Pressing Delays: What's the hold up?

[Dub Studio]

I am hearing lots of horror stories at the moment about long lead times for record pressing. I understand that Covid + the Apollo fire are behind a lot of the problems, but I am interested to understand the specific ways in which things are being held up right now. What's happening? Can anyone shed light on this?

[MEGAMIKE]

there probably more interested in pressing time code plates and not music

[Dub Studio]

I don't know anyone that uses timecode plates any more... ten years ago maybe!?

[Phinster]

probably the majors reserving slots which leaves indies waiting, unless you have been using them for a long time...

[petermontg]

Larger orders been prioritised across the board really giving what has happened the last few years, wouldn't blame them. I wouldn't expect orders back within 8 months time frame if its not a substantial order.
Saying that some plants are splitting orders so some local indies can cover pre orders etc etc.

Best

[jjgolden]

All of the above + Also Instead of 1 thousand artists pressing 50 thousand records each, you have 50 thousand Artists pressing 1000 records each.

[Dub Studio]

Ok so are we saying it's a business decision on behalf of the pressing plants to prioritise the biggest orders.. because that is not gonna end well.

[jjgolden]

It's gonna end worse if anything affects MDC's ability to produce lacquer blanks.

[Dub Studio]

Has the record industry not already learnt it's lesson when it was unceremoniously ditched the first time around? Lacquer shortages aside, how long are the "big" orders (and let's face it, they aren't that big) gonna last anyway?

[llary]

It's basically a question of supply vs demand and I don't think Apollo or Covid (or timecode discs) have much to do with it.

There has been a massive surge in popularity of vinyl records over the last few years and I think overall this is positive for our business. Who wants to be working in a dying industry?

Yes, the big plants prioritize major labels with large orders but there's not much new there, they have always done that and it's just business. When things get busy most of the larger plants end up pushing out small brokers and indie labels which then puts pressure on smaller plants like ours. The good news is that more and more small/micro plants are opening up all over the world which can only be positive for smaller artists/labels long term.

One big problem at the moment is the global supply chain. Even if you had the money to buy, say, 8 brand new record presses right now it will take years for them to be delivered. You just cannot get your hands on a lot of critical industrial parts. Even two years is a long time in this industry and not many plants are willing to take a risk investing in equipment that may become redundant if consumers start turning away from vinyl. I know a few mid sized plants in Europe that went bust from expanding too quickly in the last vinyl boom circa 2007 so now I think expansions will be done more slowly and carefully.

I'm not going to promote our business here but we are pressing short runs in 5-7 weeks and larger runs in about 5 months. We are completely full but we can maintain sensible production times by turning down major label orders, realistically very large plants just can't do this. There are other plants with turn times around 12-18 weeks which I think is pretty reasonable, just avoid the big boys and look to smaller local plants.