The 9 Best Vinyl Record Subscriptions to Pad Your Collection

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What It’s About: VMP is an online music retailer, plus a magazine specializing mostly in classic soul, jazz, and hip-hop. They work with artists on exclusive reissues—this week sees the release of VMP Anthology: The Story of Herbie Hancock, an 11-LP box set, curated by Hancock himself—and their club stays in those lanes as well veering toward some solid, left-field choices.

What You Get: Select from one of three “tracks”—Classics, Essentials, or Hip-Hop—and get one custom-pressed LP a month in a “box full of extras.” Selections are announced before shipments go out, so if you have album envy, you can switch tracks or swap your record out for another one within the VMP shop. (You’ll probably have to pony up for that Hancock set, though.)

Recent Selections: Donnie Hathaway’s Everything Is Everything is this December’s Classics pick, November’s Essential pick is Mama’s Gun by Erykah Badu, and this month’s Hip-Hop pick is Ghostface Killah’s Fishscale.

Cost: A three-month membership runs $119, a full year for $399.

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What It’s About: An offshoot of Dualtone Records, a label focusing on folk, indie, and Americana music, Magnolia Record Club’s tagline is “curated by artists, not robots.” And from the look of things, they have some good relationships; recent Curating Artists include Brandi Carlile, Josh Ritter, and Shovels & Rope.

What You Get: One curated LP a month, in an exclusive pressing— usually on colored vinyl—and an original print. There is also an optional “Artist Discovery” feature each month, which allows subscribers to add on a lesser-known record for $20; this month’s is Keep ‘Em On They Toes by Brent Cobb, which I am listening to right now, so, well done, Magnolia Record Club.

Recent Selections: My Morning Jacket's The Waterfall II, Phoebe Bridgers' Punisher, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit's Reunions.

Cost: $27 a month.

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What It’s About: The Secretly family of record labels—which includes Dead Oceans (Mistki, Phoebe Bridgers, Bright Eyes), JagJaguwar (Bon Iver, Angel Olsen, Moses Sumney), and Secretly Canadian (ANOHNI, Cherry Glazerr, Whitney)—sends you a record a month. Sometimes they’re new releases, sometimes a repressing of a classic. You’ll find out what the record is before shipping, and if you don’t want it, you can skip a selection every six months.

What You Get: One limited-edition LP, in an exclusive vinyl color with shipping.

Recent Selections: Khruangbin and Leon Bridges' Texas Sun EP, Whitney's Candid, Bright Eyes' Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was.

Cost: $20 a month.

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What It’s About: A lot of vinyl boxes try to customize themselves based on what their clients say they want, but Black Box harnesses the power of the streaming age to give you more of what you really listen to. Users can manually enter their favorite artists into a “taste profile,” or connect their subscription to their Spotify profile, which gives Black Box constantly updated access to their top 50 most-streamed artists. Monthly boxes then include limited-edition vinyl from those favorites, and new releases from related artists.

What You Get: Two LPs a month, custom merchandise (like note cards, art prints, and stickers), and members-only giveaways of audio gear and accessories.

Recent Selections: It’s based on your tastes, but their Facebook page reveals that users have recently unboxed everything from Pantera’s History of Hostility to George Harrison’s Early Takes Vol. 1.

Cost: $40 a month.

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What It’s About: As with Black Box, you link up your Spotify (or Discogs, or Soundcloud, or for some reason, Instagram), fill out a fairly extensive questionnaire about what artists and genres you like, then receive one or three records once a month suited to your tastes.

What You Get: One record a month, three if you choose the “Trio” membership. In the latter, you may then click on a “vibe” hashtag that reflects your current frame of mind for an exclusive record from an up and coming artist. It’s a little confusing, if you want to know the truth.

Recent Selections: Limited-edition colored pressings of Billie Eilish’s When We Go to Sleep, Where Do We Go? and Harry Styles’ Fine Line, plus Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Nirvana’s Nevermind.

Cost: $15 a month for one LP, $39 a month for three.

