Gemm - Whats the final end word?

[Mike]

 

Reported in this thread that no longer going and as the website doesn't load looks like its now long gone

What the view of members on this now piece of history website

I used to use it a fair bit back around early 2000s but over time used it lesser and lesser as its use as both sales (quite a few bargains at first) and use as  a reference faded.

demise reasons ?

 

whats your take.. ?

 

 

Edited July 15, 2015 by mike

[Jnixon]

 

Reported in this thread that no longer going and as the website doesn't load looks like its now long gone

What the view of members on this now piece of history website

I used to use it a fair bit back around early 2000s but over time used it lesser and lesser as its use as both sales (quite a few bargains at first) and use as  a reference faded.

demise reasons ?

 

whats your take.. ?

 

 

discogs market domination

[Mike]

discogs market domination

maybe

though perhaps more gemm themselves to blame than anyone else

 

 

 

[Mach]

Musicstack seems very popular too, but sad to see gemms go

[Dave Thorley]

Musicstack seems very popular too, but sad to see gemms go

I agree much prefered Gemm's search over Discogs. But Discogs inability to accept bulk upload of data in a single file means I'll never use them to sell. But Musicstack on the other hand, has all the benefits of Gemm, but with the added bonus of direct Paypal payments to the seller.

 

Edited July 15, 2015 by Dave Thorley

[Sutty]

Dave - Discogs accepts catalogue uploads, have tried asking them for advice/assistance? There are many dealers that upload their catalogues on a daily basis.

Gemms decline is obvious to me and I've said it many times. You want to buy a record? You go to google. First page hits are all Discogs, Gemm is on page 5 if you're lucky. I had stuff in Gemm for years that didn't sell dropping prices along the way. Put it on Discogs, sold almost all of it at more that it was on Gemm for, cos nobody could find it!

Gemm payment system was terrible, you pay Gemm then sellers have to wait for the cheque to turn up ages later.

Musicstack is lagging too, the search/view facility is painful, Discogs is definitely winning the online battle and is only going to get bigger IMO, as the fees are less than eBay and mainly because of those google results 

cheers Sutty

[Jnixon]

maybe

though perhaps more gemm themselves to blame than anyone else

 

 

Same thing I guess so yes you are also right. 

The demise of GEMM was because they failed to react to the impending domination of their market by Discogs well enough, IMO.

Discogs is now the en mass way people sell their 2nd hand music globally on a BIN/MAO basis. 

If you want to sell records from your collection this is the best online way to have many 'hooks' out.  

 

Edited July 15, 2015 by JNixon
typo

[Premium Stuff]

Gemm fuck*d people around and owed a lot of it's users money - paying them late, not paying them, not dealing with refunds/disputes.

I had some experience of this myself, small scale thankfully - and they were awful to deal with and still have my money.

I know several others who are big names as sellers on our scene who were owed shed loads by Gemm ...

[Dave Thorley]

Dave - Discogs accepts catalogue uploads, have tried asking them for advice/assistance? There are many dealers that upload their catalogues on a daily basis.

Gemms decline is obvious to me and I've said it many times. You want to buy a record? You go to google. First page hits are all Discogs, Gemm is on page 5 if you're lucky. I had stuff in Gemm for years that didn't sell dropping prices along the way. Put it on Discogs, sold almost all of it at more that it was on Gemm for, cos nobody could find it!

Gemm payment system was terrible, you pay Gemm then sellers have to wait for the cheque to turn up ages later.

Musicstack is lagging too, the search/view facility is painful, Discogs is definitely winning the online battle and is only going to get bigger IMO, as the fees are less than eBay and mainly because of those google results 

cheers Sutty

Really, I spent a week in conversation with them, the end result was that they said they couldn't. If anyone knows how to I would be very interested.

[Mick Holdsworth]

Really, I spent a week in conversation with them, the end result was that they said they couldn't. If anyone knows how to I would be very interested.

Dave,

It is possible to do a completely automatic upload, (ie you don't go and find the discogs release number first, but just upload as you would musicstack etc).
However to do this you need to have a "Big" catalogue. eg Craig Moerer has nearly 29000 items up as I write this. I'm sure his was much bigger than this last year when I looked into it late last year.

https://www.discogs.com/seller/recordsbymail/profile

If you click on any item within that page you'll see his items bypass discogs normal system, ie there is NO RELEASE NUMBER referred to in either the url or the description. So that gived CM the ability to upload anything, either common items or rare items that don't have a Discogs release number.

For the rest of us, it is semi-automatic. This involves going to discogs and searching for your record in their database, getting the Discogs RELEASE NUMBER and adding it to your own offline database. If you have an item that isn't on their database then you have create a Discogs Release No. either from start, or by cloning an existing on (eg if you have a demo and there's only a stock copy in Discogs)

Finally, from you own database, output the file as a csv file in EXACTLY the following format ...

"price","external_id","release_id","comments","media_condition"
7.08,"NSR2842","2168214","Original : ","Very Good Plus (VG+)"
7.08,"NSR2861","4801866","Original Demo / Promo Copy: ","Near Mint (NM or M-)"
8.26,"NSR2212","2998481","Reissue : Double sider, backed with her classic","Mint (M)"
8.26,"NSR2460","3713897","Reissue : Two biggies from Jackie with no previous US single release","Mint (M)"
8.26,"NSR2835","3311890","Original : ","Near Mint (NM or M-)"
17.70,"NSR2463","5393252","Reissue : Two superb versions of the Motown classics","Very Good Plus (VG+)"
17.70,"NSR2722","2684245","Original : Excellent Philly style Soul dancer from Ohio.","Near Mint (NM or M-)"

Notice there is no need to enter any artist, tiles etc, as this is all contained on Discogs under release number 2168214 or whatever. You don't need to enter anything in the fourth column (Comments) but the column needs to be there.

