On April 1st, the British magazine ‘MixMag’veteran and influential publication specializing in electronic music, published an alarming news: the largest vinyl record factory in the world had just announced that all its production was put on hold until 2030 because he had been commissioned to reissue the complete discography of ABBA (“nine studio LPs, two live, seven compilations, three ‘box sets’ and 50 singles”) in various formats, a huge task that was going to prevent him from attending other applications until the end of the decade or beyond.
There were those who took the bait and happily reproduced the news, without realizing that April 1 is the day that Anglo-Saxon tradition consecrates the April Fools’ Day and without noticing that the text contained some clues which, to say the least, invited suspicion (starting with the name of the company, Wax On Wax Off, directly taken from the movie ‘Karate Kid’). But the truth is that, in essence, the joke-news from ‘MixMag’ was credible because it reflected (in a hyperbolic way, yes) a very real situation: the increase in demand for vinyl records and the strategy of the big labels multinationals to bet on the format both in their novelties and in the reissues of old references from their catalogs has overwhelmed the capacity of the factories and has caused significant delays in numerous launches.
“Monumental Jam”
A few weeks ago, the leader of The Cure, robert smithannounced that the band had already finished their next album, ‘Songs of the lost world’, but added that, in the best of cases, the album will not see the light until September “due to the delay in the manufacture of vinyl & rdquor;. Recently, loquillo he was forced to postpone the appearance of his latest LP, ‘Diario de una trugua’, for a little over a month, for the same reasons. They are already known the problems and delays caused by the shortage of vinyl factories, and the monumental congestion they suffer due to the large number of references to be produced at present”, pointed out the Barcelona rocker to justify the postponement (‘Diario de una trugua’ was finally published on April 26).
These are just two examples, but there are many more.
It seems increasingly clear that the vinyl boom is not a seasonal fad. The figures are, of course, far from those when the old microgroove was the absolute king of the recorded music market, a period that lasted from the end of the Second World War to the mid-1980s. but they start to be very worthy of attention. According to data from the Recording Industry Association of the United States (RIAA), 39.7 million vinyl LPs were sold in that country last year, 67.3% more than in 2020, generating revenues of more than 990 million euros. In the United Kingdom, growth was somewhat more moderate (5.3 million copies, 10.6% more than the previous year), but it consolidated a continuous rise that began 14 years ago. In Spain, with 1.6 million units shipped, the income obtained from the sale of vinyl records (25.5 million euros) rose by 38.2%.
triple the capacity
The problem is that a large part of the vinyl record manufacturing plants that existed in the world were dismantled when the format seemed doomed to extinction and, although a few new ones have been launched in the last decade, the current number is quite insufficient to absorb a demand that is also increasing. According to a report published at the end of last year by the US magazine ‘Billboard’, the approximately one hundred factories currently operating have a production capacity of about 160 million discs per year, an amount that should triple in order to meet the needs of the market in the coming years.
If you add to that a shortage of materials aggravated by the war in Ukraine (PVC, which is still a derivative of petroleum, and acetates, but also cardboard and inks for the covers) and the problems in international transport, we have the perfect storm that has ended up causing that big traffic jam that the industry speaks.
impossible planning
“The situation is a bit desperate & rdquor ;, admits Luis Fernández, head of the Madrid label Sonido Muchacho, for which artists such as Carolina Durante, Hinds, Erik Urano, Cariño, Los Punsetes and Mujeres, among many others, record. “Before the pandemic, the waiting period from when we delivered the master until we received the album was one or two months. Now it’s hard to lose four months, and even then you are exposed to unforeseen delays. To us, for example, the Rojuu album [‘Kor Kor Lake’] It arrived three months after what was agreed, and that made a simultaneous digital and physical release impossible, so the first impact was diluted & rdquor ;.
The Rojuu record Fernández is talking about was made in GZ Media, a macro complex located in Lodenice, in the Czech Republic, from which most of the vinyl consumed in Europe comes from. The volume of work at GZ has grown so much in recent years that there delivery times can reach up to eight months and even more. “Under these conditions, it is practically impossible to plan a launch & rdquor ;, points out the founder of Sonido Muchacho. And the economy of the companies is also put at risk. “The normal thing is to pay 100% of the fee in advance. And without the right to compensation in case of delay & rdquor ;.
In Spain there are currently three vinyl record pressing plants: Press Play Vinylin Urduliz (Vizcaya); Krakatau Recordsin Castelló de la Plana, and Mad Vinyl, in Algete (Madrid). In all three cases, the waiting times are much more reasonable than in GZ because, among other reasons, they work with much more modest and manageable print runs. “We are delivering eight or ten weeks & rdquor ;, says Eugene Lopezwhich in December 2020 launched Mad Vinyl together with two other partners (one of them, Liam Robinson, who took over from his father, former soccer player and sports commentator Michael Robinson, when he died before being able to see the factory inaugurated ).
a world disappeared
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López, a music lover who spent more than a decade traveling and tracking the sector before opening his own business, underlines that in the world there are only three producers of record making machines, “and they are also very expensive, so it is almost impossible for the number of pressing plants to grow at the same rate as demand & rdquor ;. In the opinion of the Madrid businessman, “they wanted to revive very quickly a world that had almost disappeared and that always causes problems & rdquor ;. See, if not, what happened to ‘Jurassic Park’.
Some voices (including singer, guitarist and producer Jack White) have suggested in recent months that the only solution to prevent the vinyl industry from collapsing is for the major record companies to restart their own disc pressing plantsas they did in the past. Carlos perez, responsible for ‘stocks’ at Sony Music Spain, is quite clear that this is not going to happen. “The way the business is, I don’t see any point in it,” he says. It is true that we have had a brutal increase in vinyl sales for 10 years, but what really moves the sector is digital, and I don’t think that getting into an investment like a vinyl factory can be profitable in the medium term & rdquor ;. Afraid that the vinyl ‘boom’ is just a bubble? “I don’t know what to believe anymore,” confesses Pérez. We have seen so many things! & rdquor ;.