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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

There's a couple of artists that I would absolutely buy their vinyl except the shipping is more expensive than the vinyl. I've done it a couple of times for artists I really like and appreciate, but it is most definitely cost prohibitive.

So it's pay their bandcamp prices for the digitals and streaming, but the physical media is just made in too limited quantities to be affordable by anyone but FAANG employees

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I’m not sure if you live in big city or not, but if so, a visit to your local vinyl shop might be able to score you a copy. Or they might be able to order it in with their shipments.

I've not seen a case where shipping was more expensive than vinyl but;

I made an album and sell the vinyl on our website. The sleeve to ship the vinyl safely in was somewhere between £0.5 and £1 depending on where we bought it from. Actually shipping it cost £5. So the £30 vinyl came with £6 in shipping fees. Lots of people complained to us that it was expensive, but that's just what it cost.

> I've not seen a case where shipping was more expensive than vinyl but;

Maybe you have the fortune of being on the same continent the item is being shipped. Your use of pounds is a big clue there. Shipping it across the pond is routinely doubling the price of the album plus taxes on top of that

Ah - shipping pretty much anything transatlantic is expensive, doubly so if you want it to actually survive. It’s never going to be worth shopping a $40 item from the US to the UK unless it’s tiny.

> It’s never going to be worth shopping a $40 item from the US to the UK unless it’s tiny.

That's bold. Who are you to say what is worth something to someone you don't know. I've already stated that I have done this, but it is a limiting factor on how often I do.

Sorry - only a sith deals in absolutes. I didn’t mean “literally never under any circumstances” I meant “on the balance of probabilities it’s unlikely that the financial cost of shipping something small is worth it, unless the item has some value that is not financial”

But that was wordy

Shipping on vinyl is rough — even shirts from anywhere outside of the US have tipped towards being hard to justify with shipping and all. I'll usually go for Bandcamp in that case (or buy something licensed in the US in the hopes that the license fee is at least something).

> Shipping on vinyl is rough

I'm well aware. I used to co-operate a vinyl store and very familiar with shipping heavy vinyl. I really wish there was a bandcamp distributor model so that artists could ship to each distributor in bulk so the consumer did not have to pay international charges rather than drop shipping per order.

I'd love that — didn't CDBaby used to do that? Hopefully something'll crop up if the popularity keeps increasing.

Even keeping vinyl is rough. I used to have a good collection that I had to drop because of moving. Still, some of my vinyls were ruined because I stored them poorly and they warped. It’s almost as bad as physical books, though they store more easily unless it’s mass paperback which will quickly stain to a weird yellow and develop a smell. Records are so fun though. The art, the physicality, the sound of the needle moving across the grooves, so good.

I import a lot of stuff from Europe and the shipping is rough. I save by bundling items.

If only I could get the artists I like to release at the same time

My guy holds stuff for me. My current order started last year.

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