Exclusive Interview: Vinyl Me, Please's CEO Matt Fiedler

Launched in 2013, Vinyl Me, Please is a Boulder, Colorado-based company specializing in a premium vinyl album service, in which albums are mailed to consumers. For example, let’s say J Dilla's Donuts is something you’ve always wanted to see in your collection, but can’t find it no matter how many hole-in-the-wall record stores you go to. Place an order online with Vinyl Me, Please and it’s delivered within a few days. 

This service comes at a time when vinyl records have seen a huge resurgence and are seemingly more popular than when they were initially invented. CEO and co-founder Matt Fiedler has made it a personal mission to bring vinyl to the hip-hop community, which has been largely ignored in the vinyl record boom.

Labels offer a common response that “there isn't a market for it.” Or that hip-hop and rap “doesn't sound good on vinyl.” Vinyl Me, Please is here to prove the industry wrong by proving the audience is there. Vinyl Me, Please wants to become the authority on hip-hop vinyl. Fiedler talked to RAPstation about Vinyl Me, Please and why it’s his duty to put hip-hop back on wax. 

 

RAPstation (Kyle Eustice): What gave you this idea for the service? 

Matt Fiedler: The original idea really came from a desire to build our personal vinyl collections. I had just gotten my dad’s turntable for Christmas and wanted to start collecting vinyl, but didn’t really know where to start. We had heard of record clubs from previous generations and thought it would be cool to create one for the new generation. We wanted to create something that helped people experience music, something that helped them establish a connection with music and maybe discover something they wouldn’t have otherwise. If I’m honest, we didn’t see a huge market opportunity and try to capitalize on it; we were just a couple of dudes who were passionate about music and wanted to get into vinyl. We really launched VMP to solve our own problem and we figured there were more people like us.

Vinyl has seen a huge resurgence in popularity overt the past few years. Why do you think people are rediscovering it? 

It’s hard to pin it down to something specific, but I think it’s a larger cultural trend. There is a trend—in a variety of facets of life—where people are exchanging convenience for experience. You see similar trends in coffee, books (digital vs. physical) and even food (the slow food movement). In each of these, people are willing to pay more money, by a surprising multiple, for something that is more experiential. As our world becomes more digitized and everything is leaning toward accessibility and convenience, I think we’ll see this trend become even more prevalent and the return to the “old way” or analog will actually become a preferred method.

The majority of the music industry is shifting from paying for ownership to paying for access. Spotify is amazing; I use it every day, but it’s a utilitarian product. It makes me look at music as a commodity and something that I don’t put much effort into maintaining or even thinking about. With vinyl, however, it’s something physical, something tangible, something you can give as a gift, something you can pass down for generations. There’s a much deeper, emotional connection instilled when interacting with vinyl. That’s what we love, and that’s what we’re trying to promote.

What are the benefits to listening to a record versus a CD? 

I literally have no way to play a CD anymore. I don’t have a CD player in my car, on in my computer, in my house… anywhere. CDs were originally cool because they were mini records that you could take with you. It was a natural evolution in making music more convenient. But now, MP3s, bluetooth, streaming, etc. have replaced it. 

The purists will say that things ‘just sound better’ on vinyl. Maybe that’s true, but digital has gotten so good and the average listener has no way of knowing, unless you’re listening very closely or on a high end stereo. I think the primary benefits of vinyl over CD is its bigness. It’s cool to pull it out, look at the album artwork, read the liner notes— all of it. The medium is imperfect, but that’s kind of what makes it cool.

What is the main objective of your service? 

Our main purpose is to help people explore, experience and enjoy music on a deeper level. The membership is a great example of this—we give people one piece of music to focus on each month and attempt to build a valuable experience around it. It may not be something they’ve heard of and can even be something they think they don’t like. That’s not always the point, though. We attempt to broaden the tastes of our members because the best things come from places you would least expect.

 

Have you always been based in Boulder? Do you have plans for expansion? 

We originally launched while living in Chicago. We moved to Boulder late 2013. We’re growing pretty fast and expanding our team quite rapidly. We have remote employees in Madison, Wisconsin and NYC, and partners around the country, and the world. We’ll certainly be expanding over time.

How do you go about deciding what albums you’ll carry? 

It’s an involved process, but the essence is that we’re always sourcing recommendations from labels, members, and other people in our community. Cameron Schaefer, our head of label relations, does an awesome job of filtering the great from the just okay. When we’re considering what record we want to feature, it’s usually from a list of three to four titles that we’ll have a healthy debate over which is better. It’s a fun process.

Why is a service like this successful? 

[Laughs] I’m modest to my own detriment at times, so to call us “successful” feels a bit premature. However, I think we’ve succeeded thus far because we’ve made the right moves at the right times. We are bootstrapped and that forces a certain amount of intentionality around the things that matter. 

We’ve worked really hard to create product that people care about and is something they are not only willing, but excited to pay for. We’ve added additional ‘features’ or benefits that enhance the value of the membership or improves the experience in some way. We’re heavily ingrained in our own community and we’re always sourcing feedback from our members. We take all of that seriously and work as hard as we can to make sure our members have a meaningful experience first and foremost.