On April 22, Owen Pallett posted the following on Facebook: “The album release date for In Conflict has been pushed back to May 27. This is due to a backup at the pressing plant; Record Store Day was a tall order this year. We will be selling CD and vinyl copies of the album at all May tour dates, prior to the ‘street date.’”
As of late, it's been all too common: An artist celebrates a record release show, booked months in advance, but doesn’t actually have the record available at the merch table because of some mysterious hold-up. Or—in Pallett’s case and many others—they release a "pushed back" statement instead, one that has nothing to do with last minute tinkering in the studio. It has to do with a shortage of vinyl pressing plants.
“It’s becoming bad,” says Ben Blackwell of Third Man Records, when asked if he’s noticed any lag time in receiving vinyl record orders in from plants. ‘There’s two things that are happening: There’s more people than ever pressing vinyl since it hasn’t been the predominant format. That’s coupled with the fact that people who’ve always pressed vinyl—folks like Jack White, Daft Punk, and Radiohead—are pressing more vinyl than ever.”
“[Jack White’s] Blunderbuss—70 to 80,000 copies of that LP have gone out our doors. That’s a number that, five years ago, would’ve exploded your brain. But now, Daft Punk, Vampire Weekend, Queens of the Stone Age each have first week vinyl sales of 15, 20, 30,000—shit like that.”
“There’s more demand than supply,” he says, “and the supply is pressing plant capacity.”
There are only about 20 vinyl pressing plants currently operating in the United States. That's it. Rainbo Records, a busy plant in California, has 14 presses and operates 24 hours a day, often at least six days a week but usually seven.
“With us, the demand has just been unbelievable with the vinyl, going back the last couple of years,” Rainbo account executive Rick Lepore explains. “There’s a lot of surges too where we start to flatten out and [things] seem like they’re going to be a little more reasonable. Then we’re hit with a lot of new lacquers and orders.”
Lepore says that beyond demand, an industry shift in custom orders has slowed the manufacturing process.
“[An artist will] want to do a run of 500 but they want 200 in green, 200 in blue, and 100 in red and that really slows everything down through put-down, where we do a run and then have to stop and clean up the press each time,” he says. “Then with the packaging, we used to just put in the jacket and we’re done. Now quite often there’s inserts, people want to put in their download cards and stickers and that happens quite a bit.”
Such examples point to the influence that digital consumption has had on aesthetic value; artists feel that fans who seek out vinyl not only want something tangible to help them connect with music, but that thing also has to look and feel particularly unique. Will this increased demand for vinyl production lead to new pressing plants? Lepore doesn't think so.
“The start-up costs would be astronomical,” he says. “Getting a hold of presses is pretty much impossible; there’s no one making new presses so, if you want to start up a plant, getting a hold of presses would be very difficult. There’s nowhere to get them. And you need people with very precise technical skills, and finding those people who can run those presses is very difficult.
“So, really between big set-up costs, the lack of available presses, and then the lack of people with the proper expertise makes starting another plant very difficult.”
That said, earlier this month there was a pretty dramatic development: Nashville’s United Record Pressing announced plans to nearly double its record production by bringing 16 new presses back to life, some of which they’d acquired from other defunct plants. In an interview with Billboard, Jay Millar, United’s director of marketing, discussed how the move would almost double their current volume of 30,000 to 40,000 records made each day.
Millar also addressed arguments that initiatives like Record Store Day have actually placed so much pressure on plants, some smaller customers (say, Owen Pallett) are pushed to the back of the line.
“I did see some of that criticism, and it seemed like most of it was coming from the UK,” he said. “I wasn't aware of any indies that failed to meet the Record Store Day deadline, but I was aware of major label stuff that didn't make the deadline... People were saying 'If you're a small label or small order, it's not happening' which seemed false from my observations here.”
“I would say Record Store Day is a result of the rise in vinyl,” he continued. “From my own experience, it was the emergence of digital music players that brought on the rise in vinyl. It's people wanting to have that ‘deluxe’ experience. I compare it to going to the movie theatre versus the DVR.”
Recently, pressing plant representatives have been urging customers to get their orders in as early as possible to ensure that they receive their stock well before a scheduled release date or tour. For now, this seems to be the only solution. But now that United has anted up and expanded its operations, there’s a glimmer of hope that other plants might be able to do something similar—and a greater likelihood that records will come out exactly when they’re supposed to.