Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Skipping Over This Post

Maybe you will give the needle a nudge:

"Vinyl producers balance new popularity, old presses" by Ben Sisario New York Times  September 15, 2015

BORDENTOWN, N.J. — Vinyl, whose popularity faded with the arrival of compact discs in the 1980s, is having an unexpected renaissance, making it one of the record business’s few growth areas.

But the few dozen plants around the world that press the records have strained to keep up with the exploding demand, resulting in long delays and other production problems, executives and industry observers say. It is now common for plants to take up to six months to turn around a vinyl order — an eternity in an age when listeners are used to getting music online instantly.

“The good news is that everyone wants vinyl,” Dave Hansen, one of Independent’s owners and the general manager of the alternative label Epitaph, said on a recent hot afternoon as the plant geared up for production.

“The bad news is everything you see here today,” he added, noting that the machines had to be shut down that afternoon because of the rising temperature of water used as a coolant. To replace an obsolete screw in one machine, Independent spent $5,000 to manufacture and install a new one.

The vinyl boom has come as streaming has taken off as a listening format and both CDs and downloads have declined. The reasons cited are usually a fuller, warmer sound from vinyl’s analog grooves and the tactile power of a well-made record at a time when music has become ephemeral.

Most surprising is the youth of the market:

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Sorry for turning down the volume. I just no longer care to hear the song they are singing (have struggled to even read a Globe last three days, never mind blog about one).