Track 1

A short history of the record

The short version: This section follows the record from tinfoil cylinders in 1877 through shellac 78s to Columbia's vinyl LP in 1948 and RCA's 45 in 1949, which split the market into albums and singles. Cassettes and then CDs pushed vinyl to a rounding error by the mid-2000s. Since then US vinyl has grown 19 years in a row, passing $1 billion in revenue in 2025.

Who made the first record?#

Thomas Edison developed the phonograph in 1877 while working on telegraph and telephone equipment; the first machine recorded onto a metal cylinder wrapped in tinfoil, which wore out after a few playings.¹ A diaphragm moved by the voice made a stylus vibrate up and down, pressing a track into the foil. Edison got there by reversing the process of the phonautograph, a device about 20 years older that could trace sound but not replay it, and the Smithsonian calls his machine "the first instrument ever to record and play back sound."²

The often-cited August 12, 1877, is probably too early: historians think the first working recording came later, because the patent application was not filed until December 24, 1877.¹ The Edison Speaking Phonograph Company was set up on January 24, 1878, to exhibit the machine, and the patent issued on February 19, 1878.¹ Paid demonstrations followed that spring and summer, and in April 1878 Edison licensed it as an office dictation machine. Sales were poor, production stopped, and Edison did not come back to it until 1888, with 17 new patent applications.²

In the gap, others improved it. C. Bell and Tainter, as the Library of Congress credits them, swapped tinfoil for wax, patenting their graphophone on May 4, 1886. Edison adopted wax cylinders too, forming the Edison Phonograph Company on October 8, 1887, and selling an "Improved Phonograph" by May 1888.¹

The first words on that first 1877 recording were the opening of the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb," according to ASME.³

Did the cylinder or the disc win?#

The disc won, and Edison eventually said so with his product line. Emile Berliner received his gramophone patent on November 8, 1887, moving from cylinders to what the Library of Congress calls "flat, double-sided zinc discs with spiral grooves." The case for the flat disc was industrial: it could be mass-produced far more cheaply than a cylinder.⁴

Berliner's early discs were a materials lab. The Library of Congress lists experimental zinc discs and very rare celluloid and rubber ones, but most surviving Berliners were pressed from a shellac compound by two outside firms, the Duranoid Company and the Burt Company. The earliest known list of Berliner records is a scrapbook page dated November 1, 1894, and production stopped in 1900.⁵ That year a court injunction shut the Berliner Gramophone Company of Philadelphia; Berliner passed his patent rights to Eldridge Johnson, who formed the Victor Talking Machine Company, with Berliner keeping a financial interest.⁴

Edison announced the Edison Disc Phonograph in 1913, conceding that the public preferred discs. He kept making Blue Amberol cylinders anyway, right up to the company's end in 1929.¹

What were 78s made of, and why do they shatter?#

A shellac 78 is mostly rock dust held together by bug resin. The shellac compound was the resin plus fillers, typically clay, slate or limestone, with carbon black for color and cotton fibers for strength.⁷ "Shellac 78s were produced commercially from 1897 until the late 1950s," per the University of Illinois preservation guide, with use declining steadily after World War II.⁷

The name 78 promises more consistency than the era delivered. Speeds varied (the same guide lists 30, 70 or 78 rpm), and common sizes were 7, 10, 12 and 16 inches.⁷ The Internet Archive's Great 78 Project puts it flatly: "During the 78rpm era there were no standards for speed, stylus size, or record/playback equalization." Its transfer engineer plays every disc at 78.26 rpm, a long-standing trade convention.⁸ Pre-1948 discs mostly have wide coarse grooves; the microgroove records that followed carry nearly twice as many grooves.⁷

How long 78s hung on depended on the country. In Japan, according to Japanese 78 experts relayed on a professional archivists' mailing list, the last new-issue 78s came out in 1958 and reissue pressings continued until production ceased in 1962.⁹ Treat those dates as reported rather than documented.

The last US-issued 78 is claimed to be Chuck Berry's "Too Pooped to Pop" on Chess, released in February 1960, though later ones were almost certainly released on small labels.¹⁰ The same history site reports, citing one source, that EMI deleted 78s from its catalogs in 1962, and says 78 sales were "virtually gone in the US and western Europe by about 1960."¹⁰

When did the LP come out?#

In June 1948, at a press event at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, Columbia unveiled the long-playing record. The exact day depends on who you ask: the Library of Congress gives the announcement as June 21, 1948, while a commenter on the same Library of Congress post, citing Billboard from 1948, and the researcher Matsubayashi Kohji's microgroove.jp both give June 18.¹¹

The engineering came first. Peter Goldmark led the Columbia team that perfected the microgroove in the summer of 1947. The first LP catalog number, ML 4001, was the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with Nathan Milstein and the New York Philharmonic under Bruno Walter. Early sides held about 23 minutes; Columbia's 1949 catalog claimed "up to 45 minutes of music on one 12-inch record," made of "nonbreakable Vinylite."¹¹ There was history behind the gamble: Columbia's president, Edward Wallerstein, had earlier halted RCA Victor's failed long-playing disc of the early 1930s.¹¹

The material change mattered as much as the groove. Plastic discs, made of polyvinyl chloride or polystyrene with stabilizers, were developed in the late 1940s and are still the format in use.⁷

Why are records 33 1/3 and 45?#

Because two companies fought for two years and both won. On January 9, 1949, Columbia announced a 7-inch single at 33 1/3. The next day, January 10, RCA Victor introduced its own 7-inch at 45 rpm, code-named "Madame X," with a dedicated changer; the big center hole allowed a smaller changing mechanism.¹² RCA also claimed the 45 used less vinyl compound per pressing.¹²

This was the war of the speeds, and the rest of the industry had to choose. In August 1949 Decca went with the LP and Capitol went with all three speeds. In April 1950 RCA began issuing LPs, and in August 1950 Columbia began issuing 45s.¹² The settlement, per Matsubayashi's history, was no single winner: the LP became the album, the 45 became the single.¹² The formats section covers the sizes and speeds in use today.

