Oblivions

It’s prob tough to have started in the music selling biz pre-PayPal and all this clearly outlined customer protection. Now, no matter what wacky policies you draft up about having zero culpability or responsibility for an order’s condition, if you accept PayPal or credit cards, you do have responsibility and a savvy buyer knows that, worst case scenario, they are protected. That said, please always be nice and polite to your customer support people. Even if they aren’t polite back or try to give you the runaround, which is rare, just hang up and skip to dealing with PayPal/your credit card company in that instance. Be nice to humans.

Man. He could release album after album of mediocre mid-paced pop rock like High as a Kite and it’d be light years better than the top 40 pop producer stuff he likes doing.

Ah, sorry! I had no idea Lauren would restock that a few days after. Worst case scenario, if you wanted to buy a copy from them instead, you can refuse the package and, once I receive it back, I can refund you. Otherwise, do let me know once you get it and are happy and have it safe in your shelves. Thanks, dude!

I haven’t had any seam splits out of the 12 or so albums I’ve got from VMP but almost everything has been somewhat warped. 5-6 have had some kind of scratch that causes ticks or weird surface noise flare ups. Their support team is great about sending replacements so it hasn’t been too annoying in the end despite the frequency of issues.

FYI, I'm leaving for vacation on Saturday, so any messages or payment I get after this Thursday will receive a delayed response when I get back. If there's something you wanted soon, let me know and, if you pay by Thursday night, I can have it out in the mail before I leave. Otherwise, I'll be back when I'm done living that Disney World/Florida life.

I'm selling my Parrot Flies half orange/green Asian Man variant. It has a medium warp but plays OK. $18 shipped. PM me if you dig it.

DEAL ENDED

N/M

Man. I vaguely remember this parody video and I'm hoping someone out there saved it.

Has anyone had luck with SmartPunk's customer support? I got a copy of the new Mustard Plug reissue that has multiple skips and SmartPunk ignored my email. I ended up opening a PayPal dispute and District Lines (their parent company?) messaged me right away and said they'd get SmartPunk to help. Within an hour, SmartPunk sent me a brief email ("We're going to forward this to our fulfillment folks!") but it's been radio silence in the 2 weeks since. I'm covered via PayPal but just curious if SmartPunk is normally this unhelpful.

It feels like DJ made a low level deal with the devil sometime around his Saint Bartlett album. You can lease my soul for 1,000 years and, in exchange, you will give me the power to release the most consistent, decently reviewed, well respected mature indie songwriter albums every year until I die.

Not sure, to be honest. It’s always possible it was a coincidental thing, if Google does auto-generate ads, but I remember it seemed more egregious than that. The screenshot was posted in the VMP forums a while ago and a VMP staff member said they’d noted it but didn’t elaborate further.

Would that setting cause your ad to mimic a competitor’s title and catch phrase/description, as well? Usually, the ads are obviously for Company B with language directed at customers searching for Compny A. This example was Company B using a very similar title and description to Company A and the only clue that they weren’t Company A was the URL.

Also, funny story. A few years back, VNYL put “Vinyl Me Please” as one of their Google ad words (and styled their paid search listing to look exactly like the VMP search result, including using the ad title “Vinyl Me Please”) to trick people searching for VMP to go to their website. Very not allowed by Google’s terms and policies but VNYL are LOLok tech asshole trolls who DGAF.

IMO, VMP is 1,000x better than VNYL. VMP is expensive and their marketing is very Vinyl As A Lifestyle Accessory at times but they actually put some energy and thought into their exclusives, release a decent range of genres and titles, and their customer support is nuts. They’ll replace any defective or damaged records immediately without questions and they let their customers yell at them and be insanely picky about corner dings and they gladly serve them with a smile. To me, their high prices are what keep them from being a practical recommendation for me. On the other hand, VNYL has consistently put out a poor product and service and survives mostly on the strength of their branding and tech biz savvy. If they release a well thought out exclusive here and there, it’s the exception, whereas with VMP, they release some gnarly and well-produced exclusives every single month. This concludes my ad for a service I actually don’t care too much about and only use when I get it for free or a major discount.

IMO, it’s pretty much the same core/style with less dependence on guitars to drive everything. Instead of just throwing in an extra layer of guitar, there are other instruments/effects used and everything else gets a little more foreground and time in the light. Reminds me a little bit of the last Paramore album which is the only Paramore album I like. If you dig their last album, I’d stick with this a little more before writing it off.

They seem to market towards new collectors, younger people, and college students who fit the Urban Outfitters demographic who aren't as savvy or obsessive about records yet.

Sleeve City has a few oversized sleeves. Unfortunately, any larger sleeve will most likely be too loose or tight as 3-5 LP packaging tends to vary a lot in size. So it’ll be trial and error and compromise on your part.

Edit: Cosmogramma sold. Still have Mitski. I got warped-but-no-skip copies of Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma and Mitski - Bury Me at Makeout Creek VMP editions for $16 each shipping included. $30 shipped for both. PM me if that sounds like something you’d dig! Thanks.

Off the top of my head, I'd add Great Grandpa, Forth Wanderers, and Bethlehem Steel to this quick list. Bully, Petal, and Camp Cope are cool too but I was actually not as stoked on their newer/sophomore LPs so I feel obligated to list them separately from Bliss, Great Grandpa, etc. Hop Along are more veteran than those bands but they are awesome and deserve mention. There were some other cool bands that released random tape singles and EPs in 2015-2017 in this same genre/sound but I'd have to look at my notes to recall the names since I listen to so many tapes by bands with silly hard-to-remember names.

I’ve been desperately waiting for round 2 of all these awesome new grunge-y non-bro bands that released albums in 2015-2017. Hoping for a new All Dogs LP soon too.

DEAL ENDED

I'm selling my copy of the Rob Crow 2018 Artist in Residence vinyl box set. Please note that a majority of the records have light to heavy warps. All play tested on a U-Turn Orbit with Grado Black 2 cartridge with no skips. Some of the more warped copies are one sided LPs and the worst of the warp is more visible on the non-playable side. Cost is $200 + $7 shipping. PM me to see videos of the warps and place your order. Thanks!

Never forget VC’s valuable contribution to the cluster F by leaking the store link an hour before it was sent to their mailing list (the place the band told everyone the post-RSD pre-order would be). I saw the mailing list link and bought it within 1 minute and I still had to wait several months for the SECOND pressing, since the leaked link had incurred an entire pressing’s worth of sales before we had a chance. Lol. Great memories.