discogs marketplace?

is this usually OK to use? looks to have a much better selection than ebay, or does anyone know of any good alternatives?

(sorry if this has been asked before, couldn't find anything when I searched?)

discogs imho is in the same league as Gemm and Musicstack--generally a slightly more esoteric selection, but the pitfalls and price-gouging remain the same. (i.e. it's a number of individual sellers and so it's dicey no matter what. I guess that's why there's a feedback system? I've never used discogs.)

i assume you're looking for vinyl? discogs is usually fine, but i wouldn't buy anything labeled below nm-, unless you've scanned the seller's profile and s/he seems like a saint

yeah just vinyl and CDs that you can no longer get elsewhere really, thanks for the warning!

i started using it a few months ago and have found it to be pretty great in general though i would agree about not buying below mint. out of about 30 purchases i've only had to deal with one person who ripped me off. i now look on discogs before ebay if looking for a record.

I was able to score a highly OOP release from overseas, and as long as you have PayPal, you're quick, and you're picky about feedback ratings, you should be fine. (same goes with Gemm and the like.)

via discogs that is. Granted, I've only bought one thing from Discogs marketplace, but it was a simple and quick transaction, especially for overseas.

+1 to discogs: they don't have Gemm's crappy UI (Gemm usually contains these impossibly long forms with checkboxes and radio selection buttons all obfuscated while you're trying to buy or sell through them.)

i buy and sell on discogs. have only had 1 bad experience with a guy who tried to charge me 10 dollars to ship a cd single from Canada.

i've shopped quite a bit on Discogs, 30+ purchases or so, and I have been satisfied in all but one. And in that instance I filed a claim through PayPal and got my money back. As long as you use PayPal you should be fine and protected, prices are high though and I don't buy anything under NM-, like everyone else here has said.

I've used it once so far without problem. There are some rare and/or hard to get things on there, but the prices seem a little over the odds a lot of the time.

lol last post on thread: http://www.discogs.com/sell/list?seller=musicberlin

Um, someone want to try and explain this to me? Also WRT his feedback rating/comments?

hahaha. so weird. just 5 seconds ago i sent my friend a link to a record that is also $1540.00. 2 days ago it was $15. something's wacky.

holy shit, so weird. it's actually the same seller. wtf

discogs allows you to bulk upload items to your marketplace account for sale via a .csv file. I guess with an inventory of 25000 items this is what that seller does and that their prices got out of whack somehow in the process.

what i cant stand about discogs is the inflexiblity of postage rates. if im ordering one white label 12, theres no way the postage will be £2.75 or £3. very fucking annoying.

should that weigh less than a non white label?

xp OK that probably explains that

titchy are you saying that's over the odds? It's not if you consider postage plus if you have to buy a mailer!

i suppose. but white labels are still cheaper than normal lps.

i do like discogs though, the offers system is good too. some of the prices people put on their records though is ridiculous (and i do wonder if they do end up getting the prices they ask for).

what i cant stand about discogs is the inflexiblity of postage rates. if im ordering one white label 12, theres no way the postage will be £2.75 or £3. very fucking annoying.

― titchy (titchyschneiderMk2), Thursday, 17 September 2009 20:36 (18 minutes ago)

Postage rates have nothing to do with discogs though, they're entirely up to the individual seller, so I'm not sure what you mean by them being inflexible. You should contact the seller if you think they're charging over the odds.

I happily both send and receive offers on prices via discogs, often the listed price is just a ball park, or best hope, or even a stab in the dark if you're the only person selling an item.

Again, if you think something's over priced then just speak to the seller. No big deal. If they don't like your offer they'll ignore it or let you know. Easy as pie.

well i mean the indvidual seller obv, yeah.

I need to get rid of lots of dance vinyl - some desirable, some considerably less so - and ebay seems like a busted flush for this kind of thing: a few tumbleweed auctions surrounded by acres of Buy It Now postings from professional retailers. Has anyone here used it for selling recently? Is it better than ebay now? Does stuff shift fairly quickly or sit around for months?

I use discogs for buying and selling fairly often. For dance vinyl, I'd say it's def better than ebay. It's really quick and simple to list items, and there are no fees unless your items actually sell, whereas Ebay charges a listing fee. I have some things on discogs that have been sitting for quite a while now, but it all depends on what you have vs. how many others are selling the same item.

Best to put them on Discogs a couple bucks below whatever is the cheapest copy if you want to move it immediately. if you're in no hurry, put it at a good price, offer a discount for multiple items in the Comments field and wait.

