December 2021 Updates

🗓 Mark your calendars Starting with our January Record of the Month launch, all ROTM launch days will now fall on the third Thursday of the month, consistently. The January ROTM launch will take place on December 16 at 10 a.m. MT. The window will continue to close on the last day of the month at 11:59 p.m. MT. 

🔁 Swap Preview timing. On a related note, the newly minted Swap Preview — a  sneak peek of ALL the additional titles that will be available to customize your box — will now always go live 48 hours before ROTM launch. By making the window longer and launching on a consistent day and week each month, we want to help you better plan for your next month’s journey. 

    

📖 Updates to The Magazine This month, we rolled out some updates to our digital editorial outlet, The Magazine. The first thing you’ll notice is that we’ve moved, and we’re now on the same site as the rest of VMP. You’ll also notice that we’ve updated it with a fresh new look. Explore what’s new and read our recent list of the best 50 albums to come out in 2021.

🎁 Holiday Giveaway Until December 24th, people who gift a VMP subscription will automatically be entered to win a FREE 12-month membership. Go on, gift lost sounds and spin them too! 

*Contest is limited to one entry per person. U.S. only. Void in RI

🧩 We have a winner! Thanks to everyone who entered our first official round of Guess Me, Please. Congratulations to our savvy winner Christopher C., who guessed all 12 of our Records of the Month for January, February and March! 

October 2021 Updates

🔍 Swap Preview & More Earlier this month, we introduced the concept of a Swap Preview, so members can fully map out their monthly journey. The Swap Menu itself looks a bit different with a few extra tools for finding that perfect pick. Look for more updates around this aspect of your membership experience in the upcoming months. What do you think of the updates so far? Let us know here.

🏆 50 Hip-Hop Contest Winner! In October, we ran a contest in honor of our 50th Hip-Hop ROTM, Three 6 Mafia’s When the Smoke Clears: The person who successfully referred the most people won a copy of each in-stock Hip-Hop ROTM. Congrats to our grand prize winner, Shawn Amjad. Happy Spinning!

And P.S. you can continue to Refer a Friend year-round and get $10 in store credit for each successful referral.

🎁 Holiday Timelines The holiday season is upon us. There are a few things to note, in order to ensure you receive your gifts and holiday records in a timely manner.

→ Choose “Direct Ship” at checkout for in-stock items no later than 12/06, for the highest likelihood of arrival by 12/24 (applies to U.S. orders). → Our 2021 Holiday Exclusives include free Direct Shipping. Add to cart soon to get in the spirit!

🗺 Adventure on your Qwest In celebration of our new The Story of Quincy Jones Anthology, we partnered with Qwest TV, a subscription on-demand video service and global hub for music and culture created by Quincy Jones, which features 24-hour programming and over 1,300 hand-selected concerts, interviews, archival gems and documentaries. Now, Qwest TV is giving all VMP community members 50% on an annual subscription. Just follow the link here to sign up, and the voucher will be applied. Offer is only valid for 30 days.

🩹 Damage Policy We put a lot of pride into our products and ensuring your experience with VMP is nothing short of remarkable. We hope you don’t have issues with your VMP products, but there may be times when you’ll receive something that isn’t quite up to snuff. The most common types of damages are sound-related (scratches, excessive noise, warps, locked grooves) or cosmetic (jacket seam splits, bent corners, print defects). If you are ever unsure, please email us and we’ll help determine what’s intentional and what’s not. Read our full damage policy here.

Generally speaking, if there is an issue with a record that you receive from VMP, let us know and we will do everything we can to make it right.

🦠 COVID-19 Impacts As you’ve likely heard in the news, COVID-19 has created a substantial disruption in the global supply chain. This has raised challenges for VMP like every other business. In our case, it has occurred in areas such as seaport delays, capacity constraints at pressing plants and shortage of production materials. Fortunately, our team has been working very hard and very closely with our partners to take every possible measure to ensure your music arrives to you on time and in great condition. Nonetheless, please reach out to our Customer Care team if you have any questions about an anticipated shipment or quality issues with a received shipment.

