Saturday / Deluxe 1 July 2017
Suzanne Vega anniversaries
Suzanne Vega will be touring later on this year to celebrate the 30th and 25th anniversaries of Solitude Standing and 99.9ºF respectively and the singer-songwriter has made a limited edition purple vinyl edition of the former available via her new webstore.
According to the blurb on the site, only 500 of these are being pressed, although the problem is that if you are in the UK, the site (run by Music Glue) charges you £21.12 for the vinyl and then a further £19.82 to ship to the UK!! That’s a grand total of £40.94. If the item was then to be caught via Customs & Exercise they’d charge 20% VAT on top of that (call it £8) and you’d get the dreaded ‘admin’ charge of £11.50. In short, this could end up costing £60!
So as much as I’d like to purchase, it’s simply not viable right now. Here’s hoping these become available from a platform that ships from the UK or they are on-sale at her shows later in the year.
Order the purple pressing of Solitude Standing.
SDE Chartwatch
Radiohead‘s anniversary reissue of OK Computer outsold the Prince Purple Rain reissue in the UK this week, although neither album could ‘do a Sgt. Pepper‘ and actually top the UK albums chart.
Ed Sheeran (yawn) rises to number one while Radiohead are number two, although on the physical album chart, which discounts streaming and downloads, Radiohead are indeed number one. Purple Rain enters a number seven on the ‘proper’ album chart and is a couple of places higher on the physical chart.
It some ways it doesn’t seem ‘fair’ that Radiohead pipped Prince, because despite a great sounding triple vinyl set, the reissue offers very little that’s new, save for a trio of unheard songs. Compare that to the Purple Rain reissue which delivers a whole disc of unreleased material, an entire concert on DVD for the first time and a CD packed with 12-inch versions and single edits.
The difference in sales probably comes down to promotional activity (Thom Yorke has being doing interviews) and Radiohead getting some major mainstream coverage on BBC TV thanks to headlining at Glastonbury. To underline what a difference that can make, even the Foo Fighters‘ seven year old Greatest Hits compilation outsold the Purple Rain reissue last week, because they too headlined Glastonbury’s Pyramid stage the night after Radiohead.
Prince never played Glastonbury, but it’s not hard to imagine the impact it would have had if he was still with us and had played a a two or three hour hit-packed set last weekend.
A review of the Purple Rain reissue will be published on SDE on Monday.
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Received this yesterday, the colour is actually that dark translucent purple that looks black unless you hold it up to the light, so nothing like as bright as that image would have you believe. Didn’t get nabbed for customs charges thankfully. The delivery was quite quick (although I think I could reasonably expect this given the cost) but the album was slightly dinged (I think I could reasonably NOT expect this given the cost!) Nice enough release, shame there’s nothing extra though, not even a download card, given that its supposed to be an anniversary edition.
Postage costs are a real issue. I have had several of my auction sales fall through due to postage cost to UK/EU based on quoting a cost that is the same as what the United States Postal Services tell me and this is before adding fees and a mailer to ship the item in. Unless I price my item accordingly, charging actual postage amount costs me money! And most people want a deal on the item to begin with. The $3.99 postage cost offered by online sellers to send a CD domestically actually covers the $2.63 media mail cost to ship the item and probably related fees and cost of mailer (probably bought at bulk). I have no problem paying a little more for postage when I know the item will be packed in a sturdy mailer – such as JPC.de did with the blue vinyl OKNOTOK.
Dammit – I had that in the basket, but it’s not worth £40+ however much I love Solitude Standing as an album. On a side-note – do you think she’s a closet Rush fan as the price without postage is £21.12
“Ed Sheeran (yawn)”
Call yourself lucky you’re not a girl, Paul, otherwise I would kiss you for this comment. :o)
I’m glad I am not into buying vinyl anymore, especially the fancy type. That purple is completely wrong for Solitude Standing!
I took the plunge with the Suzanne Vega vinyl, it’s on its way to me as I type this. I buy from the US quite frequently and the shipping charges are pretty punitive no matter where you buy from (they were even more so as the dollar has been very strong for the last year or more but at least it has weakened a little recently). Even shipping from the UK isn’t cheap (I’m in Ireland) as some of the smaller retailers have a minimum charge of £7-8 for one LP!
