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IN WHICH… I REVEAL VINYL SUICIDE TECHNIQUES

Sellers of second-hand records rely on the goodwill of their customers, who are difficult enough to attract, let alone retain, so I’m not sure that one Portsmouth-based establishment trying to entice people to sell their unwanted vinyl took quite the right tone in its online ‘invitation’ to do so: ‘We don’t provide free valuations or recommend other shops. We do not have the time to reply if not interested in buying your records. Therefore, if you don’t hear from us within 48 hours we are not interested.’ That abrupt attitude is hardly likely to convince potential customers of a warm welcome, is it?

A fellow member of a vinyl-based Facebook group caught my attention when he wrote: ‘Visited a record shop that was absolutely packed to the nines with literally thousands of records today and sadly left almost empty handed, I’m sure the guy didn’t actually want to sell me anything really. I had money to burn but he had next to nothing priced up and when asked about prices of any records, he just threw out a crazy number. I asked him if he planned to be buried with his stock like an Egyptian King! Maybe he’s turning into a hoarder now, not a vendor. I guess he can’t bear to part from his children.’ Other than that the shop was in England, the writer, Chris, didn’t identify a location (although I did later discover it is in Staffordshire). Someone else on the site named a shop with the same odd strategy, in Washington – so maybe this is a worldwide phenomenon! My similar Kiwi experience is outlined elsewhere.

But I then came across an eye-catching example of what is, fortunately, a rare species of business technique, the online suicide note. Scott Halstad, of the website scottsmusicshak.com definitely wasn’t in the best of moods in May 2018 when I found his site:

‘This blog post may come across the wrong way, but I feel I need to write it. I’ve sold music on a number of platforms in various online “shops” or “stores”. A couple have been successful. But this website – I’m being vulnerably honest here – has not been overly successful. I’ve tried to figure out why. I don’t have the largest inventory because I’m a one-person shop, and don’t have the capital the wholesalers and distributors have. I try to make up for that with excellent customer service, very rare items & collectibles & more. I engage with people, try to spend time at social media marketing, do SEO (search engine optimisation), offer promotions & discounts, do free custom searches for potential customers. But I’m not getting any significant ROI (Return on investment). This isn’t worth my time & effort.

‘I try to add to the inventory regularly; to add diversity (and) what people want. This site tracks searches, so I know what people are searching for. My wife and I have been continually shocked by the search results on this site, what people are searching for. And not finding. And, therefore, not buying. People are searching for stuff we’ve NEVER heard of, as in most of the search terms are meaningless to us. And between us, we own thousands of albums, and have heard of, seen, or sold thousands more! We’re familiar to varying degrees with most groups, most movements & genres from the present, back to the 1960s. We THOUGHT we were familiar with most. We were wrong. You folks are searching for truly bizarre stuff! When people are searching for items I can get, I’ve tried to get items in. But even when I do that, no one is buying them. Examples include multiple searches for Duran Duran. So I got three DD albums in. Have they sold? No.

‘There were searches for Alice Cooper, Pearl Jam, James Taylor, Suspiria, Nirvana, Iggy Pop, Iron Maiden, Linkin Park, Hip Hop, John Coletrain (sic). I now carry something by all of those musicians. None of them have sold. Why? I’ve gotten new, mint copies, I’ve gotten used original copies. I’ve gotten imports & promos. Why aren’t people buying them?

‘Here’s where it gets weird. I’m going to list some of the most recent searches. Some make sense. Some I can carry. Many I’ve never heard of & don’t know who they’re referring to.

In no particular order:

• sigrid

• my chemical romance

• brian protheroe

• rolling stones (I carry 2 items by the Stones currently)

• daniel johnston

• teddy huffman and the gems

• morbid angel

• penny henry

• apple bite xtc

• hed kandi

• hot heat

• heavy bones

• bts cd

• yung bleu

• cinematic

• dance gavin dance happiness

• rex nelon singers

• spafford

• chris ledoux

• april wine

• thea gilmore

• mungos hifi

• annihilator

• microwave

• greta van fleet

• thea gimore

‘SERIOUSLY???!!! Do any of you even KNOW half of these groups??? I know some of these. And I’ve shown a willingness to obtain items by groups from past searches. But since NONE of them have resulted in sales, I’m not going to invest any more money on searches for obscure groups. I’ll take custom orders, if interested, but even the people asking me to do free custom searches -- in some cases for stuff that DOESN’T EVEN EXIST!!! -- won’t pay for the items when I come up with what they’re looking for, even when I produce items THAT DON’T OFFICIALLY EXIST!!! Don’t ask for rare, impossible to find items or for collector’s items or for items that don’t exist and then expect to pay $10 for it. It doesn’t work that way.

‘I collect many rare items for my personal collection. I had to pay triple digits for a rare Gary Numan import recently. That’s what you DO when you’re ordering a rare import. You have to PAY MONEY for it! They’re not damn well free! If you want me to get an impossible-to-find unreleased Czech import of your favourite group, it’s going to cost ME hundreds to get, so I have every right to tack on a small finder’s fee. But when people aren’t even willing to spend $50 on a decades-out-of-print cassette from a small European publisher when there are only 2 copies for sale in the world, you have unrealistic expectations, my friends.

‘If I can produce something you claim to want that has never been made before, & I can get it for you for under $100, be freaking glad & pay up! I’m not making a huge profit off this & I just wasted 10 hours of my time searching the globe. Forgive me if I sound ungrateful, but I’ve poured my heart & soul, and a lot of money, into this site. Sorry for the harsh attitude, but it’s beyond ridiculous! If you want free music, please return to Spotify. If you want quality tactile/analog music, I can provide it. But not for free. As of now, I’ll ask for a search fee. $10 for a custom search. $20 for a tremendously rare, hard-to-find item. If I find it, I expect it to be purchased. That’s only reasonable, considering the hundreds of hours I’ve devoted to this. Stop wasting my time. Please. Now, have a nice day.’

Definitely the closest I have ever come across to a business-suicide note.

When I next checked Scott’s site in late November 2018, this is what I found:

‘Sorry, this shop is currently unavailable.’

Clearly, poor Scott had been having a nightmare day/week/month/year/life when he wrote that rant. Here’s a nightmare of my own I inadvertently rekindled…