I suppose many have seen latest discogs change. It sort of reminds me how Finnish post marketed their letter price change to businesses. People who have ordered stuff from me that is being sent in those while letters, they were basically roughly 7 euro to buy, 500g maximum weight. Couple years ago, they announced that only modest price adjustment, charging like 1 euro more... but besides that, not only price changed, but maximum weigh was dropped to 250g. Or was it 300g. Anyways, basically former letter you could send 4 jewel box CD for 7 euro, now it would be like 2 CD's for 8 euro. "Only small increase" actually in most cases, makes it multiple times higher. 4 CD's formerly shipped for 7, now 4 CD's could be 16 euro - making it about the same as just send as package. They did say that all old envelopes function as they did, so any old 500g letters you have pre-paid, works fine. I still got boxes of those and price have remained the same until I run out of envelopes. When? Who knows.. depends how much orders keep coming, yet at some point new postage rates will apply, and they might be horrible. Lets see that when time comes.
In similar way, latest discogs change, they claimed they only did modest 1% increase in fee. Formerly 8% fee is now 9%. Not bad, except that now it applies to both item AND shipping. When shipping is such a massive price, I would estimate this will make selling cheap item in discogs completely obsolete.
Let's say, you got seller with 5,- noise CD. Postage is 15,-. Total price 20,-
9% out of 20 is 1,80. Then mandatory PayPal fee, I guess something around 3,5% + 0,50 = 1,20
so total fees... 3,-
Does it make sense to sell 5,- tape, CD or LP, if 3,- goes to fees? Does it make sense to sell 10 euro 2nd hand LP, if high postage included in fee calculation takes half of its value into fees? Is this somehow intentional way to clean up discogs from discount releases? Aim to lift the profile into valuable and collectable stuff? Now that you got items for sale at 2 euro or so, think about selling such items to someone... 2e tape, 15 euro shipping... 17 euro... and fees according to math should be... 2,60? Taking loss for selling items that are too cheap. Discogs mentioned that sellers will have to adjust prices themselves. Sure. I guess in near months we will see low priced items disappearing from market. If it is actually less costs to throw something into garbage, than sell it, I can't see reason why people would keep them listed on the platform.
This may be also nuisance for labels who run new item distro via discogs.
I personally have no problem really. Haven't been buying anything from discogs for ages, all inventory been removed long ago. But I feel a bit cautious what kind of effect this has in underground that has perhaps too much relied on services of couple bigger platforms?