Hope that's some help,

Cheers
Mick

As a footnote, there was quite a bit on the Musicstack forums about this, and I'm sure there were sellers with larger catalogues than 29000 who said they were having to doing it the semi-automatic way, so maybe there isn't a clear ruling on when Discogs will let you do it, or when they won't. Maybe it's more to do with how much Discogs feel they will make from the commission on sales.

[Dave Thorley]

Dave,

It is possible to do a completely automatic upload, (ie you don't go and find the discogs release number first, but just upload as you would musicstack etc).
However to do this you need to have a "Big" catalogue. eg Craig Moerer has nearly 29000 items up as I write this. I'm sure his was much bigger than this last year when I looked into it late last year.

https://www.discogs.com/seller/recordsbymail/profile

If you click on any item within that page you'll see his items bypass discogs normal system, ie there is NO RELEASE NUMBER referred to in either the url or the description. So that gived CM the ability to upload anything, either common items or rare items that don't have a Discogs release number.

For the rest of us, it is semi-automatic. This involves going to discogs and searching for your record in their database, getting the Discogs RELEASE NUMBER and adding it to your own offline database. If you have an item that isn't on their database then you have create a Discogs Release No. either from start, or by cloning an existing on (eg if you have a demo and there's only a stock copy in Discogs)

Finally, from you own database, output the file as a csv file in EXACTLY the following format ...

"price","external_id","release_id","comments","media_condition"
7.08,"NSR2842","2168214","Original : ","Very Good Plus (VG+)"
7.08,"NSR2861","4801866","Original Demo / Promo Copy: ","Near Mint (NM or M-)"
8.26,"NSR2212","2998481","Reissue : Double sider, backed with her classic","Mint (M)"
8.26,"NSR2460","3713897","Reissue : Two biggies from Jackie with no previous US single release","Mint (M)"
8.26,"NSR2835","3311890","Original : ","Near Mint (NM or M-)"
17.70,"NSR2463","5393252","Reissue : Two superb versions of the Motown classics","Very Good Plus (VG+)"
17.70,"NSR2722","2684245","Original : Excellent Philly style Soul dancer from Ohio.","Near Mint (NM or M-)"

Notice there is no need to enter any artist, tiles etc, as this is all contained on Discogs under release number 2168214 or whatever. You don't need to enter anything in the fourth column (Comments) but the column needs to be there.

Hope that's some help,

Cheers
Mick

As a footnote, there was quite a bit on the Musicstack forums about this, and I'm sure there were sellers with larger catalogues than 29000 who said they were having to doing it the semi-automatic way, so maybe there isn't a clear ruling on when Discogs will let you do it, or when they won't. Maybe it's more to do with how much Discogs feel they will make from the commission on sales.

Yep Mick that was sort of where I got to with them. I can upload my entire catalog as my own listing but it won't appear in theirs, just on my Discogs homepage. Otherwise it is a partly manual upload, which I think I'm going to have to do. It's a major pain and costly, as I have to employ someone for this.

[Mick Holdsworth]

I can upload my entire catalog as my own listing but it won't appear in theirs, just on my Discogs homepage.

I didn't know you could even do that. So you have "Some" things listed properly, so does that mean if anyone clicks your homepage from one of your links they can see all your listings ?  Although it's not perfect it's a good transisional method, at least folks can see all your stuff if they click a button or two.

[Quinvy]

I just tried to use Gemm, didn't see this thread. I will miss it. Found some bargains over the years, and can't get my head round discogs.

[The Tempest]

Used them once - lost £80.00 

French seller said he'd posted after delay in family issues,  locating the item in his warehouse,  blah,  blah,  

What I was'nt aware of was,  that it was all just a stall technique regarding firstly Gemm having no responsibility after the thirty days secondly the seller stating in the end they had posted it but never arrived 

No comeback whatsoever,  a crowd of w******s running a rip off site

who couldn't care less selling for a crowd of w********s,  good riddance ! 

However if any new fans of the soul scene out there looking for big ,tasty and too good to be true original demo items for sale then please visit my record site,  - 

Ripoffandscarper.com as advertised on Rogue Trader !

[Sutty]

eBay, Gemm, Discogs, Musicstack are obviously portals into sellers. They all operate generally using PayPal and your protection is with PayPal not the portal. There will always be unscrupulous sellers because they exist in life. Discogs certainly respond quickly to anyone contacting them about these people and suspend and close accounts, none of these portals want those types of sellers, and they don't profit from them, they get headaches like the buyer. I don't know how the other portals have ever responded. Blaming the portal is like blaming soul source moderators because someone has posted something up you don't like.

cheers Sutty

[Dave Thorley]

eBay, Gemm, Discogs, Musicstack are obviously portals into sellers. They all operate generally using PayPal and your protection is with PayPal not the portal. There will always be unscrupulous sellers because they exist in life. Discogs certainly respond quickly to anyone contacting them about these people and suspend and close accounts, none of these portals want those types of sellers, and they don't profit from them, they get headaches like the buyer. I don't know how the other portals have ever responded. Blaming the portal is like blaming soul source moderators because someone has posted something up you don't like.

cheers Sutty

MusicStack are quick and even handed in their approach..............