Good advice. Thanks. Tbh I'm more interested in offloading most of it than making big £££.

ive put some stuff around the lowest price theyre listed at on discogs but still waiting to shift them. starting to think im possibly the only person buying old grime or dubstep 12s.

what does it mean when there's a color bar to the side of a release in discogs.

there's yellow, grey and orange here http://www.discogs.com/artist/Rolling+Stones%2C+The

If you hover over them it tells you.

ah! thank you. i've been searching for hours

So, if one were selling off a few hundred records of the psych / noise / jazz / indie variety, discogs over eBay, for sure? My issue with discogs (and, for CDs, Amazon) is the fact that things sell in spurts, with no deadline. It tends to make packing records and regular trips to the post office a full time job. Any advice?

i dunno, i always buy on discogs, sell on amazon. i don't want to wait for people to stumble over what i'm trying to unload, and on average, i get really good money from ebay sales.

i think the upside (sale price) on ebay is (or can be) higher, but the ease of doing stuff on discogs might be better, depending on how much hassle you're willing to go through

Yeah, I find Discogs has rarer stuff in the first place, and then for a more reasonable price than Amazon. If what you're selling is aimed at the collectors market or folks that may not look at Amazon first, Discogs is the way to go.

Thanks!

it feels good to sell rare-ish things on ebay for +£££s to people who don't know about discogs ;)

Coincidentally they just linked to this via their Facebook page:

http://www.discogs.com/blog/339369-top-30-most-expensive-items-sold-by-month

Advice on this:

Person contacts me on Discogs about an item that I am not listing for sale, offers me a large (but not obscene) amount for it, then paypals me with his "brother-in-law's" account and wants me to ship it to his sister (he's in Europe). Obviously I'm not going to ship it to anyone other than his brother-in-law (since anything else violates PayPal's Seller TOS) but should I even do that? Is this some sort of crazy elaborate scam to get a CD single? His Discogs rating is fine... but the whole thing seems pretty suspicious.

Obviously I will not accept the payment if I don't ship him anything btw.

I would just make sure to do delivery confirmation/insurance so he can't say it never arrived and file a claim with Paypal. That's the only scam I could think of if he already paid. Unless he somehow got hold of someone else's Paypal account but that seems far fetched.

Does seem a little suspicious to have done enough business on discogs to have a rating and yet you don't have your own Paypal acct?

Thanks for being such a big part of the Discogs community. If you’re anything like us, you collect more than just music.

With that in mind, we’re developing databases for other things we collect. We want to invite you to be one of the first people to see the work that only a few collectors and Discog’s staff members have built.

To get early access to the beta, just click what you’re into below and start submitting!

Submit My First Book

Submit My First Comic

Submit My First Film

hmmmm

hmm discogs is really a good database and have often thought it would be nice to be able to look up different editions of books/comics/movies instead of just doing ebay-searches but not sure if this seems like a greedy move or an enthusiast move, also not sure if such databases/market places already exist

also, any thoughts on whether the new tax policy will be very harmful to the 2nd hand market place? (apparently Discogs will add 25% tax or something for all orders going from US to EU)

Whoa- what? Really?

It's VAT that's now payable on *fees* paid by sellers at their local rate if they are in the EU. Fees are 8% of sales prices.

So it only applies to sellers in the EU and it's nothing to do with where orders are going. I think it works out to no more than around 1.8% on the price of a record in practice. Presumably VAT registered businesses would be able to claim it back as well so no need to pass it on to customers.

I'll give Discogs credit for hooking me up with a good guy from Norway who had a Neil Young tribute LP I'd been trying to get for eight years (Everybody Knows This Is Norway. It's worth more than I was prepared to pay, so he ripped the CD, put it up on Soulseek, and I got it from him that way.

The other thing I've listed on my want-list is a Velvet Underground tribute that came out in the late '80s. I get an e-mail every few weeks saying one's up for sale, but it's always around 20 pounds, which after conversion and shipping is just way out of my buying range.

It seems to be a good place to buy from. I've only had one negative experience I can think of where a cd arrived shattered because it was sent with neither jewel case or adequate padding.
May have been others but that is the only one came to mind. Think I got a refund but not the cd I wanted.
Discogs is also a reasonably ok resource though it does have gaps. I use it frequently when EACing cds I've bought when they're not in the EAC database. Tends to have tracklisting down for main release version at least.
Gap can be in what releases are listed though.
Would be useful to have reviews of lps and individual release versions too. I think there are some reviews on site but sporadic. There is rateyourmusic I guess. But would be useful.

