'This is disastrous. We’ve been saying we need to fix this for years. Now we actually need to fix this.' A distressed yet optimistic vinyl industry is coping with a fire that decimated one of two lacquer disc plants used to make vinyl records
The vinyl-manufacturing community is tightknit, and within hours of the Apollo fire, phones were ringing in pressing and lacquer-cutting plants around the country as people scrambled to reassure clients and reconsider their production schedules for the next few months. There’s also been plenty of talk about what must happen next. No specific details have been announced yet, but there are plans in motion to fill the critical void Apollo has left, according to multiple people in the industry.
“The main concern is figuring out how you’re going to prioritize your customers and what you’re going to cut,” Mara says. “I don’t think any of us are used to saying no to new business. That’s going to be the hard part. Fortunately, a lot of cutters also do mastering and other work, so hopefully there’s a number of people who, even if they’re unable to cut for a few months, will have enough income to make it through.
There is one obvious, though somewhat controversial, short-term solution: another audio mastering technique, called direct metal mastering , a process that requires a very specific and rare type of cutting head that many in the industry say produces higher frequencies. DMM doesn’t have the best reputation in the vinyl world: “We’ve all been talking shit about DMM for years, just because the way it’s being done now,” Carter admits with a laugh. “But it can be done well, and it can be done right.
“The immediate danger to the North American pressing business is that there are companies overseas who can make records right now,” Muth says. “It would be very easy for a record company to say, ‘Well, we need 2 million records pressed right now, so we’ll go overseas.’ It’s been hard-fought to acquire these clients and keep them in America because our costs are higher than they are in Eastern Europe.
Because making lacquers is a chemical-based process, there will be plenty of permits to fill out and environmental regulations to meet. It’s also far from the sexiest part of the vinyl-making process, and it doesn’t exactly produce massive profits. Then there’s the investment capital it will take to get a new plant off the ground.
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