He uses that after his responses alot and has for while, just a way to bring a little levity to a situation. But people were obviously riled and now throwing it in his face. We'll probably see it for years now. It's going to be the new "what would you do with more time?".
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Tyr said:
What would you do with more :/ ?
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It's already begun....
 
wynn72 said:
I really think the biggest mistake they made here (and Paul admitted this on Reddit), was hiking it up 50% at once instead of gradually which understandably comes across like greed.

I know many will disagree me but they've clearly been wanting to move to that more audiophile niche space, like Speakers Corner, Analogue Productions, Mofi, etc and this is bringing pricing in line with that. Whether they actually put out a product in line with that quality or worth that money is completely subjective. It's your money for discretionary purchases and you can choose to support the company or not, and support a company like this or not.
I think it's absolutely wild that people spend so much on MMJ releases which, despite amazing quality, I feel are way more overpriced than VMP and are a much shittier company when it comes to gouging customers. But to each their own

Don't get me wrong, the price increase sucks, and they went about it wrong. And I feel bad for those who really enjoyed the service and can't afford it anymore. But at the end of the day, it's just records and if you don't think it's worth it anymore, it's definitely easy to take your money and buy elsewhere. And if that's the case, VMP likely wasn't giving you the albums you really wanted for your collection anyway.
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I think I prefer that they just ripped the band-aid off instead of going up few bucks every few month. Hopefully this is as high as they go for a few years.
 
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