The Vinyl Countdown

Local bands go on the record

This week, Some Kind of Salvation, the new album by The Features, will be released on vinyl—and vinyl only. You won't be able to buy a download or a CD for another few weeks. That's a calculated move by a band who profess that "with the speed at 33-and-one-third I will be / the happiest person that I know." And this tactic is reminiscent of Pearl Jam's strategy for the release of Vitalogy in 1994—just subtract the download angle, which wasn't an option then.

Of course, Pearl Jam's ploy didn't prevent the decline of vinyl, which continued steadily through the '90s, but The Features' move of giving vinyl a head start is a sign of the times, as the resurgence of the once-moribund format hits Nashville in earnest. (Pre-orders for the LP have been surprisingly brisk, says Features manager Rory Daigle.)

The Raconteurs don't want to force anyone into any particular format, which is why they released their latest album, Consolers of the Lonely, in every form imaginable—even as a mobile phone download in Japan—all at the same time. Still, in their promotional materials the band "recommend hearing it on vinyl." Just a suggestion, they say, because "the choice is of course up to the listener." The listener, for her part, is increasingly choosing vinyl—though in the case of The Raconteurs, that choice won't come cheap at upwards of $25. Granted, that's for a two-LP, 180-gram gatefold package that, for any serious record collector, is a thing of beauty and definitely worth it.

But if vinyl is so great, why did we ever start listening to music on CDs in the first place?

A story told by studio owner and engineer Walter Sear several years ago in Tape Op magazine goes something like this: At a music industry trade show in the 1980s, the powers that were at the time introduced the Compact Disc. To demonstrate this new format's digital powers, they did an A/B test, alternately playing a vinyl LP and a CD. Everyone agreed—that the vinyl sounded better. But music sales were slumping, and the industry was eager to introduce a new format as a way to generate interest and resell their back catalogs. The rest is history.

The CD may be history soon, too, though it's been functionally obsolete for some time. An LP has heft and feels like it's worth something. A CD, on the other hand, feels cheap and disposable. And thanks to software like iTunes, it largely is. Once you import the music from a CD to your computer library, where it is easily searchable, rankable, playlistable and all the rest, what's that piece of plastic—and its easily cracked case—really worth?

"Everyone is so tired of buying CDs," says Aaron Hartley, who runs local label and management company Theory 8. He's considering a plan to do something comparable to the Sub Pop Singles Club—a subscription that would entitle the buyer to a whole series of releases, all on vinyl. Though he's not sure he'll do it, the idea does appeal to him. "I have a goal to release them steadily with up-and-coming acts to better document our scene," Hartley says. "I want to make it old school and find creative bands who want to do color vinyl with crazy packaging." Moreover, vinyl is not just a format from the past making a comeback—it's the future. "In 10 years," Hartley says, "people will look back at the vinyl releases with much more respect and admiration than just a bunch of obsolete CDs."

It probably won't take 10 years, though. Local label Infinity Cat—home to JEFF the Brotherhood, MEEMAW and Skyblazer, among others—recently decided to forego CDs altogether for major releases. While that's partly an aesthetic choice, it's also a practical one. "When our bands are on the road," label head Robert Ellis Orrall says, "vinyl outsells CDs 10-1." And while he's not taking that as a bellwether for the music industry as a whole, he says that "for our audience—for the Infinity Cat niche that we fill—those kids want vinyl."

That audience in particular—or the larger audience of music consumers who prefer vinyl in general—may always be a niche market, but it is growing, especially among younger listeners. "The vinyl format is most popular right now with exactly the generation that everybody is saying is all-digital, all-iPod, all-download," Doyle Davis of Grimey's told the Scene three weeks ago ("[A Few] New Kids on the Block," Sept. 18).


"One thing that put us over the top," Orrall says of his label's decision to move to vinyl, "is that United, where we have our records pressed, offers the download coupon." Orrall is referring to United Record Pressing, located on Chestnut Street in Nashville. When you buy a vinyl record that was pressed at United, you also get a coupon entitling you to one free download of the entire album in MP3 format. Labels have experimented with this concept before, and the vinyl-plus-download model seems to be picking up steam. United has offered the service since December 2007.

"It's been a real success for us," says United's Jay Millar. "In addition to making it easier for vinyl fans to have digital versions of their music for their car or MP3 player, it's opened the door to new vinyl consumers." As Millar notes, the math is pretty simple: "For the person who was only going to buy the digital files, it gives them the option of paying $9.99 for a record on iTunes or paying $12.99 or $15.99 for the same thing at Grimey's and also getting the vinyl with the huge artwork, liner notes and such." Infinity Cat sells the 12-inch vinyl version of The Boyz R Back in Town, the latest by JEFF the Brotherhood, for $10—essentially the same price as the download alone on sites like iTunes.

According to Orrall, all of this begs the question, "Why do you need to make CDs?" Sure, they're cheap, but that's also part of the problem. "We can all make CDs," he says. "Vinyl just feels more special."

