Making Vinyl Records

Musician Jack White owns Third Man Records vinyl pressing plant in Detroit, one of 88 disk pressers in the US. This video directed by Wired magazine’s Katherine Wzorek takes a look at how platters are manufactured.

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Top Image (“Leo’s DJ, after Da Vinci”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Metal Band Buys Vinyl Record Plant

Heavy Metal band Metallica is getting heavy into vinyl with the purchase of Furnace Record Pressing, a 70,000-square-foot vinyl pressing plant in Alexandria, Virginia. The band isn’t alone. Musician Jack White owns the Third Man Records vinyl pressing plant in Detroit, another one of the 88 disk pressers in the US.

Metallica sold 387,000 vinyl albums last year. Industry-wide, vinyl outsold CDs last year, the first time since 1987, becoming the single most popular format of physical media in music, accounting for $1.2 billion in sales.

More:

“Metallica Sells So Much Vinyl It Just Bought Its Own Pressing Plant,” Robert Levine, Billboard

“Metallica have bought their own vinyl pressing plant,” Will Richards, NME

“Metallica Just Bought A Northern Virginia Record-Pressing Company,” Elliot C. Williams, DCist

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Top Image (“Leo’s DJ, after Da Vinci”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

 

Vinyl City, USA: Nashville

In Tennessee, especially the Nashville area, the number of vinyl plants will rise from two to five overall this year. Through June of this year, vinyl records made $570 million in revenue, up 22 percent year-over-year. Demand hasn’t abated.

More:

“Can Tennessee Solve America’s Vinyl Shortage?” Lyndsey Havens, Billboard

US Vinyl Sales Rise 22% In First Half of 2022,” Aprol Claire Welsh, DJ Mag

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Image (“Leo’s DJ, after Da Vinci”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

The Chair On All Those LP Covers

If you’ve seen lots 1970s vinyl album covers, you’ve seen many photos of Peacock wicker chairs. Estelle Caswell explains in a Vox video.

More: 

“The Development and Effects of the Twentieth-Century Wicker Revival,” Emily A. Morris, thesis, Corcoran College of Art & Design, Department of History of Decorative Arts, 2012.

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Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

 

33⅓ in 2020: LPs Outsell CDs

“Sales of vinyl records surpassed those of CDs in the U.S. for the first time since 1986, marking a key turning point for the format’s nostalgia-fueled resurgence.

People spent $232.1 million on limited-play and extended-play records in the first half of the year, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, eclipsing the $129.9 million they spent on compact discs.

Vinyl was the most popular way people listened to music throughout the 1970s and the early 1980s, at which point it gave way to tape cassettes — followed by CDs and digital formats. Each new format was more convenient than the last and suppressed interest in vinyl.”

— “Vinyl-Record Sales Top Compact Discs for First Time in 34 Years,” Lucas Shaw, Bloomberg

More:

“Vinyl outsells CDs for the first time since the 1980s,” Nick Reilly, NME

“Vinyl Is Poised to Outsell CDs For the First Time Since 1986,” Elias Leight, Rolling Stone

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Image (“Leo’s DJ, after Da Vinci”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Vinyl Is Back. Sort Of.

“More and more people are buying vinyl; sales hit a record 6.1 million units in the U.S. last year. But as demand increases, the number of American pressing plants remains relatively fixed. No one is building new presses because, by all accounts, it would be prohibitively expensive. So the industry is limited to the dozen or so plants currently operating in the States.”

— “Wax and Wane: The Tough Realities Behind Vinyl’s Comeback,” Joel Oliphint, Pitchfork

 More:

“The music industry’s newfangled growth business: vinyl records,” John McDuling, Quartz

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Short Link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-jGp

Image (“Leo’s DJ, after Da Vinci”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

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