I actually appreciate discogs more because of the lack of reviews. Everyone on Rateyourmusic considers themselves geniuses but they're really just a slightly better class of youtube commenter.

I had someone buy from me in Argentina but wanted me to ship to his sister in Chile as you are 'not allowed' more than two foreign packages a year or some such.

So I did, and it all went fine.

JUst thinking that it would make it a full resource if people said what they thought of the lp since it could help one work out which lps by an artist were worth getting. also which pressings/releases of which lp.
BUt I guess that most people going to discogs are doing so to buy material they're already aware of. Particularly marketplace.
Just thought if it was done right it could help the experience. But not sure how 'doing it right' would be achieved anyway since I can see what johnny's saying about rateyourmusic being true at least to some extent. Ego/opinion outweighing info etc

Do wonder where you get information on the best sounding versions of things from since it doesn't seem to be fully utilised on RYM and Amazon just mixes all reviews for all releases under a title together.

Of course anyone can post reviews on there and the entire database is user populated. The process of submitting release data excludes editorialising though, which is as it should or it would never get done and.disagreements would be endless.

I like that the site still feels a bit down-home and ungentrified. Not unlike this place really. My impression is that the staff are still enthusiasts for the most part.

discogs are reviews are great, it's either:
a) old school clubbers reminiscing and being crazy hyperbolic about old school house/rave
b) a bunch of people posting "repress please?" or "you gougers should be ashamed or yourself" (hip euro "underground" deep house 12"s on small labels)
c) some person posting "the label on my copy is more periwinkle than violet and 'chuggin gasoline' is about 6 seconds longer than on the original uk chiswick issue"

interesting

when was it not hella expensive to get records overseas to the US? welcome to 2018 I guess?

why am I posting to this thread, (self immmolates)

It’s recently gotten even worse?

The U.S. increases were supposed to be spread out over five years beginning in 2019. Of course, more increases are inevitable...

it's disappointing that they will never give us a way to block sellers (that relist their inventory daily, for one)

I only have maybe 20 albums still listed but about once a month I’ll get an order from a new account or an account that hasn’t had any transactions in like 8 years and they’ll never pay, so then I have to cancel…I assume it’s some kind of bot but what’s the grift here? It’s more of a pain in the ass than anything but I mean it’s not like they’re getting something from me.

One possible grift is that high volume sellers and/or those with overworked staffs will see the order come through but miss that payment has not yet been made and ship it out anyway.

I did that once, luckily it was a CD for 99p, so it was the postage that was the annoying part. it'd been ages since I'd had a non-paying buyer, I double-check now

I did that once, shipped it out before payment was received. Thankfully, they paid the next day. Must have been impressed at the speed of despatch though....

Is that "inventory" page fixed yet? It works on this mobile, but not on my laptop...

Seems to work on Firefox for me, what issue are you seeing?

"ERROR: Subgraph errors redacted"

when was it not hella expensive to get records overseas to the US? welcome to 2018 I guess?

It’s recently gotten even worse?

I think I first started ordering from discogs at the end of 2019, specifically as a way to get some stuff I didn't expect to find here. At the time this felt a little pricey but basically reasonable for stuff I really wanted? I enjoyed this for approximately 3 months and maybe 4 orders before shipping spiked to don't-bother rates early in the pandemic. This development is kinda the sole thing that's kept me from wasting money on piles of old indie singles from the UK and indie-pop stuff that is apparently all in Japan! That and the fact that the price of the records themselves has often risen by more than what international shipping cost when I started.

Looking at the last things I know I bought from Europe in 2022, the shipping prices were very reasonable then.

nabisco yes all the old indie pop singles you and i are looking for are all in Japan and Germany aren't they!

If you're diligent and lucky stuff pops up at reasonable rates but only certain titles of course.

I will say I got really lucky over the past few years and have come away with a mega haul of that kind of stuff from someone who used to frequent Pier Platters in the 80s/90s. Oh boy did I make out good! Also was in Oslo this past September and found a treasure trove there.

And speaking of Japan, I can't wait to go back someday and really dig again.