"Gorilla Man" 7-inch
Caitlin Rose (Theory 8)
It's fitting that Caitlin Rose should give us these songs on vinyl, given that she seems to have fallen out of the sky direct from 1958 with her straightforward charm and unironic embodiment of old-time country music. From the off-kilter love story of the title track to the restless shuffle of "Shotgun Wedding," this record's a blast from a not-too-distant past.

"Glass Elevator" 7-inch
MEEMAW (Infinity Cat)
This is a scrappy, sloppy pile of punky pop rubble that goes down like candy and gunpowder. Along with everyone's favorite slice of summertime, "Blue in the Blacklight," MEEMAW deliver sharp guitars, messy leads and enough smart-assed octane to get your motor runnin', gas shortage or no.

S/T
Heathern Haints (Self-Released)
Recorded at Battle Tapes and pressed on lovely lavender vinyl, this surging psych debut features Scene staffer Brian Miles' throaty, reverbed call (at times reminiscent of Dead Can Dance's Brendan Perry), while incantatory drums lay the foundation for his now-echoing, now-blasting guitar lines.

White Stone & Black Witch
Hands Down Eugene (Grand Palace)
You may know him as "The Wizard" (he's credited as such on the new Ghostfinger album), but Matt Moody is also the beard and brains behind Hands Down Eugene, whose latest effort continues in the direction established on Full Blast—shambling psych-rock with a Beatles hitch in its giddyup. Supporting cast includes members of The Carter Administration, Ghostfinger, Ole Mossy Face and DeNovo Dahl.

The Boyz R Back in Town
JEFF the Brotherhood (Infinity Cat)
The "maxi-EP" expansion of the single (in what is becoming a franchise of sorts), The Boyz 12-inch features the heavy, scuzzy riffage we've all come to expect from the Brotherhood, overlaid with a bunch of woozy noises and disorienting effects. It's more of a trip than a JEFF live show, which relies much more on power than atmospherics, but it's a trip worth taking.

Other local vinyl releases:

Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea Silver Jews (Drag City)

Some Kind of Salvation The Features (self-released)

Consolers of the Lonely The Raconteurs (Third Man)

[Nashville Scene]

United Record Pressing - Largest Vinyl Record Manufacturer in U.S.

Take a brief tour of United Record Pressing plant in Nashville, Tennessee where company President, Cris Ashworth, explains how "music gets put onto a round piece of plastic."

If you are just joining this blog, United Record Pressing is the company I work for. In addition to manufacturing vinyl records, URP also has a distribution division called URP Music Distributors, which is the largest and most comprehensive vinyl-only wholesale one-stop for the music industry in the US. I manage the distribution side of URP. If you have a record shop and want more information, please let me know and I'll help you out.

Vinyl LPs in groove again, but oil prices to send a jolt

The good news for record fans: Interest in vinyl is way up. The bad news: So, thanks to higher petroleum prices, is the cost.

Even as sales of physical CDs are tanking, vinyl records, though still a niche product, are enjoying a resurgence, with sales of both new and reissued albums taking off. But because vinyl is a petroleum product, the soaring prices for oil mean collectors need to brace themselves for anticipated price increases.

"It's kind of cool again with a brand-new generation of people," said Terry Currier, the owner of Music Millennium. Vinyl has sold so well there lately that Currier is rearranging the floor space to bring vinyl up to the main from the downstairs level. "You knew vinyl was taking a good, strong hold when Costco and Wal-Mart started carrying USB turntables."

Those turntables, which plug into a computer's USB port, have helped make vinyl more accessible. Album art also comes across far better in the large LP format, bringing out details and allowing for more nuance in the images. But ultimately, Currier notes, vinyl just sounds better.

"Listen to an mp3 and listen to a good piece of vinyl and the sound quality is amazingly different," he said. "We're bringing in everything that we can get our hands on."

More labels, as well, have begun including a code for a digital download with their vinyl sales so consumers don't have to choose between the sound of vinyl and the portability of a digital file.

"I think the idea of selling vinyl with an mp3 download code is genius, and that's helping vinyl's popularity grow," Erika Lerner of Seattle's Barsuk Records wrote in an e-mail. "It seems pretty rad to buy a record (old-fashioned) and get the songs digitally (new-fashioned) at the same time."

Everyone from Elvis Costello to Disney has caught on, with new vinyl releases being announced every week. Fred Meyer now is selling vinyl, though the chain got into the game inadvertently, when an employee ordered R.E.M.'s new album, "Accelerate," on vinyl accidentally earlier this year. Still, Fred Meyer put the vinyl on the shelves, only to watch it fly off. A pilot in 60 Fred Meyer stores went so well, spokeswoman Melinda Merrill said, that the chain will now stock vinyl in all its stores with an electronics section.

Fred Meyer isn't alone. By this time last year, Nielsen SoundScan had tallied 454,000 vinyl records sold; so far this year, the number is 803,000, a 77 percent increase; 2008 vinyl sales could reach an all-time SoundScan high of 1.6 million, the company predicts.

