LOS ANGELES — Local record store Forever Records is offering a new home delivery service, in which a crate of personally selected vinyl is sent to your home for you to peruse, comment on, and ultimately not buy, store management confirmed.
“Coronavirus really hit us hard, and we kept hearing about how much people miss loitering in our store. We’re doing our best to help recreate that experience,” Forever Records owner Alyssa Long said. “So, now we’re asking customers to fill out a brief survey about their musical preferences, and a personalized selection of records will be sent to your front door so you can aimlessly wander around your home pretending you’re going to buy them, and then just put them away in the wrong order.”
“We’re not charging anything for this experience,” Long added. “We didn’t make any money before the pandemic. Why should that change?”
Music fans are applauding this new service.
“It’s fantastic. I pull up my friends on Zoom, and then flip through the crate commenting and judging every album,” supposed vinyl collector Timmy Ruiz said. “And you can have genre specific records sent, too. I have no interest in jazz or world music, but that doesn’t stop me from forcing my friends to listen to inaccurate anecdotes I gleaned from Ken Burns before I leave the crate in the sun all day for the store to come pick up. They also have clerks available 24/7, so you can have them on the phone while you ask, ‘Is this a first pressing?’ as if that actually matters to you.”
Music experts feel that Forever Records is providing a necessary service in the digital age.
“Customers want physical media — they want to get their grubby, oily hands all over the product and pretend like they want to buy it,” said Doyle Glover, Ph.D. and professor of music theory at Lakeland University. “They want to force you to let them sample the record on the store’s turntable before leaving it in the DVD section for you to put away later. It’s all part of the experience of music.”
For her part, Long added that she hopes to find a way to appraise used records digitally and be screamed at for her low offer on a scratched Fleetwood Mac album.