This is me: https://www.discogs.com/user/razenave/collection?header=1

This doesn't necessarily apply to Discogs, but I found out the only way I can make a worthwhile purchase from Japan is if I place a large order with an actual store or business that has a Discogs account or their own website. Usually they end up sending it via FedEx and the weight of the order justifies the cost (probably not that much more than what it would've cost eight years ago). I think I've placed about one order a year in the last five years this way, but all but one of those orders coincided with some big reissue campaign where there's a lot of newly reissued discs to scoop up - it's much less effective if you're just browsing old releases and hoping to find enough stuff to make an order worthwhile.

Hey, I'm only an occasional seller on Discogs marketplace, but I just encountered a problem I'm not 100% on how to handle.

I shipped a record to a buyer and it was returned to me, with postage due. I got in touch with him, and it turns out that he was trying to have it shipped to a friend as a present, but somehow the shipping field accidentally combined his address with the friend's, presumably through the magic of autofill. This created a nonexistent address on my shipping label. After a long trip to the West Coast, the postman brought it back to me, hitting me up for $6 return postage at the door. I'm going to ship it out to the correct address tomorrow, but I want to hit this guy up to cover the shipping charges. Should I just send him an invoice through Paypal?

that seems fair to me

I had an issue where the post office fumbled on my forwarding address and it returned to sender, frankly annoying I would have to cover that because it wasn't even my error, but I did regardless because obviously it's not the sender's fault either

don't forget to hit him up for both the postage due and new postage, since it was his mistake.

yeah. i would also give the buyer an easy out option — refund the purchase minus $6 and you keep the record. just so it feels less like extortion lol and it’s good to feel like you have options. idk that’s what i would do anyway

Thanks for the input, all. I sent him a message re: the Paypal and he agreed.

Like I said, I've only sold on there a few times before. I decided this year that I needed to do a moderate cull of my record collection though. So much stuff on my shelves that I bought because I loved, but only listened to once or twice. Or stuff where I've been in a record shop and felt guilty about not buying something, so just decided to pick something up. I decided this way back in January, but had been deeply dreading the process of actually listing and shipping. Then I had a burst of energy a few weekends ago and got started, and this, my second order, has an issue. Oh well, at least it seems to be resolving well.

I've received my first ever negative feedback because a buyer had to pay VAT to receive his record and asked me to pay him back for it. I said he will need to raise the issue with Discogs because they are the ones who took the VAT at point of sale. He never received proof of payment for the VAT he paid to receive his records and now wants to hold me liable.

The worst part is he also sells records on Discogs so we would be well aware of the rules around this sort of thing - there's no way he would refund a buyers VAT from his own pocket..

wtf - take it up with discogs, that's a bullshit reason to get negative feedback. They may be able to remove it.

In this case you maybe were supposed to put an invoice showing the vat was paid in a pouch on the outside of the package. There's specific numbers on the printable invoice that they (customs, I presume) are looking for.

Yes, that could well be it. I came a cropper with a couple of overseas buyers immediately post Brexit, as I didn’t know you had to do that now. Thankfully not to the point of negative feedback, but it was a narrow escape.

Reading through this thread and seeing everyone vent about insane overseas shipping costs (same here — £20 for a 7", $50 shipping on a $20 record… sigh), I thought I’d share something I came across recently that might help a bit.

I was poking around and found this page that lists Discogs sellers who offer free shipping to UK buyers, along with their minimum spend:
👉 https://www.backstagebargains.co.uk/show/Discogs

Here’s the gist of it:

Seller Free UK shipping on orders over
FormatJunky all orders
japhy £75.00
liberationrecords £75.00
HipHopTough £85.00
Alwills £120.00
vinyleers €125.00
Have‑A‑Break €170.00
XO_Music €300.00
enogaph €500.00
digginmichel €750.00
Schatten_Records $1,000.00

Some of these minimums are pretty steep (and Schatten_Records made me laugh) but a few — like japhy, liberationrecords, FormatJunky, seem much more realistic, especially if you’re already grabbing a few things.

Just thought this might be useful for anyone trying to get around the ridiculous shipping hikes lately. If anyone has other similar tips or sellers they’ve found, please do share!

I did do free shipping on eBay back when I first started selling stuff, thought it might encourage people. Didn't.

