Music Non Stop is back, but something smells fishy
The UK-based online music shop MusicNonStop.co.uk suddenly shut down its business back in March and left many musicians and labels in debt from unpaid merchandise. The company also left countless customers in the dark with unfilled orders in the last few days of their operation, causing many of them to lose money as well. It was sad to see a once-great site like MusicNonStop go down, but what they did to the musicians and their customers was even worse.
Now, despite all of this, Side-Line reports that MusicNonStop is planning to relaunch their webshop on August 26th under the new ownership of Grufti Limited. While this new ownership means that all the previous debts are the responsibility of the original owners, Music Non Stop Limited, there is still a lot of debate about the use of the MusicNonStop name, the close relationship between the old and new owners, and how the old stock of CDs and merchandise was transferred from Music Non Stop Limited to Grufti Limited. On one side of the debate, there is the new owner who wants to keep an institution of the industrial and gothic music scenes alive and well, but on the other side, there are lots of musicians, labels, and customers who are owed lots of money that may never be paid back. There are still plenty of unanswered questions and angry people.
That leaves us with what is perhaps the most important question about MusicNonStop’s relaunch: Should you buy your music there and give them business? With everything that has happened, I would not recommend it. But even if you ignore all of this, ordering anything from the UK for delivery anywhere else in the world is prohibitively expensive due to the poor Dollar (or Euro) to Pound exchange rate. And if you do live in the UK, I would recommend using Resurrection Music from now on. They have pretty much everything that MusicNonStop ever had, and they are significantly cheaper.
You will have no problems finding great music without MusicNonStop. I’m sure you got along just fine during their 5 month absence.
August 23rd, 2008 at 1:44 pm
I’m not gonna buy from them again. I had pre-ordered the limited edition of ASP’s Horror Vacui there for like 40 euros (about $65 with shipping). I never got the CD, and never got my money back (they said to claim it from PayPal which I has used to pay, but PayPal refused the claim). Honestly, the money isn’t even the biggest problem, that limited edition was really limited and it already very rare. It was sold out before being released and I was lucky to have grabbed a copy, and now not only did I lose money but I missed my opportunity to get that CD, which I would have gotten if I had pre-ordered from another shop for the same prices (MNS’s prices are very high in general since they’re in pounds).
That’s a very personal rant, but I can’t help being very angry when I think the (very) pretty Ltd edition of Horror Vacui should be standing on my shelf right now!
June 27th, 2009 at 12:51 am
Well, that’s UK law. The word ‘limited’ means limited liabilities and MNS are not the only ones to use such a law. I’ve recently used MNS, first time in over a year due to others not having the CD’ and found their service very good.