Fire Threatens Vinyl Supply
A major American lacquer disc provider was lost to fire on January 7th, 2020, threatening the world’s supply of vinyl records.
Apollo Masters was one of two facilities that produced acetate discs in the world, the other being in Japan. But experts from the record pressing industry have told Billboard that the real effects of this loss won’t be known for some time, although a “major hindrance” is predicted due to the Japanese producer’s current backlog.
Vinyl record sales had recently surged worldwide so some members of the industry are worried that this may cause the sales to drop, as the labels struggle to manufacture and release their recordings.
In the United States alone, sales of LPs and EPs had grown by 7.9% to US$419.2 million in 2018 according to the Recording Industry Association of America. And here in Canada, we saw a 3.1% increase in sales in 2019, to 973,891 vinyl albums sold according to Nielsen.
There should probably be no delays for most Record Store Day releases this April 18th. But next year’s selections could be slim, unfortunately.
Vinyl : Good News / Bad News
The Good News – A new 20,000 sq. ft vinyl record pressing plant will open in Burlington, Ontario in a few days and it will be the second largest plant in North America. Precision Record Pressing Incorporated will be handling independent releases, including some from Isotope Music, and major releases from Universal and Sony Canada.
The Bad News – Music blogger Pitchfork has reported that some independent records stores in the states have had their accounts closed by WEA, Warner Music’s distributor, because they’ve had less than $10,000 in orders per year. If this continues smaller retailers in the states might have issues keeping albums from Warner and their subsidiaries in stock.
New Vinyl Plant & Store
Global News has just reported that a new record pressing facility will be opened in Calgary in a month.
Canada Boy Vinyl will also include a recording studio and records store.