What is the RIAA curve, and why does it still matter?#

Every record is cut with the bass turned down and the treble turned up, and every phono preamp undoes it. That deliberate tilt is an equalization curve: cutting less bass keeps the groove from swinging too wide, and boosting treble lifts it above surface noise; playback reverses both. Before 1954 every label could pick its own. Columbia's LP used a curve close to the 1942 NAB standard, and RCA's 45 used its "Old Orthophonic" curve, and the mess helped build support for one standard.¹²

The RIAA curve was approved by the RIAA Technical Committee, with chief engineers of five major US labels, on January 29, 1954, and circulated formally by June 1954.¹³ Matsubayashi calls it "essentially identical" to RCA Victor's New Orthophonic curve, already in use, and kept the 75-microsecond high-frequency setting from the June 1953 NARTB standard, which had replaced NAB's 100 microseconds of 1942.¹³

Adoption was not instant. Radio News reported in July 1954 that RCA Victor, Columbia, Capitol (already using it), London (recutting its back catalog), Decca and MGM (future releases) and Mercury were on board, while Westminster stayed with NAB for the time being.¹³ So a record cut before its label switched was not necessarily cut to the curve a modern phono stage assumes.

Outside the US, per Matsubayashi's history, the British standard BS 1928:1955 adopted characteristics identical to RIAA in 1955.¹⁴ Germany took longer: DIN 45536/45537 of 1959 used a CCIR-based curve with RIAA's bass turnovers but 50 microseconds of treble pre-emphasis, and in 1962 CCIR and DIN moved to 75 microseconds, making the curve identical to RIAA.¹⁴

When did stereo records come out?#

The stereo LP is a two-channel trick inside a single groove (the playing section explains how a stylus reads it), and it went from a lab to an American standard in under six months. Westrex's experimental 45/45 cutter, which carves the left and right channels on the two walls of one groove, each at 45 degrees, dates to July 12, 1957. It was shown to engineers at Westrex's Hollywood lab on August 26, demonstrated at the Audio Engineering Society's ninth convention in New York on October 11, and formally adopted by the Record Industry Association of America as the US standard on December 27, 1957, according to a 1975 account by the former Westrex recording equipment manager.¹⁵

The first single-groove stereo demo disc reached the public by mail. Audio Fidelity's AFLP 1872 came from masters Westrex cut in October 1957, and in mid-December the label advertised in Billboard that it would send a copy to anyone who wrote on company letterhead; Copper Magazine puts the pressing at 500 copies.¹⁶ Stereo itself was older than the groove: Alan Blumlein's stereo patent applications at EMI date to 1931, and Emory Cook issued stereo reel-to-reel tape in 1951 and later two-groove stereo discs that needed two cartridges to play.¹⁶

Per Wikipedia, the first four stereo discs available to the general public were released by Audio Fidelity in March 1958, and the label had four more out by the end of that month.¹⁷

When did vinyl die?#

It never quite did, but it came close. In US dollar terms, per RIAA data compiled by the archivist Richard Hess, the LP and EP peaked at 62.7% of the market in 1977. Cassettes passed them in 1983 (47.8% against 44.6%) and reached 55.3% in 1985. CDs went from 0.5% in 1983 to 95.5% at their peak in 2002. The LP and EP fell to 1.1% in 1990 and stayed below 0.3% from 1992 to 2007.¹⁸

In units, RIAA shipments show total vinyl more than halving between 1984 and 1988. In 1991 the US shipped 22 million vinyl singles and 4.8 million LPs and EPs; by 1995 it was 10.2 million singles and 2.2 million LPs and EPs. LP shipments had a small 1990s high of 3.4 million in 1998, then fell to 900,000 in 2006, the bottom; vinyl singles bottomed at 300,000 in 2009.¹⁹ The other US tracker, SoundScan (now Luminate), which counts sales to consumers rather than shipments, put the low a year earlier, at 857,000 vinyl albums in 2005.¹⁹ Worldwide, IFPI figures reported by SPIN fall from 450 million vinyl albums in 1989 to 3 million in 2006.¹⁹ In the UK, just over 200,000 LPs were bought in 2007, per BPI figures.²⁰

The factories went with the sales. After the CD arrived, major labels sold, scrapped and dismantled pressing machines, the AP reported in 2022.²¹ Around 2015 NPR counted about 16 US plants still running, with the largest operating 28 presses and buying used ones from closed plants as far away as Italy.²²

How did the revival start?#

Part of it was a holiday invented by shop owners. Record Store Day was conceived in September 2007; the idea was presented by Eric Levin of Criminal Records, modeled partly on Free Comic Book Day, with Michael Kurtz and Carrie Colliton among the co-founders. The first one was held in April 2008, launched with Metallica signing at Rasputin Music.²³

The counting is the clearest part of the story. The RIAA's 2025 year-end report describes "19 YEARS of vinyl growth" in the US, which puts the turn right around the 2006 low.²⁴ Demand outran the rebuilt factories: by 2022 the AP counted about 40 US plants, mostly small, backlogs of six to eight months, and only a handful of companies worldwide making presses, "none in the U.S."²¹

Is vinyl outselling CDs?#

In the US, yes, by money since 2020 and by units since 2022. In the UK, by money since 2022, but not by units as of the latest full count. The figures below are official industry numbers unless marked; RIAA counts label shipments and revenue; BPI counts consumer sales from Official Charts Company data.