In contrast, CD sales are down 16 percent from this time last year, and digital albums are up by 34 percent, less than half vinyl's rate of increase. But vinyl remains unlikely to make up for the sales slippage in CDs because downloads and actual CDs still sell in the tens of millions, while records are only a minor portion of the recorded music market.

But while dollar record boxes of future yard sales are getting a new supply, vinyl pressings are expected to get pricier because of the higher price of petroleum, from which vinyl is made. The pressing plant used by Seattle's Sub Pop records, for example, recently raised its prices, citing petroleum costs as one reason.

At United Record Pressing in Nashville, Tenn., Jay Millar, director of marketing, noted that the industry is based, in every sense, on petroleum, from the vinyl itself to the oil that keeps the machines lubricated to the gas used to transport records, which are heavier than CDs.

"Realistically there's not a component involved in our manufacturing that hasn't gone up," he said, noting that the company is weighing a price increase. "I think it's inevitable."

Putting an album out on vinyl is a bigger commitment than making a CD, said Mike Jones, the CEO of CDForge in Portland. Last year, the company's volume of vinyl work doubled from 2006, and Jones expects a similar increase this year. The basic cost of a CD is about $1 a unit; for vinyl, which is a more labor-intensive process, it's more like $4 to $8 a unit for the initial pressing. "The artist and the record label really have to believe in its importance," he said.

CDForge doesn't press vinyl itself; they deal with Rainbo Records, in California, where the cost of vinyl's gone up since the start of the year.

"It's gone up 11 percent since January 1st, and I understand another increase is coming, about a 4 to 6 percent increase," Steven Sheldon, the company president, said. Including gas prices, the per-record cost has probably gone up 20 to 22 cents a record, he said.

Though price increases aren't ideal, he said, he doubts the price bump will be enough to drive away consumers.

Ironically, record sales are softer in one area where they stayed strong throughout the years: among DJs. For years, DJs kept record culture alive, spinning vinyl in clubs.

"So many DJs over the past couple years have switched over to playing mp3s versus vinyl," said Aaron Marquez, owner of 360 Vinyl in Portland. Marquez, who spins under the moniker DJ KEZ, remains a vinyl stalwart. His store now deals more in hip-hop, he said.

Because so many dance labels are small, independent outfits, they can't absorb price increases, such as the cost of gas, as well, Marquez said, squeezing them out of the vinyl market. "I've been involved in this business for 8 or 9 years," he said. "I've seen prices go up a lot."

Some small labels and artists, though, are still willing to take a chance on vinyl. Portland indie media cooperative Tender Loving Empire, for example, is putting out the new Boy Eats Drum Machine album, "Booomboxxx," on vinyl in September. The label does particularly intricate and beautiful album art, often by visual artists who work with the company on other projects, such as comic books.

Jon Ragel, the artist behind Boy Eats Drum Machine, is subsidizing the label's expense in pressing the record, said Jared Mees, who co-founded the collective. Creating 300 vinyl records will cost more than 10 times as much as pressing a similar number of CDs, he said.

Ragel had to convince Mees about choosing vinyl, but it was an easy sell. "It didn't take much," Mees said. "The packaging is going to be beautiful."

[Oregonian]

Labels Ramp Up Vinyl Campaigns To Meet Demand

It may have seemed like a fad at first, but the resurgence of vinyl is now turning into a nice niche business for the major labels. With EMI's announcement that it would reissue eight classic albums in the format, all four majors are now onboard the vinyl bandwagon.

EMI will release two Coldplay albums, four Radiohead titles and Steve Miller's "Greatest Hits" on August 19. Universal Music Enterprises will release 20 albums on vinyl this month and an additional 20 at the end of August, while Warner Music Group will issue 24 to 30 albums from its catalog and 10 to 12 new releases from September through the end of the year, according to executives at those companies.

[Note from Spyder:: EMI's Capitol Records will initially be releasing 18 Limited Edition 180 Gram Vinyl releases in it's first set of many in it's From The Capitol Vaults series. The first bunch of releases include (in addition to the previously mentioned Coldplay, Radiohead and Steve Miller Band titles) Beach Boys, Jimi Hendrix, A Perfect Circle, Paul McCartney & Wings, John Lennon, Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band (two albums), and R.E.M.. Also, Coldplay has three albums (not two), Radiohead has six albums (not four). Also, in addition to the Universal Music Enterprises (UMe) releases, Universal Music Group has a few additions on their own, including three U2 titles released in two weeks plus many more.]

In the independent camp, RED labels will have several hundred vinyl titles by the end of the year, half of which are new releases, RED vice president of indie sales/marketing Doug Wiley said. One of RED's labels, Metal Blade, is reissuing its classic Slayer catalog in deluxe versions, all on colored vinyl with hand-designed blood splatterings on it, Wiley said.

Indie retail started the party, but now some of the chains are carrying vinyl too. In addition to Fred Meyer and Borders, Best Buy has said publicly that it will experiment with carrying LPs.

EMI Music Catalog vice president of A&R and creative Jane Ventom said that the company has always been into vinyl, "but we are getting more into it." She said the move is in response to consumer demand from the iPod generation, baby boomers and audiophiles.

