The appeal in vinyl is that it's just much more fun to hold, and the possibilities for packaging stretch much farther. But only so far, as Sub Pop Records and Father John Misty found out when they built an elaborate pop-up art installation into a deluxe edition of the performer's new album I Love You, Honeybear. Turns out that all the aesthetics ended up damaging the actual disco holding the music (from Pitchfork).
Everyone either has a parent who has warned them against this, or a parent that painfully continues to do this even after you've warned them not to: Don't stack vinyl records. The weight of the stack will impress itself upon the titles at the bottom and ultimately damage the grooves. Although the Father John Misty release was shipped in the same way as any other record, all that extra paper in the middle caused the slightest of bubbling, putting extra pressure on the contents of the sleeve, resulting in many copies arriving at customers' doors unable to play correctly.
"This oversight, and any attendant suffering, is our fault, and we are very sorry," the label said in a statement. "We promise to be less ambitious in the future."
Not all is lost. The deluxe version of the vinyl came pressed in a tricolor pattern and the company will begin pressing more to make up for those that were squashed in transit. Purchasers will be instructed to ship the disc (not the packaging, just the disc) to Sub Pop, whom will replace it with a new (and properly delivered) model of the same color. The original packaging can be kept for storage of the new disc, as it's no longer dangerous. Assuming of course that you don't plan on ordering 100 and crunching them tightly together.
Ultimately everyone wins...except Sub Pop, due to the cost of pressing all the new records. In the future they might leave the more exotic packaging and pressings to Third Man.
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