A few details in that table carry the story. In the US in 2025, total physical revenue was $1,381.0 million, so vinyl was roughly three-quarters of it (75.5% by this guide's arithmetic on the RIAA figures), in a year when total US recorded-music wholesale revenue hit a record $11.5 billion.²⁴ Music Week reported that 2025 was the first year vinyl passed $1 billion since 1983; that milestone is Music Week's framing, not a line in the RIAA document.³⁰ Luminate, counting consumer purchases rather than shipments, put 2025 US vinyl album sales at 47.8 million against 33.8 million CD albums, the most purchased physical format.³¹ In the UK, 2024 was the first year physical album sales rose since 1994,²⁸ and the top vinyl album of 2025 was Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl, at over 147,000 copies.²⁹

The newest numbers add a twist. In the first half of 2026 the RIAA reported US vinyl revenue up 17.7% and CD revenue up 58.6%, with physical overall up 25.9%; the mid-year release gave growth rates but not dollar or unit totals.³²

Track 2

How a record is cut

The short version: This section covers the first physical step in making a record. Every pressed record starts as a groove carved in real time by a heated stylus on a lathe, usually into a lacquer-coated aluminum disc, one side at a time.³³³⁴ The cut obeys physics a streaming master never meets: bass has to stay centered, harsh "s" sounds have to be tamed, and every extra minute on a side costs level, bass or both.³⁵³⁶ The machines are mostly decades old, with a couple of new ones arriving since 2023, and the playback curve that undoes the cutting EQ has been standard since 1954.³⁷³⁸³⁹

Do I need a separate master for vinyl?#

Usually, yes, and the reason is that a groove is a physical object with a stereo problem built in. The mid signal (what the left and right channels share) moves the groove side to side, and the side signal (the difference between them) moves it up and down.⁴⁰ Big low-frequency differences between channels mean big vertical swings, and if the two channels are out of phase the groove can narrow until a stylus cannot track it, or the cutter head lifts off the lacquer altogether.⁴¹³⁵

That is why one US plant's mastering guide puts it bluntly: "Always center your bass frequencies."³⁵ Hard-panned bass, kick or toms can make a record skip or skate.³⁵ Engineers typically keep the low end in mono below a certain frequency, and on long sides they often roll off bass as well, trading away low end and stereo width for time.³⁶

There is no single number. Writing for iZotope in 2019, mastering engineer Jett Galindo noted that bass-to-mono tools typically offer crossover settings from 20 Hz to 700 Hz, and that many vinyl cutters already consider a 100 Hz setting excessive.⁴²

The same plant lists the other usual suspects:³⁵

Veteran cutting engineer Richard Simpson ranks sibilance as one of the two big cutting problems, causing distortion and tracking trouble on both the lacquer and playback.⁴¹ He also offers a useful dissent: he found that skipping the low-end roll-off or elliptical EQ (the filter that sums bass to mono) often sounded fuller, so "mono the bass" is a strong default rather than a law.⁴¹ He recalls that RCA Hollywood's "Motown filter" rolled off everything below 70 Hz and above 12 kHz.⁴¹

Why does the end of a side sound worse?#

A record spins at a constant speed, so the groove under the stylus moves fastest at the rim and slowest near the label. HiFi News puts a 12-inch LP at 33 1/3 rpm at "almost 21ips" at the outer edge and about 7.4 inches per second near the center.⁴³ The same waveform has to squeeze into roughly a third of the groove length, so wavelengths shrink and get harder to cut and to track. This is inner groove distortion, worst on loud passages with lots of high-frequency energy, and a pivoting tonearm's tracking error also grows toward the center.⁴⁴ Soundfly calls the same effect "diameter loss."⁴⁰

The fixes are all about planning: quieter songs at the end of a side, shorter sides, or splitting an album across two discs.⁴⁴ Soundfly's version is to put the ballad last.⁴⁰

Is 45 rpm better than 33 1/3?#

On the numbers, a 12-inch at 45 rpm moves about 28.3 inches per second at the outer edge, which HiFi News notes is "close to the professional tape standard of 30ips."⁴³ More groove per second means more room for each wavelength, and the article calls higher-speed formats "almost always sonically superior."⁴³ The cost is time: a 45 rpm side holds far less music, as the next table shows. Whether a given listener hears the difference is a separate argument.

How much music fits on one side?#

Less than most labels would like, and it depends on the music. Groove width and depth decide how much signal fits. A shorter side allows deeper, wider grooves with more dynamic range, bass and level; a longer side means lower level, a higher noise floor and tighter spacing, which raises the risk of overcuts (grooves running into each other, causing skips) and, on lacquer, pre-echo and post-echo, faint ghosts of a loud passage heard right before or after it.³⁶ A louder cut also hides surface noise better.³⁶

Two plants publish guidance, and they disagree:

Soundfly lands in the same place for the LP: about 20 minutes a side "without audible compromise."⁴⁰ The ceiling moves with the material. Mastering engineer Scott Hull, quoted by RPM, says 25 to 27 minutes is "almost no problem" for quiet, lightly compressed recordings such as chamber music or singer-songwriter albums.³⁶ Gotta Groove's own example: a four-minute soul ballad and bright heavy-metal guitar have very different limits on the same 7-inch.³⁵

Stereo itself costs space. Simpson recalls that the mono cut of the first Monkees album ran about 3 to 4 dB hotter than the stereo cut, because stereo needs more room on the disc.⁴¹

For the 10-inch, the US plant United Record Pressing tells clients not to exceed 13 minutes per side at 33 1/3 or 8 minutes per side at 45.⁴⁵

What is a lacquer?#

The lacquer (or master disc) is an aluminum plate with a thick coat of lacquer, and the engineer cuts it in real time with a stylus that is usually sapphire.³³ There is one lacquer per side.³⁴ The gaps between songs are made by nudging the stylus slightly toward the center, and the engineer adds the lead-in, lead-out and the crossover grooves by hand before checking each lacquer under a microscope for overcuts.³³³⁴

The supply of blank lacquers is thinner than most buyers would guess. On February 6, 2020, a fire destroyed the Apollo Masters factory in Banning, California, which per Wikipedia made an estimated 70 to 85 percent of the world's lacquers and was one of only two such factories; MDC in Japan was left as the only producer.⁴⁶ DJ Mag reported after the fire that MDC was said to be basically closed to new business, that at least three groups were working on new lacquer manufacturing, and, per one industry source, that only two companies were known to still make gem-tipped cutting styli.⁴⁷ Some plants moved to DMM (below), and the Vinyl Record Manufacturers Association of North America formed in response.⁴⁶

Making new blanks has proved hard. Gotta Groove Records says it worked with Sherwin-Williams from 2017 to 2022 on lacquer blanks of its own, a project abandoned mainly over the difficulty of curing the discs, and as of 2026 it still recommends MDC blanks from Japan.⁴⁸

Why is the cutting stylus heated?#

Heat is the trick that made quiet, detailed lacquers possible. In 1948 William S. Bachman at Columbia wrapped a copper wire coil around the stylus and heated it with direct current; the warmth softened the lacquer, allowed much smaller burnishing facets (the tiny flats that polish the groove wall) and kept more high-frequency detail.³⁷ The method was published in Audio Engineering in June 1950, and Fairchild later sold a "thermostylus" kit with a claimed noise reduction of about 20 dB (a manufacturer's claim).³⁷ The hot stylus matters beyond the cutting room: the RIAA curve's 75 microsecond treble setting relied on it.³⁷

What is a mastering lathe, and who made them?#

The lathe turns the blank and moves the cutter head, which controls the cutting stylus, across it.⁴⁹ Two names dominate the history.

Scully. John J. Scully built a weight-driven lathe in 1921, and Western Electric bought one in 1924 to demonstrate its Westrex cutter.⁴⁹ Per Wikipedia, Scully dominated the US professional market from the 1930s to the 1960s.⁴⁹ It lost ground once Neumann lathes were imported, its new design did not arrive until the mid-1970s, and it was often fitted with Westrex cutter heads and electronics.⁵⁰

Neumann. Per Wikipedia, Neumann's AM31 arrived in 1931, followed by the VMS66 in 1966, the VMS70 in 1970 and the VMS80 in 1980.⁴⁹ Pspatial Audio calls the VMS 70 the world's most popular recording lathe and says Neumann was the only company selling lathe, cutter head and electronics as one system, at more than $100,000 in today's money (an estimate on an undated page).⁵⁰ Neumann lathes from 1931 to 1980 used Lyrec synchronous AC motors whose speed followed the mains frequency; the VMS-80 dropped the traditional bed and used DC servo motors, and in 1989 the last remaining disk-lathe maker assembled a VMS-82 DMM lathe in Berlin.⁵¹ Pspatial dates Neumann's switch to crystal-locked Technics DC motors to after 1976.⁵⁰

On heads, Ortofon made its first moving-coil cutter head in 1946, and per Wikipedia Western Electric/Westrex showed the first commercial 45/45 stereo cutter head in 1957.⁵⁰⁴⁹ Neumann's SX-74 is a stereo feedback head; the SX-84, developed with Teldec for DMM, fits only the VMS-82.⁵¹

Does anyone still build lathes?#

Sources disagree on when the old line ended. In 2019 Mix wrote that "no manufacturer in the world has made one since the early 1980s," in a profile of a Nashville rebuild of a 1940s Scully 501: about $3,000 in 2014 for the bathtub, sled and original platter, $25,000 to $30,000 in parts overall, and roughly four years of work, finished in summer 2018.⁵² Copper Magazine's 1989 date for a VMS-82 built in Berlin sits later than that.⁵¹

New machines have arrived since. Agnew Analog unveiled the Type 612 at the International Disk Recording and Mastering Convention in July 2023 and listed it for order by August; it cuts lacquers, dubplates or plastics, has a hydraulic carriage, takes a 12- or 14-inch vacuum platter and accepts any cutter head, including Agnew's own Type 602.³⁸ In July 2026 MusicTech reported the Teenage Engineering APC-2, built with SUPERSENSE, a 104 kg made-to-order lathe that cuts playback discs in real time; price and availability were not stated.³⁹

What is groove pitch, and what does variable pitch do?#

Pitch is groove spacing, measured in lines per inch.⁵⁰ A fixed pitch wastes space on quiet passages and risks overcuts on loud ones. Variable pitch solves this by reading the music about a second early: on tape-era Neumann systems a preview head sat about 38 cm ahead of the playback head, so the lathe could widen the spacing before a loud or bass-heavy passage and tighten it during a quiet one.⁵⁰ Neumann paired it with dynamic depth control driven by the side (L-R) signal, and an "ECHO" button widened the pitch to cut down pre-echo.⁵⁰ Tight spacing on long sides is what raises the overcut and echo risk in the first place.³⁶

The sources disagree on dates. Per Wikipedia, Scully introduced variable pitch in 1950 and automated it in 1955, and the VMS80 introduced it to Neumann's line.⁴⁹ Pspatial Audio says the VMS 66 and VMS 70 already had a separate pitch-control console fed by the preview head.⁵⁰ Both accounts put variable pitch in the 1950s at Scully; they differ on when Neumann got it.

What does DMM mean on a record?#

Direct Metal Mastering skips the lacquer. Per Teldec's own document, a diamond stylus, excited at an ultrasonic frequency so it cuts more easily, carves the groove straight into amorphous copper electroplated onto a 0.8 mm stainless steel disc, with no heated stylus needed.⁵³ The cut disc becomes the "mother" for plating, which skips the silvering and nickel steps a lacquer needs.⁵³ Teldec claims no lacquer springback, no pre- or post-echo, 10 to 15 percent more playing time per side, up to 6 dB less high-frequency noise and stampers in about two hours, and pitched it as economical for short runs (all manufacturer claims).⁵³ With no springback, Teldec says, the grooves can also sit closer together.⁵³

Per Wikipedia, DMM came from Teldec (Telefunken-Decca) and Neumann, about 30 DMM lathes were ever made, about 10 were later converted to lacquer, and as of 2009 seven public DMM facilities remained, in Germany, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic; the US lost its last in 2005.⁵⁴ The DMM logo was tied to Teldec's specification while it enforced it; after the patents expired the name and logo were unrestricted.⁵¹

The sound is argued over. Some listeners hear DMM as bright or forward, which some attribute to the hard copper and a near-zero cutting angle that needs electronic correction.⁵⁴ In 2020 DJ Mag noted doubts about DMM for dancefloor releases, and Richard Dron, founder of the pressing company Mobineko, said he did not love its sound while noting that big European plants such as GZ and Optimal relied mostly on it.⁴⁷

A 1987 Audio magazine feature dates DMM's introduction to 1981, and notes that Teldec had used the underlying process for its TED videodisc, introduced in 1976.⁵⁵ Teldec's US patent for DMM was filed on April 7, 1982, per Pspatial Audio.⁵⁶

What is the RIAA curve?#

Left alone, bass would carve enormous swings and treble would barely scratch the surface. The RIAA curve fixes this: the cutting side cuts bass and boosts treble, and the playback side does the exact opposite, so the overall response comes out flat.⁵⁷ It roughly approximates a constant-amplitude groove, so no part of the band hogs the disc, and it improves signal-to-noise.⁵⁷ The playback half of that curve, plus a lot of gain, is the job of a phono preamp, covered in the playing section; the history section tells how the labels settled on one curve.

The numbers are three time constants, 3180, 318 and 75 microseconds, which put the corners at 50.05 Hz, 500.5 Hz and 2122 Hz.⁵⁷ A true constant-amplitude cut would need about 60 dB more gain at 20 kHz than at 20 Hz; RIAA asks for about 40 dB.⁵⁷ The curve dates from 1954, after the 1953 NARTB standard, replacing what Stereophile calls "an anarchy of different EQs."³⁷⁵⁷ It became part of IEC 98, first published in 1964; in September 1976 the IEC added a fourth time constant (7950 microseconds, 20.02 Hz) to roll off infrasonic rumble, and critics say that adds audible errors of -3.0 dB at 20 Hz, -1.0 dB at 40 Hz and -0.5 dB at 60 Hz.⁵⁷

What is half-speed mastering?#

Run the source and the lathe at half speed, so an LP is cut at about 16 2/3 rpm, and the stylus gets twice the time for every wiggle, which makes high frequencies easier to cut.⁵⁸ The lathe's EQ has to be modified or the curve lands in the wrong frequency range, and each album needs an acetate check, so a cut takes about four times as long.⁵⁸ Stan Ricker cut half-speed LPs for Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, which licensed classic albums and had them pressed in Japan.⁵⁸ At Abbey Road in London, Miles Showell, who joined in 2013, cuts half-speed masters from high-resolution digital transfers on a modified Neumann and calls the method the "holy grail of vinyl cutting."⁵⁸⁵⁹

What do one-step and three-step mean?#

After cutting, a lacquer is silvered and electroplated with nickel. The nickel peeled off is a negative called the father; plating the father makes a positive mother, and the mother makes stampers, the plates that press the records.³³³⁴ Disc Makers describes three routes:³⁴

Yamaha puts it at one stamper per thousand records, though real stamper life varies.³³ DMM needs only one electroforming stage, since the copper disc is already the mother.⁵⁴⁵³

On audiophile reissues, "One-Step" is also a selling point. Mobile Fidelity's UltraDisc One-Step pressings use stampers made straight from the lacquers, skipping the father and mother, which the label says avoids the generational losses of three-step plating.⁶⁰ Since each lacquer yields one stamper, more lacquers have to be cut.⁶⁰ The sonic benefit is the label's claim.

What is a lathe-cut record?#

A lathe cut is cut one at a time in real time, the groove engraved straight into a blank by a diamond or sapphire stylus, with no plating and no press.⁶¹ Per a seller of them, lathe cuts make economic sense from one copy up to "a few dozen," while pressing pays off from hundreds up; blanks include vinyl, polycarbonate and acrylic.⁶¹ The same seller says lathe cuts may sound more raw or lo-fi than pressed records, with quality varying by equipment, material and mastering, and that vinyl lathe cuts may last longer than polycarbonate or acrylic ones, without giving a play count.⁶² New professional lathes cover this ground too: Agnew lists "plastics" among what the Type 612 can cut.³⁸

Where are records cut today?#

The cutting trade is small and scattered: the last public DMM rooms (as of 2009) were in central and northern Europe, and after February 2020 the only lacquer maker left standing was in Japan.⁵⁴⁴⁶ RPM Records in Denmark publishes the side-length advice quoted above, and Abbey Road in London is the best-known home of half-speed cutting.³⁶⁵⁹ Mobile Fidelity's early half-speed LPs were pressed in Japan.⁵⁸

Track 3

How a record is pressed

The short version: A pressed record is a copy of a copy of a copy. The cut lacquer is silvered like a mirror, grown into nickel negatives and positives in a plating bath, and the last generation, the stamper, is mounted in a press that squeezes a warm lump of PVC on the order of 100 tons for something like half a minute.⁶³³³ Many plants keep old presses running on salvaged parts, the compound and lacquer supply has hung on very few suppliers, and the 2020 fire at a California lacquer plant plus a demand surge produced waits of up to 10 months.^64654666 By early 2025 typical backlogs were reported at about three months.⁶⁴

How do you get from a soft lacquer to a metal stamper?#

The lacquer that leaves the cutting room is an aluminum disc coated in nitrocellulose, with the groove cut into that coating.⁶⁷ It cannot be pressed from until it becomes metal, and the first step is borrowed from mirror-making: the lacquer is sprayed with a saponin mix, rinsed, sensitized with stannous chloride, rinsed again, then sprayed with a silver solution and a dextrose reducer.⁶³ The silver makes the surface conductive so it can be electroplated, usually with nickel.⁶³

Per Wikipedia's account, most plants start with a nickel "flash" in a slow, warm bath at about 15 amps, then move to a hot nickel bath and raise the current in steps to between 110 and 200 amps.⁶³ Nickel sulfamate baths made all-nickel parts possible; from 1940 to 1960 a short nickel plate was backed with copper.⁶³

What peels off the lacquer is a negative: where the record has a valley, this part has a ridge. That part is called the master, or the father; Wikipedia notes "master" as the UK term.⁶³⁶⁸ A mother, a positive with grooves like a playable record, is plated from the father in about an hour, and a stamper, another negative weighing about 145 grams, is plated from the mother in about 45 minutes.⁶³ A new mother is polished to round off microscopic "horns" at the tops of the grooves so the vinyl flows during pressing.⁶³ The finished stamper is chrome plated for a hard surface, center-punched (by aligning it over three pins or by watching the grooves under a microscope), trimmed, sanded on the back, and given a clamping lip at the edge.⁶³

What do one-step, two-step and three-step mean?#

They count the generations of metal between the lacquer and the press. Per one US plant: in one-step, the first metal part off the lacquer is itself the stamper, so no more stampers can ever be made from that cut, which the plant says is generally viewed as inferior; in two-step, the first part is plated into a mother and stampers come from the mother; in three-step, the mother is plated again into an archive copy, and dozens of mothers can come from one master.⁶⁹

The names are not used consistently. That plant calls the archive copy the "father," while a large Nashville plant and Yamaha use "father" for the first negative off the lacquer, which Wikipedia calls the master.^69683363 The Nashville plant describes its own method as a "3-step electroplating process": lacquer, then father, then mothers, then stampers.⁶⁸ If a plant quote lists steps, ask which part they mean.

Direct Metal Mastering (DMM) skips the lacquer and its plating by cutting straight into copper. DJ Mag reported in 2020 that it is said to lower surface noise, though some question its range for dance releases.⁴⁷ After the 2020 lacquer fire, some plants turned to DMM, a costlier route.⁴⁶ How a record is cut covers how it works.

How many records can one stamper press?#

Nobody publishes a standard, and the figures disagree. Yamaha's 2021 explainer says "one stamper for every thousand records."³³ A 2025 Hypebot piece by Bobby Owsinski says a stamper "may last for as few as 2,000 records."⁶⁴ One plant says its coated stampers, developed in 2017-2018 with a coatings firm, double the life of standard ones in most cases; it has pressed "a few records of over 3,000 copies" on one set, which it calls outliers, and says a late-2018 test of a 180 gram box set found copies 45 and 2,400 very similar.⁶⁹ Those are the plant's own claims. A Dallas plant's FAQ warns that very large runs risk stamper wear unless new stampers are made.⁷⁰

So the published figures run from Yamaha's one per thousand to Hypebot's "as few as 2,000" to one plant's outliers past 3,000.³³⁶⁴⁶⁹ Because new stampers come off the mother, a long run does not wear out the cut itself.⁶³

What is a test pressing?#

The first few records off new stampers, made before the full order. Vinyl Moon put the usual batch at four or five in 2018; Yamaha says "a few."⁷¹³³ The artist and label listen and approve, and if they hear serious problems the plant may have to start over.⁷¹ One plant says it listens to every test pressing in full before shipping, reports a 98% approval rate (its own figure), and in production listens to parts of every 25th record, with one listening room for every two presses.⁷² Another compares production copies against the approved test pressing.⁶⁸

This is the cheapest moment to catch a problem: only a handful of copies exist.

What happens inside the press?#

PVC compound is warmed and pushed through an extruder, "squeezed like toothpaste," as a Detroit plant's staffer put it to Tape Op in 2018, into a lump called a puck or biscuit.⁷³ The biscuit is about three times as thick as the finished record.⁷¹ A label goes on each side, the biscuit sits between the two stampers, steam heats the mold, the press closes, cold water cools it, and the ring of excess called flash is trimmed off.⁷³⁷¹ Flash and some rejects are recycled.⁶⁸⁷¹

Labels are pressed into the vinyl as the stampers close, and they are baked beforehand to get the moisture out so they do not bubble.³³ One plant bakes them overnight so they adhere properly and warns that some color change will occur.⁷⁴ A 2019 patent application for a "no-bake" label ties wrinkling and lifting to heat, and says keeping the label's backing free of water helps stop it sticking to the press plates.⁷⁵

The numbers vary by source, and some are given in muddled units:

The safe summary is on the order of 100 tons for about half a minute.

Which presses are still running, and who makes new ones?#

The classic makes still at work or rebuilt include SMT, Toolex Alpha and Finebilt; a Kansas plant rebuilt one of each and calls them among the best brands ever made.⁷⁹ A large Nashville plant says it runs more than 60 presses (Lened, Pheenix Alpha and SMT) making "up to 80,000 records daily," a company claim.⁶⁸ For years plants kept presses alive with salvaged parts and hunted used machines in warehouses.⁶⁴

New machines arrived in the 2010s. Newbilt in Germany builds semi-automatic presses based on the Finebilt design, which stopped being made in the early 1960s, and a full line was listed at about 200,000 euros (company figure, year not stated).⁸⁰ Third Man Pressing in Detroit bought eight of the first ten and told Tape Op in 2018 it expected about 5,000 records a shift.⁷³ Viryl in Toronto claimed in 2016 its automatic WarmTone could press a 140 gram record in 20 to 25 seconds (the article gives both) and that one operator could run four.⁷⁸ By 2018 Viryl offered a "steamless" version that heats mold water electrically, removing the gas boiler.⁷⁷ Pheenix Alpha in Sweden builds the automatic AD12, credits Toolex Alpha with developing it, and announced a manual version in March 2025.⁸¹

What is vinyl compound, and where does it come from?#

Records are pressed from a PVC compound sold as pellets. One Thai maker's process, as AnalogPlanet described it, melts PVC powder, extrudes it, chops it, cleans it (including removing metal contamination) and tests it, and the plant makes the pellets.⁸² Black comes from carbon black, which also strengthens the record; colored compound uses dyes and other additives.⁸³ Panelists at Making Vinyl Europe 2024 said lead and similar additives were phased out of record PVC by 2000.⁶⁶

In 2014, FACT reported that Thai Plastic & Chemicals supplied up to 90% of the PVC compound used for records, and that the last US supplier, Keysor-Century, had closed in the mid-2000s.⁶⁵ By 2020, DJ Mag counted "at least a dozen" suppliers of audio-grade PVC.⁴⁷

A 2016 Thermo Fisher materials blog on the vinyl revival describes PVC blends as "complex mixtures of PVC particles, fillers, lubricants, stabilizers and plasticizers."⁸⁴ We found no current figure for any supplier's share of record compound.

What happened to lacquer supply after the 2020 fire?#

On February 6, 2020, fire destroyed Apollo Masters in Banning, California, the only US maker of lacquer blanks; 82 firefighters worked about three hours, nobody was hurt, and the cause is undetermined.⁴⁶ Apollo made an estimated 70-85% of the world's lacquers (reported), and its loss left one known lacquer factory: MDC, a small Japanese company.⁴⁶ DJ Mag reported that MDC had a fixed supply and was reportedly closed to new business, and that three outfits were developing new lacquer production.⁴⁷ Some plants moved to DMM, backlogs grew, and the fire led to the founding of the Vinyl Record Manufacturers Association of North America (VRMA), with about 50 member companies.⁴⁶

Who makes lacquers now is not settled in our sources. Every 2020 source names MDC. A 2024 conference report in Copper names "the Japanese supplier, Public Records" as the only one left after the fire.⁶⁶ We found nothing confirming that any of the new lacquer projects shipped.

In a September 2026 history post, the US plant Gotta Groove says it "continues to recommend master lacquer blanks produced by the Public Record Company in Japan," and calls those blanks "MDC's."⁴⁸ That suggests the 2020 and 2024 sources name the same Japanese maker two ways; no source we read says so outright.

Why did records take so long to make in 2021?#

Demand outran capacity. In November 2021, Mixmag reported lead times of about three months to a year, with some small artists told they might wait until summer 2022, and cited Billboard's estimate of about 160 million records a year of global capacity against demand of about 400 million (reported/estimated, 2021).⁸⁵ Adele's 30 was reported at more than 500,000 vinyl copies, and Ed Sheeran said she "had basically booked out all the vinyl factories."⁸⁵

By May 2023 Marketplace reported most supply problems easing, with a Dallas plant that had doubled its lines running "24 hours, five days a week."⁸⁶ At Making Vinyl Europe 2024, industry people said the pandemic waits of up to 10 months were over.⁶⁶ In January 2025 the backlog at most plants was reported at about three months.⁶⁴ Plants now quote "weeks to months," varying by season and load.⁷⁰

How many plants are there, and which is the biggest?#

The Vinyl Factory counted 40 vinyl record manufacturers worldwide in 2014 (reported), with the US and Europe home to more than 80%; FACT put US plants at about 15 that year.⁸⁷⁶⁵ No current worldwide count turned up. FutureSource reported 110 million units pressed in 2023, from a survey that covered only about a third of known plants (estimated).⁶⁶

Where else in the world are records pressed?#

GZ Media, in Lodenice near Prague, is described as the world's largest. In 2022 it told Radio Prague it pressed more than 55 million records in 2021, almost 200,000 a day around the clock, against about 300,000 a year in the mid-1990s; it runs eight plants, including sites in Canada, Memphis, Nashville and France, builds its own presses, and pressed its first record in 1951 (company figures, reported).⁸⁸ New entrants reported in 2024 include a press project in Navi Mumbai, India, which pressed what the report calls the country's first record in decades, a broker's plan to press K-pop in South Korea, a plant in Glasgow, and a project in Israel halted by the conflict.⁶⁶ The old presses are kept running partly by parts suppliers: one US company that has supplied the record industry since 1946 sells machinery and parts for SMT, Hamilton, Alpha-Toolex, Finebilt, Newbilt and Lenned presses, per a directory listing.⁸⁹

Track 4

Sizes, speeds, weights and colors

The short version: A 12 inch at 33 1/3 rpm holds about 18 to 22 minutes a side by one plant's guidance, with longer sides possible depending on the music; spin the same disc at 45 and you trade minutes for a faster groove.³⁵⁴³ A 180 gram record uses the same stampers and groove depth as a standard one of about 140 grams, and hi-fi makers disagree on whether the weight itself changes the sound.⁹⁰⁹¹ Colored, splatter and picture discs are made differently from black and can be noisier, and the new PET "eco" records come with maker claims nobody has yet tested independently.⁷⁰⁹²

Why does a 45 sound different from a 33?#

Because the groove is moving faster under the stylus. On a 12 inch at 33 1/3 rpm, the groove passes the stylus at "almost 21ips" (inches per second) at the outer edge and about 7.4 ips near the label; at 45 rpm the outer edge runs about 28.3 ips, which HiFi News notes is "close to the professional tape standard of 30ips."⁴³ HiFi News says higher-speed formats are "almost always sonically superior."⁴³ The cost is time.

Groove speed also falls toward the center of every record, so high frequencies get harder to reproduce there; one guide suggests sequencing with that in mind and notes how many sides end with a ballad.⁴⁰

The 78 came before vinyl. Shellac 78s were made commercially from 1897 until the late 1950s, from shellac resin with fillers such as clay, slate and limestone plus carbon black and cotton fibers, and their use declined steadily after World War II.⁹³ Early 78s were often not cut at exactly 78 rpm, so the right speed can vary from disc to disc.⁹³

The plants disagree at the edges, and the music matters more than the clock: a quiet chamber recording can stretch a 33 side to 25-27 minutes, which one mastering engineer calls "almost no problem," while heavy sibilance or limiting makes long sides harder to cut cleanly.³⁶³⁵ For a 7 inch, one plant allows 6 minutes at 33 1/3 but prefers 45 when the song fits; the Danish plant does not recommend 33 on a 7 inch at all.³⁵³⁶ How a record is cut explains the trade-off between loudness and length.

What are the standard sizes?#

The 7 and 12 inch weights are from Disc Makers and Gotta Groove.⁹⁰⁷² Plants press all three sizes; one Nashville plant lists 7, 10 and 12 inch output.⁶⁸

Why do some records say 180 gram?#

A 180 gram record is a heavier 12 inch LP. Standard weight is "around 140 grams" per Disc Makers, or "between 130 and 155 grams" per Gotta Groove.⁹⁰⁷² Final weight also shifts with the vinyl color and the master content.⁹⁰⁷²

What weight does not change: 180 gram records use the same stampers and the same groove depth as standard weight, and Disc Makers says that on most systems they sound the same.⁹⁰ Whether that settles it depends on whom you ask. In a 2025 What Hi-Fi? survey of turntable and cartridge makers:⁹¹

• The "it's the cut, not the weight" side. Rega's Simon Webster said groove depth is set by the cutting engineer and "you can have excellent 180g pressings and poor 180g pressings." DUAL's Lothar Mertens said 120 gram and 180 gram copies from the same master can sound identical. Clearaudio's Robert Suchy said heavy vinyl "can't make a poor recording sound good."
• The "weight can help" side. Audio-Technica's Edward Forth said less vibration reaches the stylus, and Suchy said resonance may be lower. Webster said heavier records are more durable and less prone to warp.
• The caveats. Forth said a warped 180 gram disc cannot be restored the way a 140 gram one can. Ortofon's Leif Johannsen said thicker discs need careful cooling after pressing or they warp. Technics' Tetsuya Itani said, from personal experience, that they may pick up more static.