"Music is becoming a social action again," Ventom said. "The kids are now listening to music with their mates instead of on headphones." She added that vinyl allows them to "hear music in its true form."

"People are going back to reliving the way they used to listen to music and they realize that they missed the (album cover) artwork and what a pleasurable listening experience it is," Ventom said.


SOUND MATTERS

One of the most important elements to issuing vinyl is sound quality, especially in the MP3 age. That's why Warner Bros. will relaunch its becausesoundmatters.com Web site, which touts and sells vinyl and may start offering high-resolution MP3s, according to Warner Bros./Reprise Records executive VP Tom Biery, who heads the label's radio promotion team and oversees its vinyl initiative.

Warner Bros. reissued the first two Metallica albums -- "Kill 'Em All" and "Ride the Lighting" -- on vinyl, and both have passed the 4,000-unit sales mark, according to Nielsen SoundScan. On July 15, the company released "Master of Puppets" on vinyl in two versions.

In September, the label plans to issue a 50th anniversary archive series of vinyl releases, including James Taylor's "Mud Slide Slim," a Rickie Lee Jones album, a Marty Paich album and the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Blood Sugar Sex Magik." Most of the albums that are issued on vinyl also come with an enclosed CD, Biery said.

The increased interest in vinyl is putting a strain on the handful of pressing plants still left from the format's heyday. "Our vinyl is always late because it gets bumped," Redeye co-owner Tor Hansen said.

"I still have eight machines, and I am currently running at about 75 percent capacity," said plant manager Dave Jump of Nashville's United Records.

The limited pressing network often makes it hard to get vinyl out on the same release date as the CD, but when the stars align, sales can be significant. Warner Bros. offered vinyl and CD on the same day when issuing the Raconteurs' "Consolers of the Lonely" in March; the album sold 42,000 units in its first week, and 3 percent of sales came from the vinyl version.

Looking forward, executives said they want to be aggressive and practical with their vinyl campaigns.

"Everything shouldn't be released on vinyl," WEA (Warner-Elektra-Atlantic) vice president of catalog sales Steve Corbin said. "We want to be selective and smart about what we put out. (But) it's interesting that the consumer sees the value and is willing to pay for vinyl."

[Reuters]

Where vinyl records are born (this is the company I work for)

Nice article on CNET about URP today. This is the company that I work for. Whooooohah !!

Making vinyl records the old-fashioned way
by Daniel Terdiman

At United Record Pressing in Nashville, Tenn., LPs are still made the old-fashioned way: with lots and lots of vinyl. This is a bin full of little vinyl pellets that will be melted into records.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

NASHVILLE, Tenn.--When people think of the Beatles coming to America, they usually conjure up images of The Ed Sullivan Show and screaming teenage girls chasing the Fab Four on the streets of New York.

But here in Music City, there's something else to commemorate the earliest stages of the British Invasion: the fact that the first American Beatles 7-inch record was produced by United Record Pressing--then, as now, one of the largest makers of vinyl in the world.

On Monday, as I swung through Nashville on Road Trip 2008, I was lucky enough to get to visit the production facilities of United Record Pressing here and get a firsthand look at how LPs are made. Before you scoff at the notion of making records, consider that over the last few years, the format has made a big comeback, with sales skyrocketing and turntables moving off store shelves like they haven't in years.

Why? The reason is pure irony.

According to Jay Millar, the marketing and sales manager for United Record Pressing, it has everything to do with the emergence of Apple's oh-so-ubiquitous MP3 player.

"It really started picking up when iPods started coming onto the scene," Millar said. "Everything got so sterile with digital that people were not spending time" with the physical manifestation of their music.

A record-pressing machine at United Record Pressing. The company is one of only three in the United States that still produces LPs in any meaningful amounts.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

In other words, as iPods began to dominate the music world, people were leaving their CDs on the shelves, and iTunes downloads, as well as those via file-sharing services, took over.

But for audiophiles used to actually handling some sort of disc, this change has led to a reversal of fortune for the LP, a format long thought to have gone the way of the floppy disk.

For a company like United Record Pressing, that's been great news, as its sales have been going up steadily as more and more artists turn to records as a way to get their music into the hands of people who care about it.

So how is a record made?

First, a separate company with facilities nearby takes the original recording--which can come in the form of an audio tape, but (audiophiles, cover your eyes here) more often comes on CDs since many artists are using software like ProTools to cut their tracks--and uses it to cut the familiar circular grooves into an object called a lacquer.

The lacquer is then delivered to United Record Pressing, which begins the process of actually making the LPs.

First, the lacquer is sprayed with a layer of silver, which, after it sets, is then peeled off. The resulting sheet is known as the master, and it is the opposite of a record, because it has ridges rather than grooves.

The master is then used to make what is known as the mother, a metal version of the record that can, itself, actually be played.