Japhy is a great guy as well ^

never even knew they had merch

https://merch.discogs.com/products/discogs-retro-first-edition-logo-ringer-tee

Great news

https://www.reddit.com/r/discogs/comments/1mw2ikg/no_more_selling_from_sweden_to_us/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

just got my first message that an order was cancelled do to the tariffs smh
glad I bought all these uk funky 12s before this happened

Discogs has just published an update with advice on selling and shipping:

https://www.discogs.com/about/news/united-states-tariff-impact-music-media-2025

this part is interesting:

Simply put, music and informational media have always been exempt from tariffs and continue to be so at this time. This means neither sellers nor collectors on Discogs should be charged additional customs fees.

Yeah, I've been going back and forth with the company that prints my label's CDs about that (they're manufactured in the Czech Republic and shipped back to the US).

from a label:

USA tariff update: we've just done the first USA orders since... and there's a 50p handling charge now added - which we pay, but no customs is due:

Currently, there are NO tariffs on recorded media. Here is the exemption stated from the Customs and Border Protection website: "Headings 9903.01.22, 9903.01.12, 9903.01.03, and 9903.01.31 describe informational materials, including but not limited to, publications, films, posters, phonograph records, photographs, microfilms, microfiche, tapes, compact discs, CD ROMs, artworks, and news wire feeds." See IEEPA Exemption 9903.01.31 |
www.cbp.gov/trade/programs-administration/trade-remedies/IEEPA-FAQ

yeah can confirm, Royal Mail now charge an extra 50p on all mail to the USA to determine there is no tariff to pay.

So I got some questions about a 200g Classic Records Dylan set from this guy, and I was like, “Welp, he sounds like he’s going to be a pain in the ass to deal with, but anyone who’d drop $300 on this dumb thing is going to be a pain in the ass” so I didn’t put him off of buying it.

Now, of course, having received it, he’s upset that it’s not cosmetically perfect. Apparently there’s “a curvlinear mark on the front of the box in a very noticeable position, it is on Bob‘s face just to the left side of his nose.” I offered a full refund if he wanted to return it, but he thinks that “At this time, it is more trouble than it’s worth to send back to you,” and instead wants me to knock $100 off the price.

I’m pretty protective of my 100% positive seller rating, and the easiest thing would be just to give in and make the guy go away, but also, fuck this clown.

I don’t get the impression that this was part of the plan all along, he genuinely seems mentally ill in that Steve Hoffman Forum way, but it’s a hundred bucks! ($140 in my dollars).

The item was graded VG+/VG+ with the note that it was “close to NM, with the lightest signs of handling,” and I’m pretty careful — but not totally anal — about my descriptions; if there had been anything noticeable on a reasonable inspection I would have noted it, so it’s gotta be a pretty minor flaw. On the other hand, as the guy says, “it’s a holy grail item” and “with the care and time <I>took to play test the records, and based on <my> very detailed assessment <he> felt very comfortable with <my> knowledge, and also assumed that <I am> a music enthusiast and possibly an audiophile who really appreciates well recorded music and takes care of their collection” (!) so my negligence in not noting this detail was an unwelcome surprise…

I don’t know. Part of me wants to tell him to pound sand. I don’t think there’s any halfway point here — negotiation will be excruciating and probably fruitless. I think my choices are either to give him the $100 or to give him $25 and insist he send it back (and take the neg feedback). Ugh. Thoughts?

Partial refund after the fact is a real Life Hack for losers. I would only do full refund with a return.

Also the mark on the cover falls under VG+ grading assuming its otherwise nice, so if he does neg you you have a good chance of getting discogs to remove it.

I would stick with the full refund offer if he sends it back or just refuse the discount. You didn't do anything wrong. I know it sucks that you might get that negative feedback, but you will have the chance to respond to it. I always look at the negative feedbacks now and assume others do too. I don't think people will be put off if its some petty reason from the buyer and you do an honest and totally reasonable response. And yeah, as majorairbro says, there is a chance you could get it removed. These buyers are just the worst.

the stress, inconvenience and potential reputational damage all suck and my sympathies

but the true suffering is having direct insight into the cooked white glove collector mentality, so awful to have to interface with that vibe

agree with all of the "only do full refund with a return" comments

this is why I don't sell online lol - only at shows

yeah. i say this with love, hd, but reading your story i got a feeling in the pit of my stomach that reminds me why i don't sell online anymore. at least not with any regularity

Thanks for the input, folks. Girding my loins for the comeback.

Dylan dudes, man

I had someone do this to me on eBay for something that wasn't a record. For something under like $40 I would definitely be like, "You know what, keep it," because I'm not dealing with this shit but a $300 record is another story.

Yeah, this guy sounds like a grifter. Full refund only.