New Again Records Cold Heat Vinyl

When Liz Dunster, known to friends as Vinyl Mama, moves through Erika Records' 65,000-square-foot vinyl pressing establish in Buena Park, she's ordinarily trailed by Elvis, her piddling Yorkshire terrier. On a recent morning, the two ambled through the facility, her in a stone-washed brown shirt, blue jeans and cherry boots, and Elvis trotting behind.

Steam-powered presses, operated past employees busy manus-stamping splatter-colored records, hissed with energy on either side of them. She passed ane area stacked with piles of Madvillain'due south "Madvillainy" album sleeves awaiting records ordered by Highland Park label Stones Throw.

Noting a chill in the warehouse, she grabbed a warm-to-the-bear upon puck of vinyl used to create glitter-filled records. "These besides make skilful hand warmers," she said with a smile, putting it into her pocket.

It'due south been a big year for vinyl sales, and the hum of activity overwhelming Erika'south product facility, which employs 75 people, offers proof.

Simply — cue needle scratch — there's a problem: Buyers want way more than records than pressing plants Erika and crosstown competitor Record Technology Inc. in Camarillo, the only 2 remaining pressing facilities in Southern California, can supply. That'due south true globally too: At that place aren't enough manufacturers to meet the renewed need, and too few workers are available to run them.

Equally with every major establish in the country, Erika's presses couldn't continue upward with the orders in 2021, and her plant is already fully booked through the end of 2022. RTI is scheduled six months out but plant manager Rick Hashimoto says that tenuous supply bondage take rendered precise scheduling hard.

During the week that concluded Dec. 23, buyers snatched up more than two.eleven million long-players in the U.South., according to MRC Data. The volume was part of a record-breaking run in which vinyl sales in each of the final seven weeks of 2021 surpassed a meg copies, the longest continuous streak since authentic tracking began in 1991.

Erika Records CEO Liz Dunster.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Dunster holds a scattering of red, translucent PVC used in different colour vinyl records.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Sales of new vinyl records this year doubled from 2020, to more than than 42 million units. More than than 300,000 of them were Adele's "thirty," which has spent five weeks as the country's peak-selling LP. Released on Nov. 19, the superstar's anthology — thousands of which were pressed at RTI — shattered the single-year vinyl sales record despite beingness on the market for a mere month and a half.

One more ready of numbers: Adele's anthology as well broke the unmarried-week vinyl sales record, which Taylor Swift had set a few weeks earlier with the release of "Ruby-red (Taylor's Version)." Swift ultimately sold nearly 200,000 copies of the LP, part of a yr in which her vinyl catalog tallied well-nigh 750,000 units.

The need is obvious at record stores. Last calendar week Amoeba Music's Hollywood location was and then crowded information technology was hard to scan the aisles. At Record Safari in Atwater Village, proprietor Alex Rodriguez said he'd been unable to restock dozens of titles he normally carries because his distributors' warehouses are empty.

"By and large, people being stuck at dwelling house with coin to spend during the pandemic seemed to have kicked off a surge in interest in vinyl," said Jason McGuire, full general manager of L.A. indie label Stones Throw. The label, which is owned by DJ and producer Chris Manak, a.1000.a. Peanut Butter Wolf, celebrated its 25th anniversary last year, a legacy supported through vinyl essentials past J Dilla, Madvillain, Anderson .Paak and Sudan Archives. Its sales were upwards 15% in 2021.

"Lots of folks were stuck at home working or received stimulus money early in the pandemic and couldn't spend it on the same things as earlier, and so they invested in their living spaces and home listening setups including turntables and howdy-fi," McGuire said. "I retrieve that's still carrying on today, near ii years into the pandemic."

As sales take soared, though, and then have costs. In the past year, the price of PVC (polyvinyl chloride), which is elemental to pressing records, jumped by nearly 50%.

The pebble-like synthetic plastic polymer, stored in refrigerator-sized boxes in one wing of Erika'due south facility, is also used to brand vinyl flooring, imitation leather and credit cards. Global production and distribution nevertheless haven't recovered from the pandemic's first moving ridge, which shuttered plants and cluttered shipping lanes. In 2021, a cargo send wedged in the Suez Canal caused a half dozen-solar day backup that shook up shipping schedules for the rest of the year.

RTI's Hashimoto said they become their vinyl from Asia. "A container that used to cost about $5,000 to transport now costs well-nigh $xx,000 to $25,000," he says.

"Every part of the process is getting more expensive, including PVC, metal plating, freight and labor," said Stones Throw's McGuire. He adds that the label has been reluctant to enhance its prices, but its costs have jumped significantly in the past half-year. "I await them to continue to increment into the adjacent twelvemonth," he says.

Erika does heavy business organization with Disney, which in recent years has issued soundtracks to many of its successful movies on pic discs — LPs with images baked into them. Demand besides is high for colored variants — limited-edition runs in different color combinations, with glitter or swirled, multicolored hues. Variants accept more time because they're hand-pressed. Dunster said that despite the major labels' massive orders, she remains devoted to her independent customers and ensures their place in the pecking order.

Richard Simpson cuts a record onto a lacquer using a lathe at Erika Records.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

It'south a tedious process, making bespoke variants at Erika. For swirled vinyl, which when finished resembles necktie-dye, each record takes a few minutes to manufacture. On this twenty-four hour period, employee Guadalupe Herrera was setting a puck in what looked similar a big waffle maker. But instead of batter, it was a pliable polymer disc; he sprinkled information technology with glitter, added another puck, pulled the top down and squished the vinyl to imprint microscopic grooves containing sound waves onto it. Some other employee, Denise Hernandez, was inserting, by hand, newly minted "Madvillainy" records into each jacket.

