Caretaker’s An Empty Bliss Beyond This World got reissued yesterday by Boomkat. Brilliant, haunting, beautiful album. Sold out in 24 hours. Now being sold on Discogs for 10 times the price. People buying purely to sell on (in some case before they could even have got it from Boomkat.)
I feel this is unethical. Agree? Vinyl being treat purely as a commodity. But then I remember the time I bought a Company Flow LP from a record fair with the sole intention of making a profit on it from Discogs. Not much in the end (about £10) but somehow that didn’t feel unethical…
quite often buy two copies of lp’s, especially limited edition shit, and then make a bit of money selling one a few weeks/months/years down the line. easy
Unethical is a maybe a bit strong, but a little filthy maybe. If it’s sold out in 24 hours you would hope that the label will reissue it again.
I think the problem is that a market for this exists, that there are people thick enough to pay x10 the asking price of a vinyl. How you fix that, I don’t know!
The vinyl revival seems to have created a big market for stuff where they can do 300 - 1,000 copies and be confident they’ll sell them. Personally I think this is great especially for stuff where your only option is trying to find a shitty flimsy vinyl from the 1970s/80s (although obviously with discogs and eBay at least that is easier than it was).
Don’t see any reason why where the demand ends up being higher they can’t just do a repress - if people have waited years for a repress surely they can wait 6 months for another repress. By all means do a standard black vinyl or simpler packaging if you are wanting to create an ‘exclusive’ on the first repress but then at least people don’t feel obliged to pay stupid money second hand.
It’s the ltd editions on clear vinyl that went for hundreds. although first pressings are still worth considerably more than the re-presses, though less than they were before the second press arrived in February. I’ve got a sealed first press, which i picked up from my local HMV for £23 odd. I doubt I’d sell it, but I thought I’d keep it mint just in case.
Felt more ethical because I found it and sold it on, all be it for a profit, rather than denying someone from buying it in the first place. But yes, I’m not being entirely consistent.
Yeah, I suppose that’s fair enough, I can see why they are so sought after and I understand why people want to collect them and the like. I have a few first pressings and I kinda have a mindset like “yasss, this is cool!” but at the end of the day I still play them, I buy records to listen to them. So I don’t really mind whether I have a first press (still cool) or repress, so long as I have the music. Totally not saying anything against people who keep em sealed, it’s just a different thing really isn’t it? Collecting vs listening. Like having rare stamps but not sending mail with them.
Way of the world, I suppose, but does leave a nasty taste in the mouth. Recordstore Day is ridiculous, people queuing at 6am to then get home and put their gains on eBay at seven times the price…
As for concert tickets, don’t get me started…
Almost hand in hand with vinyl becoming fashionable again, it’s become a collectable commodity just like beanie babies etc. I mean there has always been a market for collectible records, but it’s getting more prevalent. A lot of it is also driven by people who collect historically collectible things like prints for films now picking up all these soundtracks being issued by companies like Death Waltz and Mondo (who started with posters). The interesting thing for me is this. I see a lot of people searching for records on these forums not specifying music they want…but the actual medium. Just ‘records’ seemingly. So they aren’t after the music, so much as the product.
But yeah RSD is bizarre. It’s now a way to buy a £30 quid ‘limited’ reissue of a record from the 80s on spunk coloured vinyl that you can buy an original press for £1 down the road in Oxfam.
Presumably the people playing 10x price are also getting it because its collectible rather than to listen it as well - nobody’s that desperate for the warmth of vinyl
