Feedbands; The curated record delivery service that presses unsigned acts to vinyl for $19.95 a month

A new vinyl subscription service has been launched that picks an unreleased album of any genre from a band you’ve never heard of and delivers it to your door each month.

Some would say ambitious, others would say foolhardy. The latest venture to try and capitalise on the music industry’s renewed vinyl vigour is the misleadingly named Feedbands platform that offers subscribers a monthly ‘secret’ record; the unreleased album of a new band, pressed to 180gram vinyl.

The selection, much like an unsigned version of Rough Trade’s Album of the Month service, is ‘curated’ by the heads at Feedbands, whose name is presumably derived from the claim that they bypass traditionally exploitative methods of major record labels to look after the little guy and bring the music directly to the people. It is a message delivered in a somewhat contradictory manner via a lavish and completely baffling promo video.

Despite the corporate production values, vague definitions and deflating rhetoric – “our team carefully chooses killer albums that deserve a place among the greats”, “The album you’ll get each month will rock” etc etc – Feedbands are desperate to appear quite literally ‘grassroots’, going so far as to include plantable download cards, embedded with wildflower seeds.

Confused? Don’t worry, we’ve also struggled to make head or tail of this, with a quick browse of online messageboards suggesting the verdict is still very much out on Feedbands. Does it fill a yawning gap in the market? Does it miss the point completely? Or, as one particularly loquacious blogger puts it: “Is Feedbands A Scam Or Is It Just Useless: Review”

You can see what it’s all about at www.feedbands.com or just amuse yourself with their promo video “Pythagoras Vs. The Record Company” below: