To Keep The Flow Of Vinyl Going, Metallica Buys Their Own Pressing Plant
We just got word that for the first time in decades vinyl outsold CDs, which is a sign that the vinyl boom will continue. That said, there are some artists that sell a lot more of it than others, like Metallica for instance. In fact, the band sells so much that it just purchased its own pressing plant to make sure that the flow will always continue.
Many artists, managers and labels complain about the long lag time between ordering vinyl and it finally arriving. The wait can be so long that if an artist isn’t careful, the album might arrive after the popularity of the release wanes. Although that’s not the case with Metallica, the band and its management wanted to be sure than it never had long periods where their vinyl wasn’t available.
This prompted the band to lease a couple of vinyl pressers with the German Pallas vinyl plant and then begin to use Furnace Pressing in Alexandria, Va, both know for their high quality work. Furnace started working with Metallica with the reissue of the Black Album in 2008, but once Metallica got their rights back to their earlier albums then their vinyl sales really took off.
Last year alone, the band pressed 902,500 pieces of vinyl for over 600,000 packages, about half of them sold in the U.S. That’s some pretty strong revenue right there, and in order to keep it going without interruptions, the band decided to purchase Furnace, which it had a close working relationship with.
To be clear, Furnace works on other projects besides Metallica, but you can be sure that the band gets first dibs when needed.
As new pressing plants come online, the time lag between placing and order and actual shipment has come down, which is the good news. That reprieve may be short lived however, since vinyl sales continue to grow and most predictions see that it will only increase.