At United Record Pressing, black is not the only color of vinyl that is used. There's also red, orange, blue, gray, and even a mixture made from the cuttings of the other colors.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

The mother is then pressed into what is known as the stamper, and this, too, has ridges. The stamper actually is the basis of every record that comes out of this factory.

At this point, it's all about raw vinyl, millions of little chunks of the material that resemble Pop Rocks.

And it's not just black either. The company also makes records that are red, orange, blue, and gray. Sometimes, it takes all the discarded vinyl from several pressings and mixes them together into a kind of hodgepodge color.

First, the vinyl is melted down into what is called the biscuit. This is the center of the record, the round part with no grooves and the little hole. To this is added the label, which is pressed onto the biscuit, a step that doesn't require any adhesive. Rather, the biscuit is so hot from the vinyl being melted down that the label sticks right on.

The labels, which are printed here by the thousands, are actually baked in a special oven so that they retain no moisture, something that could cause bubbling on the actual record.

To ensure that labels don't bubble up after being pressed onto a record, the labels are baked in an oven to remove any moisture.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

Then, the biscuit is placed in the middle of a machine and then it is joined together with a fresh supply of vinyl, and together they are smashed between a plate and the stamper. A blade then shears off the excess vinyl, and voila! A brand new record slides out of the machine and onto a rack.

When all is said and done, it's actually a remarkably simply process. But there's still much more that must happen before an LP leaves the facility.

First, at least one of each new album run must be tested. So on one side of a room that long ago was used as a room for record release and signing parties--Hank Williams Jr. had a party thrown for him here when he was 16, Millar said--a woman is sitting and bobbing her head as she listens to songs on headphones, making sure the new record has no problems. If it does, United Record Pressing will have to tell the record company what the issue is.

There's also the small matter of putting the records in their sleeves--something I saw two people tucked away in a corner of one room doing. They had their process down pat: grab an LP, inspect it quickly for obvious defects, pick up a sleeve, slide in the record, repeat.


Millar showed me a room in the basement of the building that contained thousands and thousands of folders--really, they seemed like extra-thick album covers with no art--that contain the masters of every record the company has produced over the years. This is a treasure trove bar none, since United Record Pressing works with pretty much every major label you can imagine.

Inside each folder is the master, and a full set of all the associated materials: the master, a label, an album jacket, and anything else that might be included, such as liner notes. And these days, as with an Elvis Costello album Millar showed me, the folders may also hold an insert with information for a digital download of the album.

In fact, it is these digital downloads that may be heralding the re-emergence of the LP and the death of the CD. That's because many artists are now offering record buyers a one-time free download of all the tracks on the album as a bonus.

This is still a small enough phenomenon, of course, to barely register on Apple's radar. iTunes is safe, in other words.

Still, for audiophiles who used to buy CDs, this gives them a way to have a physical disc to listen to the music on, as well as a way to easily tote it with them.

"People don't need their discs to be compact anymore," said Millar, "because you can't get much more compact than MP3. So it's back to the big discs."

Pictured is what is known as a stamper, the fourth step in the process of making an LP. The process begins with the original recording, which is used to make the master recording, which unlike a record, has ridges instead of grooves. Then, the master is used to make the "mother," a metal version of the record that can actually be played. The stamper is made from the mother, and it too has ridges. All vinyl records are made by pressing the stamper down onto hot vinyl.

This display piece at United Record Pressing in Nashville demonstrates the steps to finishing a record. The process starts with the original recording--in this case a tape--and then proceeds through the master, which has ridges rather than grooves, and is lacquer-sprayed with silver. The master is used to make the mother, which is a playable metal version of the record. That in turn is used to make the stamper, which also has ridges and which is used to press all the LPs.

This is a record-pressing machine, as seen from the front. Hot vinyl is fed into it and pressed between two plates and the stamper. Then, out comes a record.

United Record Pressing makes 7-inch and 12-inch records in several colors. Here, a red 12-inch LP is being pressed. The excess hot vinyl will be cut off and will fall into a bin below. The record will slide out and fall onto a stack of others on a pin.

Most records are black, but United Record Pressing uses several colors, including blue. This is a bin of the raw vinyl pellets used to make records.
(there's Jay Millar)

Around the United Record Pressing plant in Nashville, one finds bin after bin full of vinyl pellets.

On a wall at United Record Pressing is a display showing all the albums being pressed that week. During reporter Daniel Terdiman's visit, the sign showed that the company--if the list was up to date--was working on albums by artists including Kid Rock, Bob Dylan, and R. Kelly.

Before labels can be pressed onto a record, they must first be baked in an oven to remove any moisture. Moisture could cause the labels to bubble up after being pressed onto the record. Here, stacks of labels get baked.

A stack of labels on the back of a record-pressing machine. The labels are being grabbed one by one by the machine and pressed onto new records.

For each LP United Record Pressing works on, the facility keeps a folder with a sample of everything involved, including the stamper, liner notes, a label, a jacket and, in the case of this Elvis Costello album, the coupon for a digital download of all the tracks.

The United Record Pressing library has thousands of folders holding all the materials for each album. These represent every record the company has ever worked on, including the Beatles' first American release.