🎨 Stickers for all Congrats to our winners thus far. Keep your design submissions coming and we’ll keep the free stickers coming. Submit your designs here. Winners receive $100 store credit and 200 stickers of their design.

🌅 A Rising tide VMP Rising is our series where we partner with up-and-coming artists to press their music to vinyl and highlight artists we think are going to be the Next Big Thing. And with past artists including Dua Saleh, Still Woozy, Ric Wilson and more, we’d say our instincts aren’t too far off. Keep an eye out in the upcoming week for a cool, sweet treat to add to your VMP Rising shelf.

⬆️ Give your playlist game an upgrade Sometimes new music playlists can be a bit unsatisfying. New tracks come and go every week, with few resources to dig in and explore the latest in music. Luckily, our favorite weekly playlist, On Rotation, just got an upgrade, with a new annotated component to each weekly playlist that features quotes from the artists and facts about each track. Check out our latest Annotated On Rotation, and keep an eye on the VMP Magazine for a companion piece to your weekly listening sessions.

August 2021 Updates

💯 VMP 100 marches on

Launching our 100th Essentials ROTM in March was such an exciting moment at VMP; it was a pleasure to bring 10 fan-favorite represses back. Did you miss out on any titles? Keep an eye out as they reappear in Swaps throughout the rest of the year.

** 📦 Orders page enhancements**

In May, we introduced some helpful options on your Orders page. Now, it’s much easier to filter your orders by Records of the Month or store purchases, as well as only view your orders that have yet to ship. We’re working hard to make more improvements around your order tracking experience — more to come!

🧠 Membership Tips page

Also in May, we released a “Tips” page, which you can access from your account and serves as a single landing spot for everything you need to know about your membership.

⏰ Email & SMS reminders during Swap window

To help ensure you get a record you love each month, we’ve added email & SMS reminders on the last day of the Swap window, as well as a Swap confirmation email to help reassure that your Swap option is confirmed. Opt in to SMS here (U.S. numbers only).

** 📅 Adjusted Swap window times**

The Swap window now opens at 10 a.m. MT / 12 p.m. ET on that month’s designated day. You can see the exact date on your membership page. The Swap window closes at 11:59 p.m. ET on the last day of the month.

🛍️ New ROTMs in the VMP store

Still need to snag a recent Record of the Month? If there is remaining stock, new ROTMs will launch in the VMP store three months after their initial membership launch. We’ll also mention these in our Wednesday Store Drop email once they hit the store.

🛒 Shop Pay x VMP store credit

VMP store credits are unfortunately not compatible with Shop Pay (Shopify’s accelerated checkout process). While this issue is on Shop Pay’s end, we’ve made some adjustments to help customers bypass this issue. Apologies to those affected and if you still have trouble using your credits, please contact us at info@vinylmeplease.com.

📋 Get on the waitlist

When a sold out product comes back in stock or gets repressed, we’ll always notify folks on the waitlist first. And while we can’t always predict what will come back, it never hurts to get on the list, because you just never know! Note: You must be opted in to receive VMP emails to receive these notifications.

💌 Manage email preferences

You can now choose which types of emails you want to receive from us! Just go here to customize.

🎨 Stickers for all

Congrats to our winners this far. Keep your design submissions coming and we’ll keep the free stickers coming. Submit your designs here. Winners receive $100 store credit and 200 stickers of their design.

🚚 Shipping timelines

Our fulfillment and shipping have experienced some delays lately because of industry labor shortages, as well as late product arrivals due to a shortage of shipping containers. We will continue to test the separation of ROTM and Store orders as some of these external factors stabilize so we can better determine its impact on an improved shipping experience.

⌛ Production timelines

We are seeing longer timelines for PVC pellets and jackets. We are working with our partners to ensure they have everything they need to make the music we all love. To ensure we can get your items out on time, or as close to on time as possible, we are moving our production timelines forward to accommodate this change in material schedule.

📝 6,000+ member survey responses

Extending a massive “Thank you!” to everyone who took our member survey! It’s extremely instrumental in helping us determine how to keep improving our customer experience throughout the rest of the year.