I just got a record player and just found Discogs. Haven't bought anything from them yet. Can you tell me what kind of enshittification you've experienced? I'd like to know what I'm in for.
Vinyl and LPs - Analogue Music Goodness
A community discussing turntables, vinyl and the art of listening to high-fidelity music on spinning platters.
The searching, sorting and filtering are all really bad. You can only pay with PayPal when it works, when PayPal returns you to their app it doesn’t know what to do and sometimes it says payment accepted and most of the time it does say anything, so it’s very confusing. I still use them because I have thousands of records catalogued with them and it’s the only database I have found that has just about every music format in it.
Interesting thanks. I definitely picked up on searching and sorting being hit or miss, didn't realize it might have been better before.
It’s definitely the mobile app with the issues. I had to complete a purchase using the web version and it was pretty good.
Oh that's a good tip.
eBay!
Yeah I guess that’s better, but aren’t you still tied to PayPal which is also a service I would like to avoid.
You don’t have to use PayPal: https://www.ebay.com/help/buying/paying-items/paying-items?id=4009
Nice, thanks for that info.
If you can find a record store near you, they can often source releases even if they don’t have them in stock. And many are happy to mail items to you.
Yeah my local record store is not bad, but that’s about it.
I’ve had decent success shopping online at:
- https://streetlightrecords.com/
- https://www.amoeba.com/ (easy to filter your search)
- https://shop.cactusmusictx.com/
And I’m guessing other major cities like Chicago or New York probably have similar kinds of stores that offer online sales.
I actually forgot about Amoeba I used to shop their store in SF
Likes discogs and eBay I don't know any, but you can search for record stores websites and buy stuff.
Yeah I was really hoping someone would point me to some new startup that is a direct competitor to Discogs, but I guess there isn’t any. I would be happy if there was a third party mobile app that uses their API and provides a better experience.
Do you have Vinted in your country? I've bought used vinyl through it and I'm really happy with the experience so far.
It's not dedicated to vinyl sales though and the availability of things you're looking for will be highly variable. But I picked up an original pressing of David Bowie - Low via Vinted for a fair price.
I have not heard of Vinted. It looks promising. Thanks
No problem! It's basically a service for people to sell used clothing/items, but they have a very good delivery guarantee.