About 440, 000 LPs being produced yearly - Thomas Bernich (Brooklyn Phono) |
There were always record collectors who disdained
the compact disc, arguing that an LP’s grooves yielded warmth and depth that
the CD’s digital code could not match.
But the market largely ignored them. Record labels
shuttered their LP pressing plants, except for a few that pressed mostly dance
music, since vinyl remained the medium of choice for D. J.s.
As it turned out, that early resistance was not
futile, thanks largely to an audience of record collectors, many born after CDs
were introduced in the 1980s.
These days, every major label and many smaller ones
are releasing vinyl, and most major new releases have a vinyl version, leading
to a spate of new pressing plants.
When the French electronica duo Daft Punk released
“Random Access Memories” in mid-May, 6 percent of its first-week sales — 19,000
out of 339,000 — were on vinyl, according to Nielsen SoundScan, which measures
music sales.
Other groups with a predominantly college-age
audience have had similar success: the same week, the National sold 7,000 vinyl
copies of its latest album, “Trouble Will Find Me,” and 10,000 Vampire Weekend
fans opted for the LP version of “Modern Vampires of the City.” When the Front
Bottoms, a New Jersey indie band, posted a photo of their players carrying
stacks of LP mailing boxes on their Facebook page recently, their label,
Bar/None, racked up what Glenn Morrow, who owns the label, described as “phone
orders for $2,000 worth of LPs in 10 minutes.”
About a dozen new plants have opened in the last decade |
A growing number of classic albums — including the
complete Beatles and early Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan catalogs — have had
vinyl reissues in recent years as well.
Michael Fremer, who monitors the LP world on his Web
site, Analogplanet.com, said: “None of these companies are pressing records to
feel good. They’re doing it because they think they can sell.”
About a dozen pressing plants have sprouted up in
the United States, along with the few that survived from the first vinyl era,
and they say business is so brisk that they are working to capacity. Thomas
Bernich, who started Brooklyn Phono in 2000, says his company makes about
440,000 LPs a year, but a giant like Rainbo Records, in Canoga Park, Calif.,
turns out 6 million to 7.2 million, said Steve Sheldon, its general manager.
One plant, Quality Record Pressings, in Salina,
Kan., opened in 2011 after its owner, Chad Kassem, grew impatient with delays
at a larger plant where his own line of blues reissues was being pressed. His
company, which runs four presses — acquired used, but modified to run more
efficiently — now makes LPs for all the majors, and lists Jimi Hendrix, Eric
Clapton and Nirvana reissues among its recent projects. He is currently
pressing 900,000 vinyl discs a year.
“We’ve always had more work than we could do,” Mr.
Kassem said. “When we had one press, we had enough orders for two. When we had
two, we had enough orders for four. We never spent a dollar on advertising, but
we’ve been busy from the day we opened.”
New shipment of records being carted away |
There is a limit to how much the vinyl business can
expand right now. When it seemed inevitable that CDs would supplant LPs, the
companies that made vinyl presses shifted to making other kinds of machinery.
The last new press was built in 1982, so relatively recent start-ups like
Quality and Brooklyn Phono searched out used presses (the going rate is about
$25,000) and reconditioned them. Most plants have deals with local machine
shops to make replacement parts.
Some pressing plants have looked into commissioning
or building new presses but have found the cost prohibitive — as much as
$500,000, said Eric Astor of Furnace MFG in Fairfax, Va. “Since my partner also
owns a CD/DVD plant,” Mr. Astor said in an e-mail, “we’ve been testing using
the methods used in disc manufacturing to make a new breed of vinyl record, but
that R&D is slow going and not looking promising.”
How are LPs selling? That is a matter of dispute.
David Bakula, Nielsen SoundScan’s senior vice president of client development
and insights, said that his company tracked 4.6 million domestic LP sales last
year, an 18 percent increase over 2011, but still only 1.4 percent of the total
market, made up mostly of digital downloads (which are increasing) and CDs (for
which sales are declining). This year, Mr. Bakula said, vinyl sales are on
track to reach about 5.5 million.
But manufacturers, specialist retailers and critics
argue that SoundScan’s figures represent only a fraction of actual sales,
perhaps as little, Mr. Kassem and Mr. Astor said, as 10 to 15 percent. They say
that about 25 million vinyl discs were pressed in the United States last year,
and many more in Europe and Asia, including some destined for the American
market.
Mr. Bakula countered that manufacturers are speaking
of the number of discs made; SoundScan tracks how many were sold. But the
manufacturers argue that LPs, unlike CDs, are a one-way sale: labels do not
accept returns of unsold copies. Therefore labels and retailers are careful to
order only what they think they can sell. Moreover, LP jackets do not
consistently carry bar codes — Mr. Kassem, for one, leaves them off his discs
because, he said, “they’re ugly” — and therefore cannot be scanned at the cash
register. And many shops that sell LPs are independents that do not report to
SoundScan, although Mr. Bakula said his company weights its figures to account
for that.
There are other measures of the health of the field,
including figures from ancillary businesses. Heinz Lichtenegger, whose
Vienna-based Audio Tuning company produces the highly regarded Pro-Ject
turntable, said in an e-mail that his company sells 8,000 turntables a month.
And Mr. Fremer has sold 16,000 copies of a DVD, “21st Century Vinyl,” that
shows users how to set up several turntable models.
Vinyl retailers are thriving as well. Mr. Kassem of
Quality Record Pressings also runs Acoustic Sounds, which sells LPs as well as
turntables and accessories, including cleaning machines and protective sleeves.
Music Direct, a Chicago company that owns Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, a storied
audiophile label, has a similarly broad stock, including a selection of
turntables that ranges from the $249 Music Hall USB-1 to the $25,000 Avid
Acutus. Josh Bizar, the company’s director of sales and marketing, said that
Music Direct sold 500,000 LPs and “thousands of turntables” last year.
And the buyers, Mr. Bizar said, are by no means
boomer nostalgists.
“When you look at the sales for a group like Daft
Punk,” he said, “you’re seeing young kids collecting records like we did when
we were young.”
“We never expected the vinyl resurgence to become as
crazy as it is,” he said. “But it’s come full circle. We get kids calling us up
and telling us why they listen to vinyl, and when we ask them why they don’t
listen to CDs, they say, ‘CDs? My dad listens to CDs — why would I do that?’ ”
written by Allan Kozinn for The New York Times
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