The Motown news just keeps on coming!
In April, vinyl subscription outlet Vinyl Me, Please featured Blue Note Records for the first volume in their immersive, multimedia series Vinyl Me, Please Anthology. Now, the label has announced their next installment: Vinyl Me, Please Anthology: The Women of Motown. VMP promises "an immersive journey into the storied label told through the music of the women who made it legendary." Subscriptions for the Anthology program will open on September 19 with an exclusive, discounted early bird sale. The general public on-sale follows on September 20. Only 1,000 sets will be available, so readers are urged to send in their information here to get access to the pre-sale.
The star of the Vinyl Me Please Anthology: The Women of Motown is a deluxe, 8-LP set featuring era-defining albums from across the label's history. Though the contents of the collection will be announced shortly, Vinyl Me, Please has revealed that each disc has been pressed on 180-gram vinyl at QRP and has been AAA-mastered and cut by Ryan Smith. The collection will also include liner notes by Susan Whitall, author of Women in Motown and will feature contributions from Ethiopia Habtemariam, Motown's current president.
As they did with the Blue Note volume, Vinyl Me, Please will incorporate multimedia elements to tell a story over the course of a month. Subscribers will be able to enjoy a four-episode podcast featuring interviews with Habtemariam and Whitall, along with other exclusive content.
More details will be announced soon, but if VMP's Blue Note installment is an indicator, VMP Anthology: Women of Motown will be an immersive and thoroughly enjoyable examination of the legendary label. It's also likely that the 1,000 units will sell out quickly (the Blue Note volume sold out in less than three hours!) so sign up here for earliest access and keep your eyes on The Second Disc as we update this post with more news. And don't forget to check out our recent news about the first-ever CD release from a very special woman of Motown: Blinky Williams!
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What artists are featured? We need a list or its not very interesting
That information will be dispersed by the label shortly. Once we learn the details, we'll be updating the post. Thanks for reading and stay tuned!
This is just another attempt to milk what is left of Motown. Motown died, in 1988, when Berry Gordy sold it.
These "Hidden" Vault recordings are absolutely, sub-par. I made of mistake of buying a few of them; they are absolute garbage and Motown never release what wouldn't see. We "Baby Boomers are approaching 65 and we've already heard the best. Don't waste your money and buy it as no one but GOd will ever know the names of anyone on this collection.
Can't wait
3:00pm PST on early access day, and still no e-mail yet from Vinyl Me, Please. Bad form, and this highly-secretive tack is poor marketing. Instead, I'm listening to the new MOTOWN UNRELEASED 1969. Will The Second Disc be reporting on this archival treasure?
Will this be available on CD or high-resolution digital?
Unfortunately this is a vinyl exclusive as of this writing. Vinyl Me Please is a vinyl-only label; perhaps Universal may see fit to release the set digitally at some point in the future.