After a quick inspection, a United Record Pressing worker puts each record in a sleeve to make sure it looks ready to go.

This machine shrink-wraps each record after it has been put into its sleeve and then placed inside its jacket. The complete package is then fed onto a conveyor belt that carries it through the shrink-wrapping machine.

These finished records have gone through every step of the process, including being shrink-wrapped.

United Record Pressing works on lots of records, such as singles, that require special labels. These are stacks of such labels that are ready in case they're needed.

These are rolls of "parental advisory" labels that are applied to records containing explicit content.

Vinyl LP sales stage comeback against CDs

For every 500 people who buy their music on a compact disc, there's one holdout who still prefers getting it on vinyl.

But that's enough to create a brisk sideline business for vinyl records at two area music stores -- Atlantic Sounds in Daytona Beach and Steve's Downtown Music in DeLand.

"At least 30 percent of our sales are vinyl, and for a music store today, that's a lot," said Michael Toole, owner of Atlantic Sounds, 137 W. International Speedway Blvd. "And most of those sales are to kids in the 16 to 25 bracket. They've learned about vinyl from their parents and they want to see what it's all about."

At Steve's, 108 S. Woodland Blvd., owner Steve Chmielewski said his vinyl sales are smaller -- about 5 percent to 10 percent of his gross -- but some of his regulars are disc jockeys who want nothing else.

"My inventory includes techno music, and some of these DJs will come in and buy 10 albums of it at a time," he said.

Beth Lernke wandered into Atlantic Sounds on Tuesday with her son Kendrick, 13, and they headed toward bins with scores of new vinyl releases.

"He's all into the retro thing," she said. "He says the sound on vinyl is a lot better than a CD."

Toole wholeheartedly agreed.

"CDs are great, but records are better. It's the warmth of the sound that's the difference," he said.

But trying to find a particular new album on vinyl can test a music lover's patience. Toole said major record labels began outsourcing their manufacturing years ago, so now vinyl records are produced at just a few U.S. plants, such as United Record Pressing in Nashville, Tenn. That has led to logjams and waits of six months or longer to get the vinyl version of a recording that's already out in CD format.

New vinyl records also can be pricey, sometimes $5 or $10 more than the equivalent CD. Atlantic's best-selling vinyl, a reissue of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon," goes for $30.

However, if buyers can content themselves with used vinyl, there are a lot of bargains to be had. Atlantic, which boasts having thousands of titles in stock, sells most of its secondhand records in the $2 to $4 range. Collectors willing to sift carefully through bins at flea markets and yard sales for LPs still in good shape often can buy them for a buck or less.

Although vinyl is still just a speck of the overall music market, manufacturers' shipments of LPs jumped 36 percent from 2006 to 2007, topping 1.3 million. Nielsen SoundScan estimates sales this year will top 1.6 million. In comparison, CD shipments totaled 511 million, but they were trending downward, dropping 17 percent last year, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

A few large retailers are starting to pay attention to vinyl again but their supplies remain skimpy.

Best Buy says it is testing the market for vinyl in some of its stores, but spokesman Brian Lucas declined to say where. The chain's Web site lists dozens of different vinyl titles but nearly all of them are labeled

"back-ordered," meaning not immediately available for shipment.

A call to the Daytona Beach Best Buy to inquire about its vinyl inventory drew a puzzled response from a customer service representative.

"What's a vinyl record?" she asked. "Is that something environmental?"

A more knowledgeable co-worker said the store doesn't sell vinyl except for an occasional promotional item, such as a recent anthology of hits by The Who.

But the LP isn't going to muscle out CDs or iPod soon.

Nearly 450 million CDs were sold last year, versus just under 1 million LPs, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Based on the first three months of this year, Nielsen says vinyl album sales could reach 1.6 million in 2008.

Many major artists -- Elvis Costello, the Raconteurs and others -- are issuing LPs and encouraging fans to check out their albums on vinyl. On Amazon.com, one of the best-selling LPs is Madonna's latest album, "Hard Candy".

Some artists package vinyl and digital versions of their music together, including offers for free digital downloads along with the record.

[NewsJournal-Online]

Retailers giving vinyl records another spin

Basically the same post I made the other day, but now it references the company I work for, United Record Pressing in Nashville and quotes my colleague, Jay Millar.

PORTLAND, Oregon (AP) -- It was a fortuitous typo for the Fred Meyer retail chain.

The best-seller so far at Fred Meyer is The Beatles album "Abbey Road."

This spring, an employee intending to order a special CD-DVD edition of R.E.M.'s latest release "Accelerate" inadvertently entered the "LP" code instead. Soon boxes of the big, vinyl discs showed up at several stores.

Some sent them back. But a handful put them on the shelves, and 20 LPs sold the first day.

The Portland-based company, owned by The Kroger Co., realized the error might not be so bad after all. Fred Meyer is now testing vinyl sales at 60 of its stores in Oregon, Washington and Alaska. The company says, based on the response so far, it plans to roll out vinyl in July in all its stores that sell music.

