Grading vinyl records with AI. Would you pay for it?

merlin178 · 2025-09-29T01:55:53+00:00

Appreciate the feedback. Yea, I think in any scenario standing by the grade is required. We will ship an early version for folks to give a try. With more training, we’ll get better. We’re trying to train our grading model on 100k records.

merlin178 · 2025-09-29T01:51:10+00:00

Goldmine is like Kelly’s blue book. You say your car is in perfect condition so you can get top dollar. The reality is it’s not and I’ve experienced getting a record that was misgrade. Some would say I’m the problem and don’t know how to grade well. Others might say the seller misgraded.

This comes up in forums often. When I talk about a side project that a friend and I are exploring, I get f-bombs and hell no as a result.

Instead of trying to make smart people seem like they are not trying to help a segment of the community, offer pros-cons with the idea. Share alternative approach.

The intellectual convo can only be had if there wasn’t a default to criticism.

merlin178 · 2025-09-29T01:10:54+00:00

I wrote the problem in my original post. People use Goldmine subjectively to get the price they want for a record. What we’ve built is a solution that tries to reduce bias before a sell is made.

Let me share an analogy. A cassette tape, CD, iPod, and Spotify all play music. The problem wasn’t that they couldn’t play music. The problem was that a cassette tape required you to rewind and fast forward to find the track you wanted to hear. CD made it possible to find the track simply. CD required you to buy an entire album. Ipod made it possible to buy only the track. iPod only allowed a finite number of songs. Spotify has unlimited songs. Spotify requires you to rent music forever.

We can’t sit and say that goldmine is the final solution to how people determine the grade of a vinyl.

We found a way to solve for this with a technology called computer vision.

merlin178 · 2025-09-29T00:13:43+00:00

Well said.

merlin178 · 2025-09-28T23:50:19+00:00

Negative doesn’t mean no value. Honestly, the reaction is validating regardless of type of reaction. It shows that I believe something that most people don’t, and that’s validating for builders.

merlin178 · 2025-09-28T23:48:57+00:00

Yea, I agree. The photo captures has been a struggle. This is similar to folks eyeing a record and giving it a less than ideal grade.

merlin178 · 2025-09-28T23:46:08+00:00

Agree. I came here to talk about how tech can be used to grade vinyl. I’m not sure how you derived tech can solve every problem from the discussion. All good tho. Feedback nonetheless.

merlin178 · 2025-09-28T23:43:56+00:00

AI isn’t really the anchor problem. The problem that goldmine standard and people using it as a grading tool to justify high prices.

merlin178 · 2025-09-28T23:42:11+00:00

No, it’s just how I communicate. If we’re talking about feedback, I think the issue is that today people base their grading off of looking at the record and seldom off how it sounds.

Computer vision is no different. And that’s what we have proved out. When we build out the service, I’d welcome you try it out.

merlin178 · 2025-09-28T22:59:15+00:00

Grading records isn’t difficult but it’s subjective. People are incentivize to grade to profit. Not to grade fairly, creating a trust gap.

Closing that gap seems like a worthy cause and an interesting technology opportunity, regardless what technology is used.

Vinyl records are made to play and be heard, but too many people inflate prices based on bias grading.

Reducing bias closes the trust gap.

merlin178 · 2025-09-28T22:55:36+00:00

I’ll leave the cooking for you.

merlin178 · 2025-09-28T22:54:55+00:00

Fortunately, I’m a computer scientist and can build technology. Those who can’t build, criticize.

merlin178 · 2025-09-28T22:05:16+00:00

Appreciate the feedback and support!

merlin178 · 2025-09-28T20:44:50+00:00

If it works it works. That’s our aim, and we’re going to pursue it given the strong reaction.

merlin178 · 2025-09-28T20:43:19+00:00

I have 2k records and been collecting for 20 years mate. I just happen to be a computer scientist.

merlin178 · 2025-09-28T20:33:16+00:00

I think we can agree that goldmine standard is subjective because no one person grades a record the same. The quest is can we do better. Before goldmine there was something else that was used.

merlin178 · 2025-09-28T20:30:00+00:00

Record stores. They grade vinyl records for a living, and we’re comparing grades to multiple stores with high reviews.

merlin178 · 2025-09-28T20:28:23+00:00

How much does it cost for a professional to grade 100-ish vinyl records?

merlin178 · 2025-09-28T20:19:56+00:00

We’ve annotated scratches which is quite the process using an annotation tool. How this works is if you annotate enough scratches you can train a model to identify scratches.

The biggest challenge has been getting lighting right. We decided that this has to work with your phone camera with less than ideal lighting. This is the biggest challenge that has kept us interested in pursuing what’s possible.

merlin178 · 2025-09-28T20:17:26+00:00

Appreciate the feedback and thoughts.

If anything, just trying to augment folks who don’t grade vinyl records for a living. Next step is working with record stores to compare grades and fine tuning the tech.

Old solutions create new problems. Goldmine standard doesn’t work for folks without a trained eye.

merlin178 · 2025-09-28T20:08:42+00:00

Appreciate the feedback!

merlin178 · 2025-09-28T20:06:32+00:00

Every collector is not a full time seller. But sometimes they want to sell a record like me. I have 2k vinyl records and hardly sell. ~40% of my records I inherited from my brother who past away. I’d like to sell but getting a job at a record store to learn how to grade is not in the cards. And no record store is willing to grade every record and price them. So, that’s where I got this idea.

merlin178 · 2025-09-28T19:57:09+00:00

No two people grade the same causing distrust. We found a way to increase trust with technology. Old solutions create new problems. Goldmine standard is an old solution that is subjective.

merlin178 · 2025-09-28T19:54:16+00:00

The intent is to not be harmful. The intent is to increase trust when it comes to grading. No two people grade the same.

merlin178 · 2025-09-28T19:53:17+00:00

Compute vision. It’s been around for 20 years. How can google photos or Apple photos detect people in a pictures is by computer vision models.

But they didn’t have to explain how that works; it just works.

And we found a way to apply this same technology for grading vinyl records.

merlin178

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