Inside One Of the Last Vinyl Record Manufacturers

jonerik writes "The Nashville Tennessean has this look at Nashville's United Record Pressing, one of the last vinyl record manufacturers left in the U.S. Although LPs and 12" and 7" singles make up a tiny portion of the American music market at this point, the article reports that United's business is booming, thanks to consolidation within Nashville's record pressing business community, steady orders for the jukebox market, techno, dance, reggae, and rap orders, and this year's 25th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death. 'Elvis has been good to us. I can't complain,' says Cris Ashworth, the company's owner."

Comments

Obviously doesn't reflect the UK market...

[dan dan the dna man]

"Vinyl sales are also on the increase, thanks to exposure in films like High Fidelity and their popularity with dance music fans. Both single and album sales have increased in the past year. The vinyl market is now estimated to be worth £28.1m after growing 17 per cent."

From here

All my friends are DJ's. I see a lot of vinyl...

I remember vinyl

[wiredog]

Cleaning the LP before you played it, to get every bit of dust off of it. Spending $300 (so years ago) on a direct drive turntable+needle to get good sound. Hanging the turntable from the ceiling from chains and springs, so you and your friends could dance without making the needle skip.

Nowadays you just stick a CD into a $50 player sitting on the table and get just as good a sound, and you don't have to worry about dust nearly as much.

I don't miss LPs.

I do miss the cover art, though. Cover art is why I still have about 50 of them.

Underground Dance

[Tokerat]

I DJ a bit, techno/house/jungle/hardcore etc. and even with all this hype about CD turntables and "iPod DJs", vinyl is the choice medium. Most promos and singles are released on 12" long before CDs, and definately long before they are included on any album.

Besides, digital cannot reproduce the rich fullness of broken-in vinyl basslines, especially at high volume. Needle wear, and even the initial recording process produce extra curves in the recorded sounds, whereas digital picks up every single square corner of the wave accurately and completely, which gives it that "clear but cold" sound which so many audiophiles complain of. Vinyl adds some smoothing to the process. Worn midrange-highend also adds a bit of character (not too worn, mind you, there is definately a cutoff point), as the slight distortion not only gives the impression that the sound is louder than it really is but helps clarify it amongst the heavy low-end.

That, and it's just not as much fun to spin a plastic controller wheel to align beats as it is to actually spin the platter with your hand. Vinyl is a truely interactive medium. A CD turntable is just that: a CD player with advanced fast forward/rewind, but a turntable is like dragging a bow across a string, you are actually the generating vibrations, not some DAC in a black box.

It is for these reasons I believe vinyl will never die. However, I don't believe it will ever be anything but a niche market.