Does anyone still make vinyl records

When COVID struck, things became, understandably, pretty quiet for the music industry for about three or four months. More artists are making more product. These are:. Sony, Universal and Warner started getting all their vinyl for the States pressed in Europe, then shipped back to the US. American vinyl is a thorny issue. As well as offering design and packaging services, they buy up space across the plants to offer their clients.

Some labels may choose to do this in-house, while others use a broker who will have relationships with all the major pressing plants and can advise on how long the wait time is, while obviously keeping track of any cancellations leading to last-minute availability.

Major labels will negotiate a guaranteed capacity and, in normal times, the vagaries of a changing release schedule means that slots can become available for others to stake a claim.

But at the moment, capacity has been at maximum virtually ever since lockdown. It was convincingly denied both by a major label exec we spoke to and a pressing plant. It seems, the majors simply have more resources to be able to plan their releases further ahead and know when they need the plant space. The format that industry would apparently like to die still takes approximately 10 days to manufacture. If you are looking for fancy gatefold card wallet packaging you are probably looking at an additional 10 days.

The bonus material included on a reissue is often planned as far as a year in advance. Once you know what you want to do there are still plenty of potential hazards. A compiler might be trying to locate a specific master tape it took the best part of a year to locate the multi-tracks required for Steven Wilson to remix Tears For Fears The Seeds of Love in 5.

Crucially, the artist themselves may be negotiating their approval of the reissue for some months. Perhaps they want to promote their new album before considering any discussion of their year-old demos, or are looking to renegotiate their royalty rate or agree terms with their publishers on future sync deals.

Such financial negotiations are a reality. But not at the moment. At the moment SDE knows of at least a dozen major releases which had been scheduled for Q4 this year, but which have already been bumped to That depends. The consensus in appears to be that the industry is still burned from the failure of trying digital-only reissues when iTunes downloads were at their height a decade ago.

The established ethos states that reissues only appear to collectors, and collectors need something physical to collect.

Streaming-only reissues in hip-hop are increasingly well-established, however. In short, physical reissues are safe, but who knows what the future will bring. If you take too long once that ball is rolling on an album campaign, you start to lose momentum. In other words, this over-running of European plants might — and we emphasise might — be here to stay.

Even if pressing plants return to normal post-COVID, the delays will take a year to 18 months to catch up on. Delays at getting fresh stock of popular titles in has gone from four weeks to four months. They went in a day. It was like trying to buy festival tickets online. But for restocks, albums go back and back. Absolutely, at least financially. The split dates creates more work for stores — a month to prepare, a month for each RSD and the month after to recover — and means Record Store Day will be the main focus of record shops for about a third of the year in It has to be approached as a nice supplement to the work you do the rest of the year.

Many couriers refuse to take goods to the UK. Costs for couriers and VAT issues have risen. Plants and their brokers have been hiring extra financial staff to understand the implications of Brexit and its paperwork. Crates of vinyl have been lost in transit. Related: The home of vinyl records is Turntables and other vinyl-related accessories are also benefiting as a result.

Sony said it will resume vinyl production by March next year in a factory southwest of Tokyo that's run by one of its subsidiaries. It still hasn't yet decided which genres of music it will produce, according to the spokeswoman. The firm installed an analog record-cutting machine in February, which makes master copies of records for mass production, and is now introducing a pressing machine, she said.

There is something romantic about records, something satisfying about opening the album jacket, seeing the fantastic artwork and studying the liner notes while listening to the album.

There is nothing fast about a record. Whereas you can tap on your phone and pull up a song on Amazon Unlimited or Apple Music in a matter of seconds, with a record you have to remove it from the sleeve, open the top of the record player, place the vinyl disc carefully and set the stylus, then switch it all on and wait as that warm crackle prefaces that rare experience: music as the activity, not as the backdrop.

And whereas in the past, a record player might have seemed a luxury item that may even have verged on the frivolous, not only is a new appreciation for how we listen a factor, but any more, high quality turntables are hardly priced out of range for the average consumer. Why hybrid?

Samuel Rowan 27 Dec Excellent Product! Excellent Production Speed! Excellent experience! Johnathan Foster 16 Dec I thought the vinyl was perfect until I played it. It looked beautiful with the image I chose and my girlfriend thought it was the most amazing Christmas present.

Then we played it and the last song always cuts out early on each side. I made sure to choose songs that were under the allowed 10 minutes by more than a few seconds but I guess they don't test the vinyls for quality control otherwise they would of caught this.

For such an expensive product you would think the results would be much better. My attempts to contact customer service were futile and went nowhere. Overall, a very disappointing Christmas experience. Very happy with my results! The website was easy to use, the team was friendly and quick to respond, the shipping was very fast came early , and my vinyl looked and sounded amazing!

Gorgeous record and incredible customer service when I came across any issues. Jon Abbas 08 Aug Just want to share the joy and excitement I received from the process of creating my own Vinyl for someone special. What you and your Team has provided is an amazing way to keep in contact with people we care about and when they will listen to the music, it will help us connect on many different levels.

Lizzy Fox 22 Feb One of the songs ends kind of early on Side B but apart from there it seems okay. I was very happy that our Vinylify records were here in the USA in only a fortnight! So much quicker than ever expected! The records arrived safe and sound! Speaking of sound; WOW. The records sound just wonderful. Thank you again for so prompt service!

Paul Douglas Roadhouse Strangers. Fantastic company, they regularly checked in to make sure my record has arrived and was doing well, they notified me when it was running a bit late. If you're looking for a personalised record this is the place to get it. Raf Russell 11 Oct Never heard of Vinylify before, having looked at a few places to get a record of my own material pressed, this was definitely the most streamlined and easy to understand process.

It also allowed more song time per side than any other online record pressing site I had seen, which was important as we play proggy stuff. I bought one record as a gift for the other musician who worked on the album and it arrived with the proper formatting within about a week and a half of ordering and it sounds great! Even better than the CD version.

My only criticism is that the price can be prohibitive if you are looking to press a large amount of vinyl but that seems to be the case no matter where you go. I definitely recommend. Chris Bauer 10 Aug Item was shipped by seller very quickly but was delayed somewhere along the shipping process Vinylify customer service was very quick to respond and the vinyl did eventually make it here Will definitely buy again.