I thought this was fairly common in the music industry? For example, Blind Guardian got gold records for their live DVD Trough the Looking Glass and one of the members that got a gold one was their current drummer, but not the drummer who you actually see/hear on given material (which, granted, is a bit silly, but also somewhat logical given that is the band in its current state). Furthermore, the one who hands these out is likely the record company themselves.
That said, I can totally understand Marco, but one would think a personal/direct message to SW would suffice instead of an immediate passive agressive social media approach (depending on the answer he gets).
In regards to the whole vinyl-only thing, over here it kind of makes sense, as vinyls dominate the physical market. I know very few people under the 30 with a CD player (a dedicated one, that is), a lot of people from any age, however, own a vinyl player. You can also see it in the stores, quite often the CD corner is very small in comparison. That said, there have been many releases where the vinyl edition also contains the CD's (some Arjen Lucassen releases, and many pop releases) at the same standard pricing.