While subscription music-streaming services are a dime a dozen, one enterprising new company, VNYL, is trying to adapt Netflix’s model by mailing vinyl records to subscribers’ homes.( Vinyl Me, Please has used a similar model, sending a limited version of a record accompanied by a cocktail recipe, to great success.) VNYL will use hashtags to help subscribers form a queue, then send them three records every month based on the hashtags they chose. Some example hashtags are “#betweenthesheets” and “#lazysaturday,” the company’s equivalent of Netflix’s “Gritty crime dramas” and “Westerns that aren’t City Slickers II: The Legend Of Curly’s Gold.”
Unlike Netflix, if a person is taken with one of the records they receive, VNYL allows users to purchase it for $8-$12, and send back the rejects in a pre-paid mailer. Of course, given vinyl’s fragile nature, this could cause certain problems—especially after someone returns a tear-soaked copy of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures, proving that the hashtag “#rainyday” was better in theory than in practice.