However, while the natural response to surging demand is to boost production, with vinyl that's nigh impossible. Few pressing plants survived the industry's shift to CD manufacturing in the mid-80s, and the dozen or so that did are mostly reliant on aged, combustible machinery running at capacity. What's more, vinyl's growing popularity—and the lucrative national holidays it's spawned—has lured the major labels back into waxworks, emboldened by the realization they can get people to buy Dark Side of the Moon yet again. This has effectively crowded out the small independent labels who were responsible for keeping the medium alive during the CD era, and for whom vinyl comprises a far greater proportion of revenue.At this point, we haven't just reached peak vinyl; we've reached peak articles about peak vinyl. But the pressing-plant bottlenecks aren't just an annoying inconvenience. Here in Canada, they're actually killing labels, not to mention the overburdened, understaffed pressing plants themselves.Read More on THUMP: Seven Things We Learned from Discogs' State of Record Sales Report
Taylor Smith, label manager at Montreal art-pop imprint Arbutus Records, outlines the new norm. "When I started at Arbutus in 2012, the turnaround time for vinyl orders was a month," he says. "Now, some manufacturers are at a 22 to 26-week turn times. And the consistency is all over the map. You've got manufacturers who tell you they can do it in eight weeks and turns out to be 14. That's when it gets really frustrating."Because there are now releases that typically wouldn't have been pressed to vinyl a few years back, labels like ours—who do a good amount of business in vinyl—are feeling it. - Cameron Reed, Arts & Crafts
But for Canadian independent labels, press availability is just one factor affecting the process of bringing vinyl to market. For the likes of Arbutus and Arts & Crafts, sourcing manufacturers involves a complex weighing of variables. Ordering vinyl from plants in the US or Europe means taking a hit on the exchange rate, due to a weak Canadian dollar. At the same time, these labels do the bulk of their business outside of the country, so shipping costs are a crucial consideration too. (Some domestic imprints, like Montreal's Turbo Recordings, do all their manufacturing in Europe for this very reason.)"That's something that people rarely discuss," says Reed. "You're shipping a very awkward, very heavy product when you're working in mass numbers. All of a sudden, when we're talking about a manufacturing cost of $5-$6 per LP, you could be working with $1.50 to $2 per unit in shipping just it to get it back to the label, before you're shipping it out again to the consumer."That would explain why your basic, single-LP new release can sell for upwards of $30 in your local record store. And as unit costs rise, stores become extra-selective about how much stock they order, since standard industry practice dictates that they can't return unsold vinyl to distributors. This all has the effect of depressing label bottom lines further.Read More on THUMP: Brazil Will Soon Open the Largest Vinyl Plant in All of South America
"From my perspective, bankrolling it out of my own pocket, there are some releases that are really great, but I don't necessarily think they're the kind of album that someone would want to purchase on vinyl," Reed says. "I do believe there are formats that are particular to a sound and style. And you have to draw that line in the sand and say: 'You know what, I don't think you're ready for a release that is going to cost $5,000 to manufacture.' Or, 'I don't think that this music is super-conducive to a "listen to it for 20 minutes, get up, flip it over" experience.' And I think that's a decision that managers, artists, and label people have to make on a case-by-case basis."However, given the sustained growth in the vinyl sector, and the undying perceived prestige of the format, it's unlikely pressing plant pressures will be alleviated by that sort of common sense logic. For many up-and-coming acts, holding your first album on vinyl instills the idea that you're a proper band now, even if it results in thousands of dollars in credit card debt and boxes of unsold records doubling as furniture in your apartment. But some major new developments in the vinyl industry carry the promise that, some day, this whole conversation could be moot. What's more, these potential solutions won't require Canadian labels to constantly bust out their currency conversion calculators and shipping rate charts.Read More on THUMP: A Canadian Company Has Developed a Revolutionary New Way to Press Vinyl
Gerry McGhee's career in the music industry dates back to the era when people actually bought vinyl LPs and listened to them, instead of just hanging them on their wall in Urban Outfitters frames. He was the frontman for Brighton Rock, one of those slick, big-haired, post-Jovi rock bands that MuchMusic stopped playing once grunge blew up. But after he quit making records, he found even greater success wholesaling them—Isotope Music, the company he launched in 1996, touts itself as Canada's largest music distributor, with an inventory of over 60,000 titles.Around four years ago, McGhee started to notice a sustained uptick in the amount of vinyl orders he was receiving—and nowhere near enough stock from his label clients to fulfill them. "When all the Led Zeppelin reissues came out, Canada got zero vinyl," McGhee recounts. The labels came to me and said, 'If you put a plant together, we will support you, because we're not getting enough product.'"Acquiring vinyl presses in the 2010s involves a globe-trotting Raiders of the Last Ark-style quest guided by opportune, word-of-mouth tips and fuelled by fierce competition.
However, as he quickly learned, acquiring vinyl presses in the 2010s involves a globe-trotting Raiders of the Lost Ark-style quest guided by opportune, word-of-mouth tips and fueled by fierce competition. "I've been to plants in Canada, the UK, and Japan, trying to find machines, thinking I found machines, losing machines… One guy would call and say, 'Okay, I've got a machine for you for $53,000.' 'Alright, I'll take it!' 'Sorry, too late—it's gone now.' I was at a conference once in Portugal and met with a guy from Cargo Records and I said, "'I heard you have a plant—do you know where I can get machines?' And his response was: 'If I did, I wouldn't tell you.'"Read More on THUMP: Why the So-Called "Vinyl Boom" May Be Bad For Electronic Music