The vinyl advocacy group speaks with optimism following the devastating blaze at Apollo Masters earlier this year.
The Vinyl Alliance, an advocacy group comprised of several industry organizations, issued an official response to the recent fire that destroyed Apollo Masters in California earlier this year. The incident raised concerns about the future of vinyl production as Apollo Masters was the primary source of a critical lacquer used in vinyl record creation. Still, the statement released by Vinyl Alliance is optimistic.
“There are already alternatives available,” says the group’s president Günter Loibl, “which will help bridge the shortage of lacquer discs. This can also be an opportunity to embrace new technologies and to strengthen collaboration within the industry.”
Within hours after the fire, Vinyl Alliance members got into contact with each other to discuss possible repercussions. Simultaneously, start-ups and individuals reached out to share their ideas. Soon it became clear that the impact on the industry will be limited in the long run as there are alternatives and options available to deal with the temporary shortage of lacquer discs:
MDC, the remaining manufacturer of lacquers, is rationing supply to satisfy the demand of as many customers as possible
Direct-to-Metal-Mastering (DMM) is a working alternative, which does not require a lacquer and is available worldwide
Several start-ups are planning to manufacture lacquers, and they are expected to enter the market in the coming months
New technologies such as HD Vinyl – a modern way to produce stampers without lacquers – are in development
Scott Hull, a mastering engineer in New York, remains calm: “For the time being we have to be more careful with how we use lacquers, but I doubt that the consumer will feel the shortage before our industry will come up with a solution.”
`Heinz Lichtenegger, CEO from Pro-Ject, believes in the future of vinyl: “Perhaps we can find a silver lining in this tragedy. Vinyl is an amazingly durable medium for music that has stood the test of time. We have seen cassettes, 8-Tracks, micro-cassette, reel to reel, Mini-Disc, LaserDisc, CED discs, etc. come and go, but the vinyl LP is more cherished than ever. It is a format important to the industry, to the artists, and to millions of fans! “
The main concern at this moment belongs to the employees of Apollo Masters. “They are the ones directly affected by this tragedy “, says Zack Tipton, CEO of Vinylize. “Our thoughts go out to them and their families.”
We will continue to cover the Apollo Masters fire and the vinyl industry’s response to its destruction in the coming weeks. Follow Haulix on Facebook and Twitter for more information.
Mandatory Credit: Photo by Petr David Josek/AP/Shutterstock (6681855e)
In this picture taken, a worker checks a pressed record at vinyl plant in Lodenice, Czech Republic. As vinyl records make a global comeback in popularity, a little-known Czech company is riding the market surge to establish itself as the world's biggest record manufacturers, with plans to expand in North America and Asia. GZ Media, based in a small town south west of the Czech capital, has made deals with all the major music labels and is running its plant day and night, every day of the year - even on Christmas - to satisfy booming demand
Czech Republic Vinyl Revival, Lodenice, Czech Republic
A recent fire at Apollo Masters in California has left the future of vinyl record production in a difficult position.
Vinyl is back. To be more specific, vinyl is experiencing a new wave of popularity, which has been building in waves of the last decade. More vinyl records were sold in the last decade than in the two decades that preceded it, and until last week the likelihood of sales continuing to grow was very high.
Then the unimaginable happened.
According to the Desert Sun, a three-alarm fire broke out on February 6 at the Apollo Masters Corp., a decades-old company that produces a lacquer formula for making master discs, which are critical for the creation of vinyl records. Employees were inside when the fire started, but everyone was able to escape unharmed. The facility was destroyed.
SR 243 closed south of I-10 due to fire. Use alternate routes. Unknown duration. pic.twitter.com/muPVeCfTHj
Apollo Masters was the “primary or possibly only supplier of the styli” that is used in the vinyl pressing process. The loss of the company’s facility is placing an enormous strain on the vinyl industry. Other businesses are allegedly working to enter the lacquer business, but the wait between planning and executing that work could take some time.