Other mainstream retailers are giving vinyl a spin too. Best Buy is testing sales at some stores. And online music giant Amazon.com, which has sold vinyl for most of the 13 years it has been in business online, created a special vinyl-only section last fall.

The best-seller so far at Fred Meyer is The Beatles album "Abbey Road." But musicians from the White Stripes and the Foo Fighters to Metallica and Pink Floyd are selling well, the company says.

"It's not just a nostalgia thing," said Melinda Merrill, spokeswoman for Fred Meyer. "The response from customers has just been that they like it, they feel like it has a better sound."

According to the Recording Industry Association of America, manufacturers' shipments of LPs jumped more than 36 percent from 2006 to 2007 to more than 1.3 million. Shipments of CDs dropped more than 17 percent during the same period to 511 million, as they lost some ground to digital formats.

The resurgence of vinyl centers on a long-standing debate over analog versus digital sound. Digital recordings capture samples of sound and place them very close together as a complete package that sounds nearly identical to continuous sound to many people.

Analog recordings on most LPs are continuous, which produces a truer sound -- though, paradoxically, some new LP releases are being recorded and mixed digitally but delivered analog.

Some purists also argue that the compression required to allow loudness in some digital formats weakens the quality as well.

But it's not just about the sound. Audiophiles say they also want the format's overall experience -- the sensory experience of putting the needle on the record, the feeling of side A and side B and the joy of lingering over the liner notes.

"I think music products should be more than just music," said Isaac Hudson, a 28-year-old vinyl fan standing outside one of Portland's larger independent music stores.

The interest seems to be catching on. Turntable sales are picking up, and the few remaining record pressers say business is booming.

But the LP isn't going to muscle out CDs or iPod soon.

Nearly 450 million CDs were sold last year, versus just under 1 million LPs, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Based on the first three months of this year, Nielsen says vinyl album sales could reach 1.6 million in 2008.

"I don't think vinyl is for everyone; it's for the die-hard music consumer," said Jay Millar, director of marketing at United Record Pressing, a Nashville based company that is the nation's largest record pressing plant.

Many major artists -- Elvis Costello, the Raconteurs and others -- are issuing LPs and encouraging fans to check out their albums on vinyl. On Amazon.com, one of the best-selling LPs is Madonna's latest album, "Hard Candy".

Some artists package vinyl and digital versions of their music together, including offers for free digital downloads along with the record.

"We've definitely had some talks with the major retailers about exclusives on the manufacturing end," Millar said of United Record Pressing, which focuses primarily on independent recordings.

An avid music fan himself, Millar says he has moved to vinyl in recent years.

"Once I got my first iPod ... I'm looking at my wall of CDs and trying to justify it," Millar said. "The things I like -- the artwork, the liner notes, the sound quality -- it dawns on me, those are things I like better on vinyl." He welcomed back the pops and clicks, even some of the scratches.

"I like that fact that it's imperfect in a lot of ways, live music is imperfect too," Millar said.

Independent music stores, which have been the primary source of LPs in recent years, say many fans never left the medium.

"People have been buying vinyl all along," said Cathy Hagen, manager at 2nd Avenue Records in Portland. "There was a fairly good supply from independent labels on vinyl all these years. As far as a resurgence, the major labels are just pressing more now."

In this game, big retailers aren't necessarily competing head to head with independent sellers' regular clientele of nostalgic baby boomers, independent label fans and turntable DJs.

"I cannot see that Best Buy or Fred Meyer would order the same things we would," Hagen said. "They aren't going to be ordering the reggae, funk, punk or industrial music."

[CNN]

Vinyl Returns in the Age of MP3

LP and turntable sales grow as fans find warmer sound in classic format

For his 19th birthday, Simon Hamburg wanted only one present: a turntable for his dorm room at the University of Southern Mississippi. His father bought him a portable $69 model, and Hamburg's older brother chipped in LPs by Simon and Garfunkel and the Who. "Listening to 'Baba O'Riley' on vinyl is always better than listening to 'Baba O'Riley' on anything else," Hamburg says. "You can hear every instrument. It sounds stupid, but it's like you're feeling the music. You're part of it."

As CD sales continue to decline and MP3s are traded without thought, the left-for-dead LP is staging a comeback. In 2007, according to Nielsen SoundScan, nearly 1 million LPs were bought, up from 858,000 in 2006. Based on to-date sales for 2008, that figure could jump to 1.6 million by year's end. (According to the Recording Industry Association of America, CD shipments dropped 17.5 percent during the same 2006-07 period.) Sales of turntables — which tumbled from 1.8 million in 1989 to a paltry 275,000 in 2006, according to the Consumer Electronics Association — rebounded sharply last year, when nearly half a million were sold.

