Have you ever been surfing the net one night in the midst of a vinyl shopping spree with your fav online retailer only to find that the infamous shipping rates get sprung on you at the last second, and you end up paying twice as much as you first intended? Don’t worry, we’ve all been there, we feel your pain.

Luckily, the Belgian label VLEK heard your cries of frustration too, but unlike us, they decided to actually do something about it! Hallelujah.

Yep, you read right – the good guys over at VLEK, with a single stroke of marketing genius, have devised a system to create some order in the chaotic, ‘no-price-is-too-high’ world of shipping rates. At least for vinyl, anyway.

The Belgian label, home to artists such as Sagat, Cupp Cave, and Squeaky Lobster, unveiled their new shipping system for vinyl within a recent blog post, stating that postage prices for items will be simply ‘what you see is what you get’:

We thought those shipping prices were confusing, so from now on, all VLEK vinyls will be priced: 1€ per inch Post & Package included. So yeah, that’s 12€ for a 12”, 7€ for a 7”, 10€ for a 10”.

Suddenly, everything makes sense – 1 euro per inch of wax.

However, if you’re a customer buying from USA, Japan, New Zealand, or from down under (Australia, ">duh) you’ll be having to fork out an extra 5 euro to compensate for living too damn far away from the motherland of techno, obviously.

With the bright idea of simply removing clutter and confusion from online record shopping coming from an indie label, hopefully the bigger online suppliers will have a think about giving it a go in the months to come.

Don’t believe me? Go see for yourself and test out the shipping system of the future, and maybe buy a few records while you’re there, over at the official VLEK online store.

Words by: Nick Luke