Discogs’ vibrant vinyl community is shattering

 

A home for music diehards has been fractured by increased fees that are pushing sellers and shoppers to other platforms.

By Natalie Weiner

Photo illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge; Photo by Sean Gladwell / Getty Image

If you are a devoted vinyl collector, an obsessive music fan, or — as is often the case — both, Discogs is very nearly a lifestyle. The site has become the internet’s foremost database of recorded music and one of the most extensive marketplaces available for physical music media, with every bit of it generated and offered by users. You can catalog your collection, look up information about even the most obscure artists, cross-check record store prices to see if your local shop has a markup, and purchase records, typically at something close to their “market rate.” 

“Some people just buy records for the album art hanging on the wall,” says Doug Martin, who started selling on Discogs in 2020. But the Discogs users were different. “These were real fans listening to real music who cared about the format and the medium. That’s what attracted me in the beginning.”

The site has become a central part of the music internet, surviving through physical music media’s replacement by MP3s and then streaming — and rebounding as interest in vinyl, CDs, and tapes did throughout the 2010s. But sellers who use the platform say the site’s old tech has started to wear on them, and new fees and restrictions have made it harder to do business. Changes within the company are threatening to turn a bastion for vinyl fans, record stores, and anyone who cares about music into just another dysfunctional website — and dismantle a singular record of music history, even if just by pushing the sellers and users who have created that record away.

A fastidiously detailed Wikipedia for music

What was initially conceived of as something of a Wikipedia for recorded music — although, founded in 2000 by Intel programmer Kevin Lewandowski, it predates the encyclopedia site by a few months — hasn’t changed a great deal since its conception, besides the introduction of the marketplace in the mid-aughts. Discogs is a fairly clunky, definitely old-fashioned website devoted to even older technology: a vestige of an earlier, more idyllic internet that has spent the last decade walking the record-needle-thin line between 2020s algorithmically driven tech monolith and niche unprofitable obscurity. 

A big part of its ability to walk that line is the passion of its user base. Sellers have to submit a record’s information if it’s not already in the database in order to sell it — that’s how the database has become so complete. And many entries, even for deep obscurities, are fastidious: album covers and liner notes are scanned for inclusion and album credits are fleshed out with hyperlinks that are almost more useful and thorough than the Wikipedia equivalent, plus reviews by devotees. There is even a lively forum where all of these details get litigated. It is an insular community in many ways. But it is also, and has always been, a money-making endeavor for both Discogs and the sellers who use it.

Discogs is now the source of many people’s full-time employment. A European Discogs seller, who has been on the platform since 2008 and requested anonymity for fear of retribution by the company, says he does 80 percent of his business on the platform. He does not operate a brick-and-mortar storefront but has four employees and nets around €20,000 a month on Discogs. According to him, his sales have shrunk by half over the past year, and he’s in the process of building his own site to try to move away from the platform.

“I’ve made my living with this company for the past decade,” says a Connecticut seller who also does the majority of his business on Discogs and requested anonymity for the same reasons. “It’s just the frustration that you have no control over what they’re doing, and it doesn’t even make any sense.” The vinyl renaissance has occurred in tandem with the growth of Discogs, making the site fairly integrated into any record business — regardless of whether a business has a brick-and-mortar storefront. A major change to the site, then, could mean a major shift in the record market as a whole.

Underlying the sellers’ complaints is a kind of dismay, the feeling that what had previously been a safe haven for nerds to buy and sell $2 records is being threatened — that one more corner of the internet that wasn’t yet a glossy behemoth designed to subsume and capitalize on your personal information was about to collapse.

“When you get any kind of community built around a business, and you tweak that a little bit, you’re gonna make a lot of people upset,” says Martin. “This is their Discogs, they built it.” 

The problems started in earnest when the company raised its fee from 8 to 9 percent on May 22nd of this year, and — crucially — started charging that same fee on shipping costs for the first time, an issue considering how international the record market is. One of the beauties of Discogs had previously been finding and purchasing rarities from sellers in Japan or Germany; the most expensive record I’ve ever purchased, for example, was a copy of Cannonball Adderley’s debut album from a seller in Switzerland. Now, the site is taking considerably larger slices of those kinds of sales. (Discogs declined to comment for this story.)

You’ll find details on just about every release of every album on Discogs. This entry for a Japanese pressing of Thelonious Monk in Italy includes photos of the record jacket and both sides of the vinyl.

To make up for the lost revenue, Discogs suggested sellers use a tool it had created to raise the prices of all of their inventory by a percentage; another Discogs email to sellers suggested they offer free shipping to avoid the fee, without accounting for the fact that the seller would then be either covering that cost out of pocket or integrating it into the price of the record — which would, of course, result in the same amount of money going to Discogs. Essentially, sellers were told to raise their prices and / or offer free shipping — two options that threaten their bottom lines. “Their communication, too — it’s like, ‘I said what I said, and we’re done,’” says Martin. “Well, you’re really not, because we all have to live with this and so do you.”

