ethics of selling records

for example: buying copies of a limited release with the sole intention of selling them a short time later at an inflated price.

i remember with the unexpected tame impala - innerspeaker vinyl "re-release" people were buying them off the american site for $23 and then immediately selling them on ebay and discogs for $80 (while they were still being sold on the site for $23, of course). extreme case i know, but you get the idea.

i figured this might be an interesting discussion to have now that there's a place to sell records on watmm.

i sold last week all my records, more than a thousand, drop the fuck inna store, got myself 3 grands for my entrie collection. who cares its all backed up 3 times (house/froend/job) in flac

then I went to get msyelf a nice La^phroag bottle bitches

records are a commodity like anything else. royalties-wise, the record sold in the first place—the artist is fine (relatively speaking). so are we talking about the morality of doing it as a record re-seller? resold record buyer?

  On 7/15/2011 at 5:58 AM, KY said:

so are we talking about the morality of doing it as a record re-seller? resold record buyer?

yeah, i was more talking about individuals/small companies reselling records online, but feel free to bring up any point you want.

I find the idea of flipping goods - snatching up items one has no interest in only to resell them for profit - to be repulsive. I cannot see any advantage in doing so other than the money gained. It is dysfunctional and an awful way to treat other people.

Are there organizations or companies that do this on a large scale?

  On 7/15/2011 at 6:55 AM, Wall Bird said:

I find the idea of flipping goods - snatching up items one has no interest in only to resell them for profit - to be repulsive. I cannot see any advantage in doing so other than the money gained. It is dysfunctional and an awful way to treat other people.

 

Are there organizations or companies that do this on a large scale?

Isn't that basically what Walmart or any other retailer does? Buys lots of things at a low price and then resells them marked up...

the middleman. whoa-oh, the middleman

wrong forum

(ba dum ching)

once i bought an illegal VCD set of a cartoon show i watched as a kid. i actually had to bid a bit for it!! so when i got it, i burned copies and ebayed those. they sold well!! so i did it again a few times. meanwhile the other guy was still selling VCDs too and sent me an angry email. HOW DARE I INFRINGE ON HIS INFRINGEMENT

  On 7/15/2011 at 6:55 AM, Wall Bird said:

I find the idea of flipping goods - snatching up items one has no interest in only to resell them for profit - to be repulsive. I cannot see any advantage in doing so other than the money gained. It is dysfunctional and an awful way to treat other people.

 

Are there organizations or companies that do this on a large scale?

It's fucking ticket tout fuckers who get to me. How dare they take limited tickets and resell at, a lot of the time, a fucking huge markup. Vinyl wise I think you've just gotta get in there early and quick if you really want it. There will also be plenty of other places to find it in the future, although sometimes at higher prices. With tickets you don't really have much of a second chance.

  On 7/15/2011 at 9:56 AM, hahathhat said:

once i bought an illegal VCD set of a cartoon show i watched as a kid. i actually had to bid a bit for it!! so when i got it, i burned copies and ebayed those. they sold well!! so i did it again a few times. meanwhile the other guy was still selling VCDs too and sent me an angry email. HOW DARE I INFRINGE ON HIS INFRINGEMENT

Lol, my brother did this exact same thing in the early days of ebay. Buy a bootlegged video tape of some concert, make copies and sell them. He made a fair amount of cash because some tapes went for upwards of $80.

  On 7/15/2011 at 6:55 AM, Wall Bird said:

I find the idea of flipping goods - snatching up items one has no interest in only to resell them for profit - to be repulsive. I cannot see any advantage in doing so other than the money gained. It is dysfunctional and an awful way to treat other people.

 

Are there organizations or companies that do this on a large scale?

*Buys another copy of cv313's super limited CD that is soon sold out*

an evening scalping tickets beats a week at a real job i'd say

Not all CDs goes up in price. Doh! You can make a real loss by buying multiple copies of a CD/LP.

If you wanna do it; It's a like a gamble you know. You can make a profit. I've tried it a few times. I see it as stocks. Which doesn't make me a bad guy, right ;)

  On 7/15/2011 at 5:34 AM, uptown devil said:

for example: buying copies of a limited release with the sole intention of selling them a short time later at an inflated price.

 

i remember with the unexpected tame impala - innerspeaker vinyl "re-release" people were buying them off the american site for $23 and then immediately selling them on ebay and discogs for $80 (while they were still being sold on the site for $23, of course). extreme case i know, but you get the idea.

 

i figured this might be an interesting discussion to have now that there's a place to sell records on watmm.

 

such speculation is of the fault of those releasing special limited edition whtever in the first place -

theyre doing it to themselves; institute the hype, the italiatcs on 'special' edition.. the handwritten luv notes,

if you wanted one you shoulda got on the preorder instead of waiting to buy after you know it had already sell out

what is new about any of this?

after that, the market decides what the going rate is . as it should be.

for once, i agree with nulls-boy. the market dictates the price, caveat emptor, and all that.

i've done this a few times, sadly ... bought 3x 'carte-de-visite' when Stars of the Lid was on tour, immediately sold them on ebay for $50 each; bought Animal Collective's 'animal crack box' for $90 and immediately resold for $200 etc. i feel somewhat bad about it, but if i put in the effort to get the record before other people, i figure it's sort of my 'cost of labor'...

in theory, every used album sale robs the artist of a new album sale. in practice, if you're only buying it with plans to resell, there's still a one-to-one relationship between people who actually want the album and the number of copies sold, so the artist isn't really losing a sale, they're just not getting the maximum profit (it's their fault, really, for not pricing higher). either way, the artist is more likely to sell out of inventory thanks to this practice, so i don't think it's necessarily bad.

no one should ever sell anything for a profit

ever.

that's the way it should be

there is i in enthics

  On 7/15/2011 at 5:34 AM, uptown devil said:

for example: buying copies of a limited release with the sole intention of selling them a short time later at an inflated price.

 

i remember with the unexpected tame impala - innerspeaker vinyl "re-release" people were buying them off the american site for $23 and then immediately selling them on ebay and discogs for $80 (while they were still being sold on the site for $23, of course). extreme case i know, but you get the idea.

 

i figured this might be an interesting discussion to have now that there's a place to sell records on watmm.

 

Old post, but still a current topic imo.

I really disapprove of this buying to resell immediately at stupidly high prices. What gives people the idea they can justify that kind of profit? Did they put any work in anything more than sitting in a chair, clicking some buttons on a screen, receiving the goods in the mail, putting it up for sale again and -oh, this must be where the actual work comes in- getting it to the post office to send out to a very lucky customer. That's basically all they need to do. Is that worth 50 Dollars/Pounds/Euro's?

Sounds a bit sour, i know, but that's how I feel about it. I have nothing against rarities and people owning something valuable that they want to sell. What I do have a problem with is how it happens with new records. I've had plenty of opportunities to buy multiple copies of a record, but chose not to. I think it's a bit too easy to hide behind the fact that 'the markets dictate the price'... Nonsense! The markets are people, and people make choices. You don't agree with something, but do it yourself anyway, you keep it alive. Guess a lot of people agree with what goes on... or do a lot of hiding.

What if the artist keeps a few copies to resell at an inflated price later, once it 'officially' sells out? I wonder how often that happens.

I remember once when this one metal band that's moderately popular was so strapped for cash that they sold their own personal copies of some limited edition vinyl with autographs for like $500