With single-color records, the process is much more automated, but with labels offer multicolored vinyl (and charging a few bucks more than for it than blackness vinyl), Erika's employees have their work cutting out for them.

Dunster founded Erika in 1981, when she was a young metalhead chasing early Slayer, Mötley Crüe and Metallica shows on the Sunset Strip. Piggybacking on her dad'south expertise in the field — he worked for a company that congenital record presses — she started her enterprise against his wishes at an inopportune moment in the history of recorded music: 1981, a few years before the major record labels undertook a decades-long entrada to render vinyl LPs obsolete by promoting compact discs and cassette tapes. I of her earliest customers was Hollywood fixture Angelyne, who was trying to brand information technology every bit a new-moving ridge singer.

Not merely did vinyl refuse to dice but need is at its highest since at to the lowest degree 1991. News of vinyl'due south render is hardly a breaking story, nor is the backlog of orders. The format has been "back" since the early '00s, and given Spotify, YouTube and the hundreds of millions of used records bachelor online, even if the whole pressing manufacture complanate tomorrow, nobody would exist starved of the music Erika imprints onto vinyl. Vinyl, after all, accounts for just 1.4% of global music sales.

But what would vanish is the most enduring nonfungible token of musical fandom of the by half-century.

Unlike even five years ago, love of vinyl is no longer an indie-only phenomenon. With major labels that accept dozens of projects in some phase of evolution, they have more buying power at the plants, noted Steve Sheldon, longtime general director of Rainbo Records, which shuttered in late 2019. "The sad office nigh the backlog is everybody'south catering to the majors. The footling independent labels are actually getting squeezed."

Accept, for case, Adele's "30." Whereas anyone in the earth tin stream Adele'southward music, "true fans" require talismans that express their devotion. Whether via concert tickets, T-shirts, posters, avatars or social media, fans want to lean in. As vacation tallies from beyond America accept confirmed, vinyl serves that purpose.

Though many indie labels were pressing records in the 1990s, the format's reascension started being taken seriously by industry watchers in the early 2000s.

Two decades later, that millennial enthusiasm has echoed through to Gen-Zers beyond America, even as the necessity of owning a physical copy of anything has most vanished.

Jack DiAngelo, sixteen, first started collecting records through her dad, who used to accept a sizable collection that he'd given away over the years — except for his Grateful Dead albums. When the Essex Canton, N.J.-based DiAngelo, who is gender-fluid and uses she/her pronouns, started getting into music, the box of Dead records were her start acquisitions. She's since started building a collection that includes albums by John Coltrane, MF Doom and the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

For her, vinyl'southward so-called "warmth," which audiophiles and collectors often espouse every bit the format's major attraction, has little bearing on her format preferences.

"Some people accept really nice speakers or whatever. I'k playing my stuff through a pretty cheap Bose Wave radio that my dad used to have," she said. DiAngelo bought her first turntable over the holidays, and hopes to go speakers to pair with an amp soon. "For me, it's nice to have it physical — to be able to feel the music. Not just hear it but be able to hold something. There'southward something special about that. Information technology feels important."

Still, until recently, the vinyl boom has been considered by many in the manufacture as a bubble gear up to burst. On a global scale, streaming remains the most feasible avenue for profitability — and nobody has to worry nearly production getting throttled by an errant send in the Suez Canal. The incentive for manufacturers to forge new presses, which are expensive to build and maintain, was tempered by the sense that the format'due south return was a fad.

That has shifted over the by half decade every bit at least two companies, Toronto-based Viryl Technologies and German company Newbilt Mechanism, accept introduced new presses. Rock singer and Third Man Records owner Jack White's recently opened pressing plant in Detroit is fitted with Newbilt presses.

"Worldwide production today is probably in the range of 150 one thousand thousand to 175 meg records," said Rainbo's Sheldon. "If y'all take that everybody is backlogged for a half a yr, at least — and information technology's probably worse than that — the excess is probably in the range of 75 or 85 million records."

Dunster said that one major record visitor recently made its 2nd inquiry into buying Erika'southward whole operation. (She declined.)

Erika's biggest hurdle is a labor shortage. The visitor has xviii automatic presses gear up to go but simply has plenty manpower to run 10. That staff shortage too means she can't run a second line, which she used to do. "I've never seen information technology like this," she said.

That demand pushed RTI's plant in Camarillo, where each week its 8 presses run 24 hours per day to make about 80,000 albums. For much of autumn, the presses were working on nothing but Adele; her label, Columbia, had ordered 100,000 black vinyl copies of "30." Since information technology was a ii-LP fix, that meant RTI had to mint 200,000 pieces.

"Information technology really put u.s. backside," said Hashimoto. "Nosotros worked weekends in Oct, November and December and everybody only got really burned out." The company took extended time off for the holidays. "At present we're back," he said.

Sheldon said demand volition continue to outstrip supply equally long as global production capacity isn't increased through new pressing plants. It'southward unproblematic math. "This is non going to get away quickly. It's going to take a lot of equipment to ramp up."

Spotter Fifty.A. Times Today at 7 p.k. on Spectrum News ane on Channel i or alive stream on the Spectrum News App. Palos Verdes Peninsula and Orange County viewers tin can lookout on Cox Systems on channel 99.

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Source: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2022-01-05/adele-taylor-swift-vinyl-lp-shortage

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