The tension between Discogs’ old-internet charm and its attempts at growth came to a head earlier this summer around a since-deleted viral Twitter thread by artist and label head Mike Simonetti lamenting “the fall of discogs.” Simonetti sounded the alarm about increasing fees and subsequently increasing prices, a growing influx of scammers, rising shipping costs, and the dysfunction of the website itself, among other issues. 

“We had kind of thought Discogs was on our side as sellers,” says Gene Melkisethian, who runs Joint Custody, a record store in Washington, DC, and sells on Discogs. “But when they started charging fees on shipping, it just felt really punitive.”

“In their communication, it was beyond insulting the way they framed it. Like, ‘Oh, you can just not charge for shipping,’” says the Connecticut seller. “The sudden fee increase was a huge, huge blow to a lot of people.”

The fee increase arrived shortly before USPS raised the price of its Media Mail service (the lower rates at which anyone can send media products like books, music, and movies) by an average of 7 percent — and a year after the site had switched all its transactions to PayPal, which charges its own fees on each transaction, ones that are higher on international purchases. PayPal also requires that every shipment has a tracking number, which can be a significant extra expense for international sales. 

The changes also arrived at the tail end of a phenomenon alluded to in the same original thread. The pandemic had created something of a record sales bubble: people who were already vinyl aficionados were stuck at home with their record players, stimulus checks, and nothing to spend them on besides survival and things you could do at home — like listen to music. Melkisethian says his sales actually grew during the pandemic in spite of the fact that his brick-and-mortar sales disappeared. According to him, the boom inflated record prices; now, with the higher fees Discogs is imposing, a sales decline that was almost inevitable post-lockdown has become steeper. 

“They’re under the impression that they’re the only game in town.”

Even with all of those increasing costs, Discogs is still less expensive (albeit now only slightly) than alternatives like eBay or Amazon. But those alternatives, being considerably larger and more mainstream, offer a much broader base of potential buyers as well as a more solid infrastructure and support system.

“eBay has much more of a user base, so for the little bit of extra cost it’s a no brainer,” says Martin, who says that, for him, eBay’s fees are usually around 1 percent higher than Discogs’. “It’s probably double [the business] I do on Discogs, and that’s only grown since they raised the fees.” He sells primarily new vinyl and uses Amazon, Walmart, eBay, and Discogs, along with his own website, apocalypsevinyl.com. With the new fees and the competitiveness of the Discogs market, the platform is becoming less and less useful as a selling channel.

“They’re under the impression that they’re the only game in town,” says the Connecticut seller of Discogs. “The fees were relatively low, but now that they’re higher, there doesn’t seem to be a reason to use that anymore.” He’s been selling on Discogs since 2009; since the recent changes, he’s lowered his prices to offset the higher shipping costs and was compelled to institute an order minimum — a major shift for a marketplace that had done considerable business in selling records under $10 and even under $5. 

Discogs attributed the need to raise fees to its “significant investments in recent years to ensure compliance with various regulatory programs, including tax support and privacy protection.” The company said the change would allow it to “continue to devote resources to maintaining the Discogs Marketplace and develop better tools for collecting, selling, and enjoying music.” 

Many sellers who spoke with The Verge speculated, in line with the viral thread, that the company was trying to pump up its valuation for a potential sale. All of them, though, had the sense that Discogs was trying to increase its profit margins without necessarily offering any improvements to its product in return.

Discogs’ marketplace page showing copies of Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts for sale. The prices are generally higher than buying the album elsewhere.

“It just seems like they’re actively trying to stop sales,” says the Connecticut seller. “You can raise your fees, but maybe you could do some promotions, coupon codes, sales — something that offsets the shift. Sellers can do it on their own, but that’s going to require them to lower their prices — it’s going to be a race to the bottom. If you were trying to ruin a sales forum, this is how you’d do it.” 

Discogs did have a sale in late August, but it featured just 11 of the site’s largest stores. “When I first saw it, I thought, maybe they’ll be randomly promoting stores or the best products,” says Martin. “I don’t know a big sale that most people are not part of that you promote to further depress our prices is the right direction.” 

The website itself is a frequent source of complaints, as is the lack of support. (My query for a press contact was sent on July 25th, for example; I received a response on August 23rd.) “I guess the most apparent thing has been the lack of updates, or any positive progress in the operation of a website,” says Melkisethian, who has been selling on Discogs since 2011. “It was a little bit quaint back then, but it has not improved in any way. It’s actually only gotten worse, which is kind of funny — but knowing how much money I’ve given them and other people give them, it’s like, who’s steering the ship?”