“From my understanding, this fire will present a problem for the vinyl industry worldwide,” Ben Blackwell, co-founder of Third Man Records, told Pitchfork in an email. “There are only TWO companies that make lacquers in the world, and the other, MDC in Japan, already had trouble keeping up with demand BEFORE this development.”
“I imagine this will affect EVERYONE, not just Third Man Pressing and Third Man Mastering, but to what extent remains to be seen,” he added. “I don’t want to be an alarmist. But I’m attempting to be realistic as opposed to Pollyannish.”
Pitchfork also points out that the Twitter account for Duplication, a Toronto-based vinyl/CD/DVD duplication, pressing, and printing company wrote, “Disaster for the vinyl pressing industry,” and “There will be a lacquer shortage, and possibly plants having to close or scale back operations for a while.”
It’s unclear if any artists depend solely on vinyl sales for income, but many in the rock and metal world have seen a healthy boost of revenue because of vinyl’s popularity. An industry scale back would impact artists at every level, but let’s be honest: Major labels have negotiation power that smaller names do not. It’s most likely that indie artists and labels will be the ones who feel the pinch of this crisis.
Follow Haulix on Facebook and Twitter for more information as new details become available.
Bandcamp is setting itself further apart from other streaming services with the reveal of a new way to fund and release vinyl.
Vinyl sales have surged in recent years, but cost of pressing remains high. Could Bandcamp’s new service be the solution DIY artists need?
Bandcamp has announced a new service that allows artists to launch crowdfunding campaigns for vinyl releases. Once a campaign reaches its minimum goal, Bandcamp will press and ship the vinyl record directly to fans, which saves artists time and lowers the risk involved in vinyl production. Artists will maintain full control of the record’s design as well as its price, though the cost will depend on the design, number of discs required, quality of sound, and other factors. The service—which aims to streamline the “financing, production, and fulfillment of vinyl records”—is set to launch for all artists and labels later this year.
The ‘Kickstarter for vinyl’ service was revealed by Bandcamp earlier this week. In the post, Bandcamp stated that sales of vinyl records on the service have grown 600% in the last five years, and every month another 3,500 unique vinyl albums are added to the site. While that figure is impressive, the announcement also says that only 9% of the albums with sales on Bandcamp in 2018 offered a vinyl version. The company hopes their new service will encourage more artists to explore vinyl pressing, as well as offer fans a chance to fund new pressings of records that may otherwise never be pressed again.
The reasons more DIY and independent artists don’t press vinyl are numerous, but cost is the biggest factor. A run of 500 records can easily costs thousands to press, and that isn’t accounting for postage to ship the albums to fans or the cost of packaging for those shipments. That price is too high for many artists, especially when it means taking a change that fans will actually buy the album once it is complete. Bandcamp’s service not only streamlines production and distribution, but it eliminates the risk factor entirely by funding production through fans. The worst that can happen is that a campaign does not raise the funds required for production, in which case an artist will have to rely on other means of getting physical media to fans.
Bandcamp launched its first brick and mortar store earlier this year. Whether or not releases funded through its new service will appear in the shop remains to be seen.
Hey everyone! You know we love providing you with the best industry advice and know-how, but sometimes when searching for such content we have to look in places other than our own memory banks. This post, for instance, was written by our friends at PledgeMusic. We don’t repurpose a lot of content, but this one is quite special.
This site exists to promote the future of the entertainment industry, and to do that we need input from people like you and your entertainment-loving friends. If you have any questions about the content in this article, or if you have an artist you would like to see featured on this blog, please contact james@haulix.com. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.
Record Store Day is cause for celebration for music fans everywhere, but some artists might not realise how far in advance they must plan. We asked our UK manufacturing partner Key Production what measures artists and record labels should take in preparation for this event.
When should artists and labels start thinking about their Record Store Day releases?
The sooner, the better! Record Store Day will be on April 18th this year and all submissions for releases need to be made by February 28th according to the website, however the manufacturing process needs to have been started before then. Most artists and labels will need to have their stock with their distributor 2 to 3 weeks prior to RSD – please check beforehand with your distributor – and allowing for approximately 8 weeks total manufacturing time, orders and parts should ideally be in place within the first week of February.