From Bruce Springsteen's Magic and the Raconteurs' Consolers of the Lonely to Cat Power's Jukebox and Portishead's Third, it's now possible to buy vinyl versions of many major new releases at retailers like Best Buy, Amazon and indie record stores. And artists are making their preferences for vinyl known. Before releasing Consolers, the Raconteurs announced that they "recommend hearing it on vinyl." In April, Elvis Costello and the Imposters' Momofuku arrived first on LP, though it included a coupon for a free digital download (the CD version arrived weeks later). "Is it a revolution?" says Luke Lewis, president of Costello's label, Lost Highway. "Fuck, no. But our beliefs have been validated a little bit — not to mention we're making a couple more bucks. It's hard to do that now in the record business, you know."

"Everybody feels last year was a watershed year," says Cris Ashworth, owner of United Record Pressing, the Nashville plant that's one of the country's largest and few remaining. (Around a dozen exist now, down from more than twice that in the Eighties.) When he took over the business in 1989, Ashworth made only a little over $1 million in profit and barely had 10 employees. Today, he employs over 50 100 and profits have more than quadrupled, thanks to a surge in jobs that included Costello's LP along with pressings of Nine Inch Nails' Year Zero, Ryan Adams' Easy Tiger and independent-label products. "My son was very worried for 10 years," Ashworth says. "He kind of looked at me and shook his head and said, 'Dad, you just ain't livin'.' Now he says, 'Well, maybe Dad's a little bit smarter than I thought he was.'"

Despite the uptick, vinyl remains a niche market. Most new releases, indie or major, sell between 2,000 and 10,000 copies; recent bestsellers include Radiohead's In Rainbows (13,000) and Bob Dylan's 2004 Blonde on Blonde reissue (25,000). The possibilities of future growth are limited: As Matador general manager Patrick Amory says, "There's definitely a ceiling." And thanks to higher fuel prices (oil is used to manufacture plastic vinyl, and LPs are shipped by truck) and the scarcity of pressing plants, an LP can cost as much as $4.50 per unit to manufacture, compared to roughly a dollar for a CD. "There are still reasons not to do vinyl," says Mac McCaughan of Merge Records, which has seen an increase in sales of vinyl releases by Arcade Fire and Spoon. "It's more expensive, it's more complicated, it takes longer. We try not to lose money, but we probably are."

Although technological advances (like the CD) seriously wounded the LP, new technology is now playing a part in its resurgence. Old LPs can be converted to MP3s thanks to a new breed of turntables equipped with a USB port. Numark, one of the leading manufacturers of these models, produced them for club DJs and was surprised when the model took off; the company recently shipped its millionth unit.

Also abetting vinyl's homecoming is a growing disillusionment with CD and MP3 sound. The CD has long been known for its clean but overly bright (sometimes grating) audio. "With vinyl, the range is from accurate to warmer" when it comes to reproducing the original source material, says renowned mastering engineer Bob Ludwig, who has worked with everyone from Springsteen to Nirvana. "With digital, it's totally the opposite: accurate to brighter. The brightness in the digital domain is a sound our ears don't seem to like that much, whereas people don't seem to be bothered by the slight loss of top-end you might get with vinyl." (Ludwig, like others, does separate mastering sessions for CDs and LPs.) The compressed audio heard in MP3s has only exacerbated the trend in audio degradation. "It's taking 90 percent of the music and basically throwing it out," says Ludwig. "It takes the bad part of digital and makes it even worse."

Assuming a record is pressed under optimum conditions and played on a high-end system, vinyl can restore some of those missing sonic properties. When the Doors' Ray Manzarek listened to recent high-grade reissues of the band's original studio albums, he was stunned. "On 'Light My Fire,' the guitar and organ solos are like, 'Yeah, that's it — that's the way they're supposed to sound,'" Manzarek says. "Vinyl has a warmth and crispness without the edginess of CD."

There's also something less technical lurking behind vinyl's mini-renaissance. Whether it's inspecting a needle for dust or flipping the record over at the end of a side, LPs demand attention. And for a small but growing group, those demands aren't a nuisance. "There's nothing like putting the needle into the groove of a record," says country singer Shelby Lynne. "It's about as real as you can get. You got your vinyl, your weed, your friends, and while you're rollin', they're pickin' out another record. We're all taking music for granted because it's so easy to push a button. I mean, come on — music should be fun."

[Rolling Stone]

URP Music Distributors - New Vinyl 12"/LP Distributor Announcement

United Record Pressing, based in Nashville, Tennessee, is now setting up a new vinyl distribution division.

Our new company is URP Music Distributors. Contact information is below.

We are just getting set up now and have a lot to do this week and we will advise our customers everything we will be offering very soon. Our official new start date is February 1, 2008.

I will be working out of a Florida-based sales office. Pressing facilities and warehouse will be in Nashville.

Also, if you need some vinyl pressed up, let me know. Since we are now owned by a pressing plant, we can possibly get your own label pressed up. Please make sure you own the rights to the music and it has no samples or you have sample clearance.

Get ready – Vinyl is Alive Again !!


Best regards,

Spyder
Sales & Marketing Manager
URP Music Distributors
ph: 1-615-823-7598
ph (toll-free in U.S.): 1-866-252-3520
fax: 1-615-301-9899
e: Spyder@URPDist.com
website: http://www.urpdist.com/