2025 Mad Season Above Vinyl Reissue - 6 variants .. delayed

allstar340

PB11041 said:

allstar340 said:

Lost In Ohio said:

allstar340 said:

PB11041 said:

For a group that pimps about vinyl a lot, they sure continuously fuck up their vinyl production. 

They used to care about getting the best quality audio and physical media to fans who cared to listen at reasonable prices. Now it’s about exploiting the subset of consumers who are “collectors” desperate to own every variant of every album ever pressed and still never listen to them. They’ll gladly charge you several months in advance for something they know they can’t deliver on time. Really sad and poorly managed especially given we never even got an email from the 10 club with an update, just a forum post lol.

They feed the collectors who feed into the frenzy. If people stopped lining up at 3am for Record Store Day, there'd be a lot more than 3000 copies of something around the entire world.

My point is they don’t HAVE to play this game. They choose to because they are greedy. And the least they could do if they’re going to be this greedy (6 variants, extremely limited variants available via online preorder not even supporting local record stores, and not a RSD related release) is be fair and clearly state to people preordering an item that they have no clue when it’s actually going to be ready. 

How is this greed? When all is said and done there are maybe 7,500 copies of this being reissued. At $40 a pop that comes to $300K gross, then you have to take out the fees that the engineer cutting the laqcuers gets, the distribution across surviving band members and the departed's estates, distributors, stores etc.  This is not exactly a financial avalanche.  These things are always a labor of love with minimal financial upside. If the first round of the reissue sells well they can in theory due a regular release.

While the variant game can be a bit much, it is on fans if they obsess about getting all the variants. Independent stores all had an option to partake in a variant.

I get delays are frustrating and frankly my point was it is comical because it keeps happening in this bands circle like clockwork, but in terms of the small runs, pre-orders, that is the reality of modern physical media.  Artists and especially labels that assist those artists have no interest in sitting on stock endlessly. 

Disagree about modern physical media releases always being delayed. I’ve received countless preordered records in recent years on or before the street date.

I get your argument here is that it’s not as profitable as them gouging and scalping their fans on “premium” ticket prices like they are in Florida and everywhere right now — sure this isn’t as profitable or greedy as that…but it’s just another way for them to generate revenue while not actually caring about the customer and their experience. 

$300k of revenue is not an insignificant amount of money (conservatively since copies from other retailers sold for $46+, and scalpers, who could be affiliated with indie stores or the manufacturer are reselling preordered copies for anywhere from $100-1000+). I can’t imagine anyone is losing money on this given whoever is manufacturing this likely has made a deal with the label/management to cut down on production costs to incentivize more business. I’m not claiming it’s going to make them filthy rich, just stating it as an example of greed to generate revenue immediately driving a decision to accept preorders on something you don’t have logistically managed. 

All this being said, I just want to get an update with a reasonable timeframe of when to expect the record to actually be produced and in the mail to us. I’m looking forward to listening to and appreciating this album on vinyl but really disappointed in this release experience.