Discogs is in the process of rolling out a redesign, one that — to look at the forums at least — doesn’t have many fans among the Discogs lifers but is definitely sleeker-looking. According to the sellers who spoke with The Verge, bugs abound: the European seller, for example, had just been dealing with an issue with the platform’s refund button. “Discogs said it was PayPal’s fault, and PayPal said it was Discogs’ fault,” he says. “It caused stress for the buyers, and so I had to do direct refunds — which meant I was refunding not just what I made but Discogs’ and PayPal’s commissions as well, effectively losing money on the refund.” Melkisethian, speaking a month later, had just noticed a shift in the way shipments are processed that required manually entering information in steps that used to be automated.

Besides the baseline functionality of the site, there are other improvements that could bring Discogs closer in line with its competitors. “There are other seller tools and seller initiatives that we’ve been asking for for years that have never been done — like any kind of tie-in with Google, any kind of integration with social media, the kinds of things basically other platform has,” says Martin.

The database is another aspect of the site that could be threatened by the fee increases. If sellers and buyers move elsewhere, that database will likely become less exhaustive. “Ever since the price increases, I’ve noticed that less and less new albums are being added to the database,” says Martin. “When we get new stock in, we have to match it up with a UPC on Discogs and we’re noticing it’s not there as often as it used to be.”

A beloved internet sanctuary gets bled for profit to the detriment of its functionality — by 2023, it’s become just about the most familiar story online. Discogs, hopefully, will not become the latest in a long line of formerly useful sites; for the moment, though, sellers feel alienated by the small company they once viewed as an ally in an optimistic mission to share knowledge about music. 

“There are a lot of good things about Discogs, and I think Discogs is worth fighting for and saving,” says Melkisethian. “I think it’s still more of a good than a bad. But the people at Discogs need to be aware of what makes it special — to think about the little guys with the records.”

‘Happiness’ at 25: How Todd Solondz’s Controversial Film Shocked Its Studio and Made Him a Breakout Star Director

By Daniel D'Addario

Some 25 years ago, Todd Solondz had a hot hand, and he knew it. His film breakthrough, “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” was a Sundance sensation and a surprise hit — surprising, in part, because of its scabrous and brilliantly profane view of life among the petty thugs known as middle-schoolers.

So he set out next to write a script as close to unproduceable as he could. “I played with things that I would otherwise never be able to play with and get financed,” he says in a recent conversation over lunch near his apartment in Greenwich Village. The end result was a tough sell. “Virtually every door was shut, except one — but you only need one,” he says. October Films’ Bingham Ray signed on, and the finished product, a film called “Happiness,” played the New York Film Festival in 1998.

The title should be read ironically; the ensemble of characters, emanating outward from a family of three adult sisters, are seeking joy in their lives, but struggle with miscommunication and alienation. Dylan Baker plays the husband of the most picture-perfect sister (Cynthia Stevenson), with whom he lives in an idyllic suburban setup. Seemingly, they have everything going for them, and yet he’s a just-barely repressed pedophile who can’t help but give in to his desires. Still, we’re invited to care for him, even as we watch his crimes.

Before it came to New York, “Happiness” premiered at Cannes, where it generated controversy, harsh criticism and praise. Writing in Salon, the novelist Jonathan Lethem compared Solondz to a film-world Bob Dylan and called “Happiness” “a masterpiece”; Variety reported on its stellar box-office average after “wildly successful screenings” at the fest. It was Baker’s pedophile, though, sensitively portrayed and standing out in an ensemble that also includes Jane Adams, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Lara Flynn Boyle, who cemented the film’s challenging, intriguing reputation. “What’s difficult about the film,” Solondz says, “is that it’s fraught with ambiguity.”

Time has burnished the film, as its portrait of people trying to do the right thing in an unfeeling world has come to seem, well, quintessentially American. And time, too, may have softened Solondz. Since the “Happiness” days, the writer-director has made five more feature films, the most recent distributed by Amazon in 2016. He’s taught film at NYU’s Tisch School for the Arts. He’s now in his mid-60s, and a father. “I wouldn’t make the same movie today,” he says. “I wouldn’t write the script quite the same way. I’m not the same person — we change and evolve in ways that we can’t predict.” (As for his kids, he told them they can watch “Happiness” when they’re 35.)

But he still has that eye for the contrast between our best intentions and the harshness of the world that gave “Happiness” its special flavor, as well as its bite. And while similarly sharp observers of contemporary mores, from Mike White to Todd Field, have had career renaissances in recent years, Solondz has not. His brand of embracing risk — of making films fraught with “ambiguity” — runs headlong into an increasingly risk-averse cinema culture.

Even in the best of times, “you have to patch together” funding, he says. “And I think they would not finance it now. Because if the movie is successful, it will make $2 million, $3 million? That would be huge for me. And if it’s not successful, it would invite such a Twitter storm of ‘How could you?!’ and such a backlash – it’s just not worth it.”

