September 4th, 2024 Updates

Changes to International Memberships

Starting in October 2024, Vinyl Me, Please will no longer offer memberships to members outside the United States.

Here’s what this means for you:

Membership Cancellation: If you are an international member, your membership will automatically be canceled at the end of your current term. You will still have access to tracks and swaps until your membership expires.

Store Purchases: If you are located in a country that we will continue to ship to, you can continue to buy records from our store until (and after) your membership ends. Member pricing will still apply while your membership is active, and shipping, plus any applicable duties and taxes, will be charged on future store purchases. Each order will be shipped separately, and purchases will be limited to in-stock items. We're working to make new ROTMs available for international members in the store during the months they are released—stay tuned for more details.

UPDATE 9/5/24: If you are an active international member, you will continue to receive member pricing AND free bundled shipping for store purchases while your membership is still active. Store purchases will still be limited to in-stock items only, and VAT / Duties will soon be implemented for all international store purchases on checkout (member or non-member).

New shipping rates will only be applied after your membership expires and for any future store purchases. 

Future Availability: We are exploring partnerships with international distributors to make VMP records available in local record stores around the world. We will keep you updated on any progress in this area.

If you have any other questions, please email us at info@vinylmeplease.com, and we will help you however we can.

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July 19th, 2024 Updates

ROTM consolidation + FAQ

Changes go into effect on Monday, September 23, 2024 at 10am MT (when the October Swap window opens). Here is a preview of how these changes might affect you: 

• If you have a primary subscription that is either Rock or Country, it will be converted to Essentials.
• If you have a Rock or Country add-on, those will be canceled after September. 
• You can still add or swap for the Rock/Country ROTMs in August and September.
• If you are in the middle of a 3, 6, or 12-month subscription and wish to cancel your subscription when these changes go into effect, please email info@vinylmeplease.com, and we will help you in this process. 

We’re also using this as an opportunity to revise how we intend to curate Essentials, Classics, and Hip-Hop moving forward. Here’s a preview of what you can expect:

• Essentials: We plan to focus Essentials on records that are truly essential to the modern vinyl collection, spanning any genre, era, or artist. This is where titles that might have been in Rock or Country will most likely end up. 
• Classics: This track will be renamed to "Jazz, Blues, Funk, and Soul," and it will include both classic and modern examples of these genres.
• Hip-Hop: The best Hip-Hop reissues, with unique remastering and top-notch packaging, covering any era of the genre’s history.

We will send a reminder in September before these changes go into effect. In the meantime, if you have any other questions, please email us at info@vinylmeplease.com, and we will help you however we can. 

Now shipping!  

We got the Keys to the warehouse

A few of our beloved team members took a trip to our warehouse in North Carolina last month to personally hand-number and assemble our Alicia Keys box set. Two lucky members got handwritten letters from Alicia in their boxes — was it you? Take a picture and tag us @vinylmeplease on Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook. 

    

C’mon Barbies, is your turntable ready to party?

One of our most creative box sets has started shipping and is landing on people’s doorsteps. We are so proud of the team for coming together to deliver such a beautiful product — we certainly hope you love it as much as we do! Tag us in your unboxing photos; we love to see them.

Your vinyl shopping did some good

For those of you who participated in our Earth Day Sale in April, you single-handedly saved 100k records from going into the landfill. You also gave us some great ideas on how we can provide you with fun bundles in the future. Mother Nature thanks you, and stay tuned as we continue to drop ‘em!

Shipping soon!

Impulse! will finally be on its way

The long-awaited Impulse! Anthology will be headed to your turntable in August. We can’t wait to hear your thoughts – remember to tag us on socials in your unboxing posts!

Shipping and production delays

We know there have been several production delays lately, which is never a fun experience (especially when we’re late communicating these updates). 

Several of these delays have been caused by moving projects from Vinyl Media Pressing to other facilities, and others have resulted from changes we’re making to streamline our supply chain. We sincerely apologize for these delays and are revising our internal communications plans so that we can be more proactive when/if delays do occur.

Member interviews and insights

Huge thanks to Kenneth, David, Levi, Shawn, Peter, Tom, Nicholas, Brian, Barbara, Michael, Connor, Hayden, Harry, Joseph, Lee, and David for connecting with our team over the last several weeks! These conversations were incredibly helpful in informing our plans for the future. Here are a few more exciting takeaways:

Curation and Title Diversity: While VMP is celebrated for its curation, we heard it can sometimes feel "hit or miss” (not always, but sometimes). These conversations helped us understand the importance of having a diverse set of compelling inventory in Swaps and the Store in case ROTMs don’t resonate. Our curation team is working hard to refine our curation strategy while building a pipeline of exciting drops for the future. This will take time — it’s a herculean feat to get any project over the finish line — and is part of how we’re reimagining the member experience to support the changes to ROTMs. 

Swaps: Swaps are a key part of the membership experience. However, Swap inventory can sometimes feel limited or stagnant, especially for long-term members. Based on your feedback, and to create a more diverse and compelling experience, we’ve been retooling our approach to Swaps. You might have noticed we’ve been experimenting with Swap bundles and Swap exclusives these last few months, and we have more plans in the works.

The new VMP Zine

Over the years, we’ve heard that many of you would prefer liner notes to not be inside the package. Well, good news: We're changing how we deliver liner notes moving forward.  

Beginning in September and every month after that, each member shipment will include a monthly Zine. Inside each Zine will be “liner notes” for the upcoming ROTMs, plus additional content, including essays, interviews, and a look ahead. Beginning in October, ROTMs will no longer include the liner notes booklets.  

Keep your eyes peeled for your September Zine, where we’ll preview October ROTMs. Any early guesses?

Listen up!

Have you checked out our flagship podcast Radio VMP? It’s on every podcast platform, and a few times a month, we interview artists we’re featuring in the Store and in ROTM. We recently talked to Los Campesinos! about We’re Beautiful, We’re Doomed, their sophomore album, and the Rock ROTM for July. Check it out here. 

Emails about new products are moving to Fridays

OK, we heard you! Less emails, but not less of the good stuff – check. Our store drop emails will now be consolidated and moved to Fridays! (Unless, of course, we get another Young Thug drop).  

If you don’t want to wait until the end of the week to see what we’ve dropped, subscribe to our SMS and follow us on socials! That way, you’ll be the first to know.

Updated policy for how we ship replacement records

We currently ship replacement records as unique shipments. This is costly and dramatically increases our carbon footprint, especially for international shipments. Beginning August 1 for active members, we will send replacements bundled with your next monthly shipment. 

There will be some exceptions to this policy, namely if something is lost in transit or an audio issue affects playback (or, of course, if you don’t have a planned shipment next month). We recognize this may not be the ideal experience, so we will do our best to accommodate when/if there is an urgent need for a replacement to be sent sooner.  

Paypal x VMP

We’re sad to say that we’ve had to turn off PayPal for the time being due to challenges in the integration and increased processing fees (we’re a small company, so these things matter a lot to us). This won’t affect anyone with an active membership that is paid through PayPal, but it means you won’t be able to check out from the store using PayPal. We know this is a bummer, and we hope to be able to restore PayPal at some point in the future, but unfortunately, we don’t have a definitive timeline right now.