Why not go to one of the shows? I imagine she may have some to sell there.
I am going to one of the shows. She may or may not have these on sale.
Some postage rates are excessive for sure, but usually they are within the realms of being reasonable I find. For Pledge and big online stores you have to factor in that people’s wages in distribution dept’s as well as packing materials and postage costs are being paid. It’s not like an ebay auction you do do yourself dropping off a package at the post office next time you pass… A second class recorded delivery of a CD internally in the UK with a padded envelope is what, say about £2.50 on it’s own? Then Royal Mail prices soon rise when weight and shape/size of package increases.
charging nearly £90 for a delivery that actually cost music glue £4.80 is not within the realms of being reasonable, they outsource all their stock and do not manage the postage at all
Who said that was reasonable? I didn’t. Do you have me confused with someone who did?
for me your comments were defending the postage rates charged and i was disagreeing with you, most of the larger companies outsource their deliveries and stock holding and for the larger users they get charged £1.20 per parcel
Then you were mistaken Tony. How do you get me defending the postage you were charged on this specific order you made when I neither referenced it or even mentioned it! From “some postage rates are excessive for sure, but usually… reasonable” I’d have thought you would read that that whilst most are ok, some are taking the p*ss which would be those like yours ;)
Be warned of any artist using music glue as their sales point, they charge the highest possible postage prices and use the cheapest possible courier, i recently spent £600 on vinyl with them and got charged £89 in postage (UK to UK) and they used a company that delivered it all in 4 parcels (poorly packed and damaged) that cost music glue £4.80.
I tried to ship 3 homemade CDRs in paper sleeves (no jewel cases), single small packet with zero value to Canada from the USA and the US post office wanted over $21. It was much cheaper to upload the files and let my friend download them and burn to CDR or his hard drive. OMG! I just described file sharing!
I think Amazon uk set the postage rates that can be charged Julian
“this could end up costing £60!”
You can get a “Like new” copy of the CD on Amazon Marketplace for £2.21 including postage.
I already own the CD, thanks.
Prince was the biggest selling artist of 2016. I got Purple Rain Thursday. Sounds fantastic & the concert is very enjoyable. I was concerned that the sound would be too loud or brickwalled whatever that means from comments here. Bought the shm which is still available just in case. Love roadhouse garden which sounds way better than it does on 84 birthday show. Prefer the 86 version of we can funk. It’s a good expanded format 3 cds & a concert which I hope the estate continues for other releases.
Paul did not think a great deal of the pointer sisters comp from what I have heard so far. Breakout would be the one to buy. Anyway Viva La Prince.
Prince at Glastonbury? Would have been absolutely IMMENSE!!!
OMD charged me $10 shipping to the States via Pledge for the yellow vinyl edition of their upcoming release. ‘Other sellers’ on Amazon routinely charge me $3.99 per item ordered for shipping then package everything together. It’s pretty clear to me that shipping costs are used for extra back door profits. I imagine some of it is the ‘handling’ portion but regardless it’s perplexing.
You wanna see the shipping costs for buying CDs/DVDs/LPs fro the States to the EU.
`fro` should. of course, be from ; ))
Believe me, I wasn’t saying it didn’t happen on both ends. But I buy from Amazon UK, France and Italy and always get charged the same shipping as a domestic order. It’s only when I hit places like Pledge or private distributors that I see these high shipping costs. I don’t know why, just what I’ve observed.
Having shipped items to the States, I can only assume people charging $3.99 are either making a loss or have negotiated a bulk rate beyond what OMD are likely to get. Those of us in the UK ordering from many US sites would be delighted to get items for $10 P&P.
Having looked at selling on Amazon UK, they enforce very low postage rates on sellers. It put me right off as I would have been making very low margins as actual postage was higher than I was allowed to charge. For there own sales, they negotiate low charges with the different carriers.
$10 dollars is cheap last time I sent a record to America the postage at the post office was £12.70
Yes, the Glastonbury effect helped The Bee Gees to score a number 9 album too
Talking of expensive postage charges, went to preorder this mystery 10 inch single advertised on Elvis Costello’s website this morning and the outlet they were selling it from wanted $88 for postage. Must be some sort of joke!
Where is this mystery 10″ single on Elvis’ website???
It’s gone….