There’s a piquant irony to Solondz’s challenges finding funding: America, with hatreds and vulnerabilities on full display, has come to seem a lot more, well, Solondzian. “It’s a sad, grotesque place,” Solondz muses, in the unaffected tone with which he tackles every question. (His voice remains a beautifully New Jersey honk, a tribute to his own suburban upbringing.) “How do you teach your children to be decent, respectful, kind people, when on the news, you see how savage the dialogue is?”

And yet the filmmaker represents a paradox of sorts. If his treatment of a soul-sick America felt urgent then, it couldn’t feel more pressing now. But finding a place for oneself is a challenge. “It’s not like I have a plan,” Solondz says. “I am grateful that I’ve had the quasi-career that I’ve had. And I hope that I’m still able to do it — to make another film after a series of setbacks.” Solondz is in process on a project about which he’s close-lipped, other than to say that “it’s a movie of our times. But then, anyone who’s serious about what they do, even if you’re making a Western, you’re speaking of your time in which you live.”

A good way to understand which way the cultural winds blow is to stand in front of students, as Solondz does at NYU. “I look at graduate students who are in their 20s and 30s as young people, and one of the challenges is that they tend to be timid,” he says. “That’s always been the tendency. That said, these are times that will make them more timid. Because there’s the fear of writing or saying something that will tarnish their social image. There’s the new social anxiety about saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing.” It’s a balancing act for a professor who, in his working life, finds redemption and flickers of joy in the wrong thing: “I know,” he says, “that as a teacher, I’m vulnerable. It makes me feel like a trapeze artist without a net. And that makes it more fun for me — how much I can push, or not push? I genuinely like getting them talking.”

This question — how much can he push? — received an answer 25 years ago, too. After Ron Meyer, then the CEO of October’s parent company Universal, saw the film, he intervened in its release, says Solondz. “He declared it morally objectionable,” and kicked it to the now-defunct independent distribution company Good Machine.

In September 1998, Lynn Hirschberg reported in the New York Times Magazine that Meyer had personally blocked Universal shingle October from releasing “Happiness,” protesting that he didn’t want to see the world through the point-of-view of a pedophile. Solondz buzzes with irritation as he addresses the imbroglio even now. “I wasn’t allowed to talk about this at the time, but where did the money come from to even release this movie?,” Solondz says. “It was all money that was borrowed from Universal so that they could, in fact, profit if the movie made money — from that ‘morally objectionable’ film.”

Via email, Good Machine co-founder James Schamus said, “That was quite a situation! As part of the workout with the studio, we negotiated a payment that certainly helped with at least the initial release set-up costs, but — and my memories of the details are vague — I think it would have been nearly impossible for the studio to profit, or even recoup, given the terms. So although the theatrical release was quite successful, it would be miraculous if the studio saw a profit — and I don’t believe in miracles.” He also recollected having the impression that it was Universal’s then-parent company Seagram’s, not Meyer, who had issues with the film’s content.)

Beyond the tempest around its release, though, Solondz speaks about “Happiness” with earnestness and evident love. It’s plain how much affection he has for these characters (ones that he revisited in 2009’s loose sequel “Life During Wartime”). When I remark how unusual it is that the film’s characters are “all miserable,” Solondz corrects me. “I’ve never looked at it that way,” he says. “Everyone has their struggle. And I can’t make a movie if I don’t have an emotional investment in my characters — if I don’t believe in that struggle, live with that struggle, be true to that struggle.”

It’s a theme that resonates throughout Solondz’s work post-”Happiness” — the struggle of being alive. Solondz compares himself to the late novelist Anita Brookner: “She wrote like 30 books and they’re all the same book. I love them all, and it doesn’t matter which one I’m reading. That would be so cool if I could continue in that way.”

But pulling together funding is the perpetual struggle, especially in a climate where daring, for its own sake, is no longer a virtue, if ever it was. “I like to play ,” he says. “Everyone — they don’t want to play. And it’s very hard. And the idea of movies having a life in the theater is something from the 20th century.” “Happiness,” in 1998, got in two years before the century’s end. The past has its frustrations, but Solondz, cinematic ironist, glimmers with enthusiasm as he describes projects he’s working on, in hopes they’ll come together. (Musing about his students, who have included Chloe Zhao and Charlotte Wells, Solondz says that teaching is “fun – it’s the opposite of filmmaking, because there’s no stress.”).
But without the stress, there’s no finished product – and Solondz hankers to work. A film project Variety has reported on, Solondz says, needs to be recast – “I can’t get into it, but we’re very excited. It can really happen.” He’s written, he says, “my first movie with a plot.” He goes on: “I wrote it so fast, but it’s taken forever to get made. It’s a love letter to Hollywood. You’ll see it, knock wood.”