Just as I’m starting to get back into vinyl records, one of the format’s proponents, a popular record club called Vinyl Me, Please is shutting down.
Since launching in 2012, Vinyl Me, Please has offered boutique, collectible record pressings to a subscriber base paying as much as $654 a year for the highest-tier membership, as The Denver Post’s John Wenzel reported last month. The article traces the period of instability back to the firing, in March 2024, of three senior staff, whom the board of directors allege had conspired to divert company funds to build a pressing plant. Cameron Schaefer, the company’s former chief executive, said he believed that he and the two others had been fired to save on severance.
At least the accused were (allegedly) trying to do something that would benefit the record industry!
I was a part of a record club called Sounds Delicious that put out cover albums by some of the most recognizable independent musicians. The club offered some extremely well done slabs of vinyl. A couple that come to mind were The Pains of Being Pure At Heart reimagining Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever, a master class in how to adapt a rock touchstone into indie pop and Frankie Rose covering The Cure’s Seventeen Seconds with all the appropriate adoration.
With Sounds Delicious, which is still taking orders, but hasn’t put anything out in a long time, the rate of releases was always spotty. Delays and apologies were abundant. The proprietors are a wonderful husband and wife team who really believe in the concept but it seems like a significant logistical challenge to make work.