What is the normal lead time for a vinyl project and how does that compare during this season?
The production process usually takes 15 working days for test pressings and 20 working days for final pressings (upon approval of test pressings), therefore our planners recommend allowing at least 8 weeks for vinyl manufacturing. The good news is, that even in this hectic period, we’ve managed to keep our vinyl turnarounds exactly the same by securing extra capacity with our suppliers.
And in case you were wondering, coloured and shaped vinyl have the same production time as standard black vinyl.
Why does vinyl take longer to make than it used to?
With sales growing, record labels and artists have shown more interest in vinyl as a format and, as a result, have started producing more and more vinyl releases, but the number of pressing plants has remained the same. Therefore with sales and orders up and capacity the same, the time it takes to produce vinyl has gone up. There are various suppliers who are starting to invest in new equipment, so maybe this will have a knock on effect on turnaround in the near future.
What’s the one thing most people don’t realise about vinyl manufacturing?
Vinyl manufacturing is a process that hasn’t changed in the last 50 years, so it has its limitations and flaws, but that’s also what make it beautiful. Every piece feels, and at some level is, unique. Your vinyl pressing won’t (and shouldn’t) sound exactly like the CD version.
Is there a difference in quality between vinyl pressing plants? What makes one plant differ from another?
You’ll frequently hear people preferring one plant to another, but it depends on personal taste. With our 25 years expertise in the business, we always know where to go to fulfill a customer’s needs and deliver the kind of product the way they imagined it to be.
Why do you think people love vinyl so much?
Well, you can’t hug a download and there’s no satisfaction in hugging a CD. People love vinyl for the warm sound and because it looks beautiful. It starts with the sleeve artwork, the packaging and then you play it: the needle swishes, the music starts. It’s magic.
What’s your favourite piece of vinyl?
As you can imagine, here at Key Production, a lot of vinyl releases come in and each and every one is our favourite for a different reason. The Pixies “Indie Cindy” was the best-selling album of last year’s Record Store Day, but for beauty, we’ll have to go for Heavenly Recordings’ King Gizzard & The Wizard Lizard “Head on/Pill,” a picture disc with a swirling artwork by Oliver Hibert released in only 300 copies.
What now? Where does an artist or label go to get their vinyl release manufactured?
They can click here for our detailed manufacturing guide, where artists and labels can find all the information they need about formats, artwork and how to submit an order. Or they can contact us or their Campaign Manager for any further information.
Hello again. Thank you for taking a few moments out of your day to spend with us. We have been planning a very special reveal for the end of the week, but before we get there we have the pleasure of hosting an editorial from Antique Records about their experience putting out their very first vinyl release. If you have any questions about developing as a business owner in music, please do not hesitate email james@haulix.com and share your thoughts. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.
For the last two years I have had the great fortune of running a tiny indie record label with my best friend. We started our label, known as Antique, on a whim. It dawned on us one day that we shared a mutual bucket list goal of owning a label and that life had put both of us in a position to create that very thing. It was exciting and thrilling, but also pretty low risk as far as money was concerned. You see, until very recently we were known solely for creating limited edition cassette pressings of popular indie albums. Yes, people still buy cassettes.
Anyways, at the end of 2013 we decided that if we ever wanted to take Antique to a new level we would have to invest more time and money into the products we create. We went back and forth on the best way to expand our horizons, but truth be told we settled on the very first idea that came to mind (after spitballing an additional 100 or so ideas that are still unexplored). That idea, as the title of this article suggests, was pretty simple: Let’s make vinyl. I was already an avid collector myself, as was my co-owner, but the costs associated with such an undertaking turned out to be about 10x what we had experienced when placing a new cassette order so we had – until that point – never thought about pressing records ourselves.
A few weeks after Craig, my label’s co-owner, and I had that conversation about expansion we decided to take a leap of faith an register an LLC for our label. We admittedly should have done this about two years ago, but as we were paying for everything out of pocket and barely breaking even, if not losing money outright, we never thought it too necessary to pay the costs associated with ‘properly’ starting a business. Once we did, however, we were able to sign up for a company credit through American Express, which made our dreams of making vinyl (and accruing large sums of debt) a reality. We searched the net and found the perfect voice to represent the future of our label, made a deal to press their latest album, and in early February placed an order for 500 vinyl records.