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What It’s About: Record collector Todd Drootin doesn’t run a subscription service so much as a “personalized collection-building service.” He works with clients to determine what they love, then goes in search of great-sounding pressings of their favorite records, and makes recommendations for records he thinks fall in line with their tastes. He emails them weekly or monthly with offers. Everything is 100 percent guaranteed, but according to him, “almost nothing ever comes back.”

What You Get: That depends on your taste and your budget. But if you want some great deals, follow his @lpguru Instagram feed, where he does regular “Feeding Frenzies”: free-for-alls where he posts some good recent finds. The first person to post “me” in the comments gets them for a steal.

Recent Selections: Some lucky Instagrammers just snapped up mint-condition original copies of Kraftwerk’s Autobahn, Sparks’s Kimono My House, and Television’s Marquee Moon.

Cost: Varies, obviously, but I can see myself parting with a significant amount of my money this way.

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What It’s About: “It's no secret that the music industry is a complete financial fuckstorm,” says the website, in a statement that I have to imagine was written even before the pandemic turned the chaos up. So they’re offering a “VIP Membership” that doesn’t send LPs every month, but does offer exclusive content. Joyful Noise’s current roster includes No Joy, Deerhoof, and the Low Anthem. They also have “open relationships” to release one-offs from artists like Sufjan Stevens, Japandroids, and something called Anal Trump that I am afraid to learn more about.

What You Get: Free downloads of every new release, plus access to limited, hand-numbered vinyl editions, on colored vinyl, and often with bonus material. You don’t get the vinyl for free, but you do get 10 percent off. There’s no telling how many new records Joyful Noise will release in the coming year, but at least you know you’re supporting a scrappy record label. Plus, when live music becomes a thing again, free tickets to shows in your area.

Recent Releases: Jad Fair and Daniel Johnston’s It’s Spooky, Lou Barlow’s Apocalypse Fetish, a 25th anniversary cassette box set of Deerhoof’s Children of Hoof, and Safe In Sound, an LP featuring Joyful Noise artists performing songs in quarantine.

Cost: $5 a month, $50 for a full year.

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What It’s About: Feedbands, an Austin-based music collective, has a pretty cool plan for saving the world through music. Unsigned artists can submit their music to its streaming platform, receive one cent per qualified stream (payable via Bitcoin), and for every 100 streams, Feedbands plants a tree in sub-Saharan Africa. Each month, the most thumbs-upped artist gets their record pressed in an exclusive limited release, and subscribers either get that record or choose another from the Feedbands catalog.

What You Get: One hand-pressed, numbered record a month, plus a digital download, a lyric sheet with art, a write-up about the artist, and what Feedbands calls “a good feeling about supporting independent music.”

Recent Selections: Peach by Larkin Poe and Funk Jesus by the Floozies, and if these are not yet household names, Feedbands find Smooth Hound Smith was chosen by the Chicks to be their opening act a couple years back.

Cost: $23/month.

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What It’s About: Seattle couple Kasey and Matthew (first names only) release exclusive vinyl from some of their favorite artists—Ben Gibbard, Cults, Pure Bathing Culture—along with, depending on the subscription, some seasonal spices and dry ingredients, or a bag of coffee from an artisanal roaster. Unique among these services, all Turntable Kitchen releases are recorded exclusively for the club, and commercially available only through them.

What You Get: Within Turntable Kitchen, there are three different subscription clubs. Sounds Delicious gets you one exclusive LP a month, featuring one of the curators’ favorite artists covering one of their favorite artists; this month it’s Fruit Bats covering all of Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream. With the Pairings Box, an exclusive seven-inch single, a “digital mixtape,” plus one to two premium seasonal ingredients, and recipes for some home-cooked meals that suit the music. Coffee + Vinyl replaces the food with a 12-ounce bag of fresh-roasted coffee beans.

Recent Selections: A recent Sounds Delicious highlight is Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado covering Born in the USA in its entirety. For Coffee + Vinyl, the Pains of Being Pure At Heart’s Covers EP got paired with a Colombian coffee from Onyx Coffee Roasters, while the Pairings Box sent a Local Natives single along with almond meal and recipes for a wild mushroom flatbread, honey-thyme chicken thighs, and a plum and amaretto cobbler.

Cost: Sounds Delicious and Pairings Box run $25 a month, Coffee + Vinyl $30.