“All of our customers were just crying for capacity.” By the top of 2021, URP decided to grow its operations yet again - fortuitous timing, with Michaels noting that supply-chain challenges got much worse soon after. “And then, as we saw 2020 and the growth of vinyl, it created an incredible acceleration and demand,” he says. After the plant relocated to its current, larger facility in 2017, Michaels never thought it would need to further expand. Michaels believes URP, which was founded in 1949, had a bit of luck on its side. So how did so many plants within one state manage to break ground on expansions or entirely new facilities all at once - and during a global supply-chain shortage? “Half our jobs are just running around town.”īut not everything can be done locally, and surely not everything can be sourced locally. Everything is within a 10-minute radius,” he says. “The components that you need to make a record: the mastering houses and studios, the people who cut the lacquers. The Vinyl Lab founder Scott Lemasters believes it’s about proximity to everything. It’s not just proximity to distributors that makes Nashville and Memphis ideal cities to house a pressing plant. Vinyl Prices Might Seem High Today, But They Were Worse in 1978 population lives within a 24-hour drive of Nashville, making it what he calls “a distribution heaven.” (Nashville and Memphis are centrally located to two of the country’s major distributors in Franklin, Ind., and La Vergne, Tenn.) He cites everything from “attractive” economics and state tax rates to the presence of tech giants like Amazon and Oracle as drivers for the city’s growth.Īnd, as Coker points out, an estimated 75% of the U.S. “Nashville is exploding right now,” says URP CEO Mark Michaels. Physical Music Products, a smaller plant with three presses currently online (and five more expected by early 2023) that was founded by Nashville-based mastering engineer Piper Payne, opened in March, and The Vinyl Lab, a music venue and boutique two-press plant, has been operational since April 2021. MRP - owned by Czech Republic-based GZ Media, the world’s largest vinyl record manufacturer - is adding 33,000 square feet to house 36 new presses to be up and running by early 2023 NRP, also owned by GZ Media, opened in June. ![]() The growth in Tennessee’s vinyl production capacity is substantial. “Tennessee is going to be vinyl country.” “We’ve got wine country in California,” adds Drake Coker, CEO of Nashville Record Pressing, one of three new manufacturers that have come online in the past year in Music City. Why Is Opening a New Vinyl Pressing Plant So Hard? ![]() ![]() “We really take pride in our musical heritage.” “All music resonates from Tennessee,” says Brandon Seavers, CEO of Memphis Record Pressing (MRP), which was founded in 2014 and is undergoing its own $30 million expansion. The state offers advantages in distribution, in taxes and, most notably, in culture. Tennessee is aiming to take the lead, increasing its number of plants from two to five in 2022 and planting a flag as the U.S. ![]() And URP isn’t the only Tennessee plant on the prowl.Īs the vinyl boom continues - the format generated $570 million in revenue through June 2022 (up 22% year over year), according to the Mid-Year 2022 RIAA Music Revenue Report - pressing plants around the world are not only striving to keep up with demand but planning how to get ahead of it. With an expansion underway that will bring in 48 new presses - upping the manufacturer’s count to nearly 100 and more than doubling its total output from approximately 40,000 to over 100,000 units of vinyl per day - the need to staff up is crucial. For the record… We’re hiring!” reads the lawn sign in front of Nashville’s United Record Pressing, the largest vinyl pressing plant in the United States.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |