Bad news, vinyl collectors. If you were looking forward to any vinyl releases this year, prepare to be hugely disappointed. If a release hasn’t been mastered yet, it probably won’t be anytime in the foreseeable future.
California based Apollo Masters burned to the ground on Thursday, Feb 6th after a series of explosions occurred in the manufacturing plant causing devastating damage to both the plant and storage facility. The company produced 90% of the world’s lacquer, the material used to make the masters for pressing vinyl. A piece of good news though, fortunately no one was hurt.
This leaves just a single plant in Japan to fill the massive vacuum, and it’s not too likely that they will be able to. What this means is we can expect huge delays in turn around time for masters resulting in delays at pressing plants.
Small runs will likely not be a priority and this is going to have a huge impact all the way down to your local record store as vinyl costs will likely increase. Now is a great time to focus on building up your used and second hand vinyl though, right? Although, I would be surprised to see the price of used vinyl go up as resellers compete for in demand finds to stock shelves and make up the gap.
But there is hope! The vinyl industry has been booming in the last 10 years despite the transition to digital media. In 2019, vinyl sales even surpassed CD sales. Rumors are going around about smaller companies already eyeing the gap. So cross your fingers someone steps up, and fast.