Back in early July, the Automatic for the People: 25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition came back into stock in the R.E.M. store. I managed to buy one which was cool because I missed out on it back in 2017.
Cut to over a month later and it was never delivered. I got no responses from either the Store or the shipping company from multiple attempts. At least Revolut came through and I was able to get my money back. Although I would have rather the album.
There’s some on Discogs.
I’ve had this same issue multiple times with various bands.
I WANT to support you; I WANT to order direct, but sadly, fifty percent of the time doing so becomes a nightmare and I just wind up on Amazon like everyone else.
I’ll give R.E.M. a bit of a pass as they are hardly an active entity anymore, but it’s still a sad situation.
Even if R.E.M. were still around, it’s not like they were ever directly involved with the store on the website.
Of course, but that wasn’t my point.
Whether or not you (i.e., a band) are directly overseeing your web store, if it is flying your banner, the business said store conducts is a direct reflection on you.
Given R.E.M.'s ‘good guys’ reputation (how they treated support acts, etc.), I’d like to think that if they were still active in 2024, the OP would not have had the experience they had.
Not the same situation but even when the band was active I recall issues occurring such as pre-orders arriving late. In fact, for whatever reason, this still appears to be an issue for a lot of artists and their web stores. I understand your point but I also understand how situations like this are beyond their control. In that sense, I don’t hold the artist responsible. I handle it the same way I would with any business, I take my business elsewhere.
Yeah, we’re totally talking in circles, but it’s all good.
As someone who directly handles his own merchandise sales, trust me, it’s only ‘beyond their control’ because they choose to let it be that way.
R.E.M. is not a small, largely unknown artist such as yourself operating on that scale that directly oversees the sale of their merch. That is not meant as a slight, BTW. I’m aware of many other artists that have problems with issues such as pre-orders not arriving on time. I’m no music business expert but I gather that many of these artists use outside entities to sell their merch online. In that respect, it is out of their hands.
Fair enough, but again, you are completely missing my point. I’m speaking to what how it ‘should’ be, which is obviously not how it ‘is.’
Just one man’s opinion meant to commiserate with the OP.
Oh, I can relate. Despite the poor experiences others had in the past, I pre-ordered In Time from the R.E.M. store which didn’t arrive on time (as opposed to not at all). Never did it again and have never ordered from any other artists’ online stores because of so many others having the same sort of experiences. I have no idea what the answer is. My decision was to buy elsewhere.
Yep, been there. It sucks, because, ideally, going direct would be the best bet for the artist.