Months passed, but eventually the records did show up at my apartment, which for the time being doubles as Antique Records HQ. There, buried amongst boxes and packing tape, I embarked on a multi-hour mission to organize, pack, and ship 150 pre-orders that until this very afternoon were a drain on my free time. Now that I’m all caught up, I’m ready for more, but first I wanted to take a few minutes and share some insight on my experiences with this release. Some of it may feel obvious, but when you’re in the midst of trying to start your own business, let alone doing so while promoting a relatively unknown artist’s new album can make you so busy you overlook basic tricks of the trade. So, here it is, the best of everything I learned while putting out my label’s first vinyl:
1. Record pressing, like pretty much every other facet of entertainment, can be a long and frustrating process that is almost entirely out of your control.
When we decided to press our first record in the early months of 2014, I knew we would be facing competition at the production facility from all the major label releases planned for Record Store Day in April. What I did not realize, however, was just how much of an impact the growing demand for vinyl would have on my business. The company we ordered from guaranteed a 6-8 week turnaround, but told me it may be closer to 10 considering how many orders were pouring in when we first contacted them. By my math, that put our album release date somewhere between April 15 and the beginning of May. You know when the records arrived? June 25. That’s just over four months after I placed the order, which is a fact people who pre-ordered the album reminded me of well over a dozen times in the weeks leading up to the record’s arrival at my label’s doorstep. I called multiple times during the wait, but the most insight anyone could offer is that it was ‘being processed.’ Ultimately, I had no choice except to keep my cool and wait for word from the plant.
2. You will always need more tape. Always.
One thing no one ever talks about when it comes to putting out records is the amount of time and tape you will need to box and send off your product. We all want our records to succeed, of course, but as the owner of an independent label you need to realize the responsibility of making all those consumers happy falls entirely on your shoulders. As such, you need to make sure you’re ready for your first album to arrive by buying plenty of boxes, tape, and whatever additional shipping supplies you feel you may need well in advance of the final product arriving at your door. I cannot tell you how much time I wasted making not two, but three extra trips to the office supply store because I underestimated the tools I would need to do my job well. Plan ahead. Over plan, in fact. Just be prepared.
3. You cannot please everyone. You should try to, of course, but eventually you have to accept that some people have demands that are just too great.
When releases records, especially early on in the life of your label, people may be suspicious of just how well you actually run your operation. Delays may be out of your control, but that does not mean people will not blame you when their orders do not arrive on time. Likewise, there will be people who expect you to ship their order the same day the final product arrives from the plant. You may be able to comply with this request on rare occasions, but if you try and meet every demand made by consumers you will be inundated with too many requests to handle. Keep communication open at all times, but don’t be afraid to put your foot down whenever necessary.
Above all, don’t be a dick. Even when you have to be the bad guy, be as nice as you can possibly be.
4. You’re going to need help.
The fact you’ve taken it upon yourself to start a label and put your own money into making records is great, but if you believe you can handle all the ins and outs of owning a small business without a little help from your friends you’re sorely mistaken. As your business grows so will the various task that demand your time and attention. This goes double for super successful order, which come with a large number of pre-orders that need to be packed and shipped in advance of the album’s intended release. It’s the kind of thing people call a ‘good problem,’ but it’s a problem nonetheless. If people ask to help, let them. If not, consider seeking an intern.
5. International shipping has the power to break your spirits (unless you plan accordingly).
We may live in a digital age where essentially every task that can be turned into an app has been turned into an app, but that does not mean every thing your business needs to succeed is automated as soon as you sign up to open an online store. Many services automate overseas shipping, but not all of them. I know at least three labels who put up records with $5 shipping and forgot to make sure international orders had a different rate, including my own. The results, while not completely miserable, set the labels back several hundred dollars. Some orders even lost money! Always. ALWAYS. Double check shipping before pushing a new product live.
