“We tried to make the experience cool so they would tell friends.” “We had twelve people sign up the first month,” says Fiedler. They managed to attract a handful of subscribers. With no marketing whatsoever, the pair launched the club, offering the idea to friends and anyone else who would listen. “We feature one record per month, but it’s something we think you need.” “The original idea was offering undiscovered stuff that needs to be heard,” says Fiedler. This arrangement makes Fiedler and his partners into tastemakers, a role they take seriously. Instead, every subscriber receives the same carefully chosen record. This isn’t a Pandora-like service, with choices tailored to a listener’s predilection for certain artists or styles. Vinyl Me, Please takes the opposite approach, offering a single album each month. Yes, it was a way to build a collection quickly, but the choices, though numerous, were far from the best albums available. The record clubs that people remember from the ’70s and ’80s thrived on offering lots of choices for a small fee. Why would you do it?’”īut Fiedler and Barstow had a fresh take on the old concept. “People in the industry told us, ‘This has been done. “The record club is nothing novel,” admits Fiedler. In 2013, Fiedler and friend Tyler Barstow started Vinyl Me, Please, despite the fact that the record-club concept has been tried before and has drawn many detractors. “Vinyl forces intentionality, which gives you a deeper connection.” “If you’re listening to something on Spotify, you could listen to a million other things,” he points out. There was something about having a physical album, he says, that made the music feel more real and important than it would simply playing on a computer. It was overwhelming how much was there and yet hard to get a connection."įiedler says he realized that part of what helped him connect to music as a kid was his father’s record collection later, his own CD collection served the same purpose. “What didn’t sit well with us was we didn’t think we had any connection to any of the music. “It was right about the time all the streaming companies were making a big impact,” says Fiedler of the club’s beginnings. For Louisville-based Vinyl Me, Please, a record club that offers exclusive monthly installments of “must have” albums, the trend back toward analog has been a way to get music that the club thinks people should hear out to a growing audience.įor owner Matt Fiedler and his friends, something was missing in today’s digital-music landscape. Despite the proliferation of digital music through downloads and streaming services, vinyl sales have continued to grow.
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