The weight is printed on the sticker; the quality of the cut and the pressing is not.

Does colored vinyl sound worse than black?#

Colored records are pressed from colored PVC pellets, and black gets its color from carbon black, which also strengthens the record; colored compound uses dyes and other additives instead.⁷¹⁸³ A Dallas plant's FAQ says colored and picture discs "can introduce higher surface noise if not handled properly," and that black virgin vinyl "typically remains the lowest-noise option."⁷⁰ On the other side, The Vinyl Room's 2023 roundup found many listeners say translucent vinyl sounds almost the same as black, while some advise avoiding white; it gives no measured figures in its free section.⁸³ So: a plant says the risk is real and manageable, listeners report anything from no difference to a noisy white disc, and nobody we read has measured it.

Splatter comes from mixing pellets of different colors in one biscuit; plants also hand-mix biscuits for color-in-color and A-side/B-side effects.⁷¹⁹⁶

How is a picture disc made?#

According to a UK retailer's blog, a picture disc is a PVC core with a printed paper or card image on each side, and the grooves are pressed into a thin clear polyethylene foil; the layers are pressed together and trimmed.⁹⁷ The same blog says the foil wears faster than regular vinyl and that picture discs tend to cost more.⁹⁷ A Los Angeles CD, vinyl and merch company's guide (2022, updated 2023) describes a PVC base with a piece of artwork on each side and a clear PVC layer over both, pressed between the stampers and trimmed.⁹⁸ It calls the outer layer clear PVC and mentions no foil, and neither source says it presses records itself, so the outer layer's material is not settled in our sources.

Are there eco-friendly records that aren't PVC?#

There are, and every performance figure so far comes from the makers or the trade press, not independent tests.

• EcoRecord. Sonopress in Gutersloh, Germany, injection-molds recyclable PET instead of compression-molding PVC, on a machine of up to 300 tons, with no gas or steam; it claims energy savings of up to 85% in a test operation.⁹² It launched with Warner Music, and the first order was an orange Liam Gallagher and John Squire release listed at US $44.01 (2024, official retail price).⁹² The From Vinyl to Plastic writer was skeptical of the sound claims and asked for an independent review.⁹² Owsinski, writing in Hypebot in 2025, reported surface noise lower by up to 10 dB, but also visible wear after about 35 plays versus about 50 for standard vinyl, and a higher cost.⁶⁴ At Making Vinyl 2024, about 70% of each EcoRecord was said to come from bottles collected from a river in Guatemala in 2023, nine bottles per record.⁶⁶
• Electric injection elsewhere. Green Vinyl Records replaced conventional gas-powered presses with an electric injection-molding machine and PVC with virgin and recycled PET, per an equipment supplier's case study that gives no figures or dates.⁹⁹
• Bio-plastic and recycled PVC. Evolution Music in the UK has made a record from sugars and starches, and Elastic Stage is working on a similar idea.⁶⁴ Beologic regrinds records with the labels punched out; its own research said seven in 10 listeners preferred the recycled-PVC pressings (company research).⁶⁶
• The cost question. At the 2024 conference MPO asked whether labels could absorb "25 to 30 percent more" for PVC alternatives.⁶⁶
• The rules. VRMA and the Vinyl Alliance offered six anti-greenwashing principles in 2024: truthful claims, a full life-cycle view, and evidence.⁶⁶

None of this is new in spirit. In the mid-1960s Emory Cook ran a vacuum "microfusion" process using micro-particles of vinyl, and its makers claimed lower noise.⁷⁶ The planet covers the footprint numbers.

Track 5

The runout groove: what the etchings mean

The short version: The smooth band between the last song and the label is called the dead wax or runout, and it carries the record's paperwork: a matrix number for each side, cut numbers, stamper codes, plant marks and often the initials of the engineer who cut it.¹⁰⁰ Read the right way, those scratches can tell you which factory pressed your copy and which lacquer it came from, but no single mark proves a first pressing on its own.¹⁰⁰¹⁰¹ And every so often there is a joke in there too.¹⁰²

What is the dead wax, and why is anything written there?#

The matrix number is a code, letters and numbers and sometimes symbols, stamped or handwritten in the runout groove area, which also goes by dead wax, end-groove area or matrix area.¹⁰⁰ It exists for the factory: per Wikipedia, its main job is to file the stamper and make sure each side gets the right label, and collectors borrowed it later to tell editions apart.¹⁰⁰ Around that core number you can find a cut or take number, plant codes or logos, the cutting engineer's initials or signature, and sometimes dates.¹⁰⁰

Do not confuse it with the catalog number, the bigger number that is usually the same on both labels. Matrix numbers differ side to side, and some labels print them upside down to avoid exactly that confusion.¹⁰⁰

There is a geography to it. One UK guide puts the lacquer number normally at 6 o'clock, with matrix and stamper information 90 degrees away at 9, 12 or 3 o'clock.¹⁰³ The same guide gives a useful tactile tip: stamper codes are embossed, standing proud of the surface, while lacquer and mother codes are carved in.¹⁰³ A researcher of one jazz label's runouts adds that the style of the stamps tracks the plating plant and era, not the cutting room.¹⁰⁴

The habit is old. Before about 1950, records were cut direct to disc and take numbers were inscribed in the matrix area; on Victor records the take number sits at "9 o'clock".¹⁰⁰ In the 1950s, one engineer recalls, every cutter at Fine Sound had a personal "maker's mark" that he inscribed, and dedicated mastering houses later stamped their own imprints.¹⁰⁵

What do A1, B1, -1A and RE actually mean?#

The number after the dash is usually the cut. Per Wikipedia, a suffix such as 12345-3 marks the third cut of that side, and an album numbered X-1234 might carry X-1234-B7 in the runout, the 7 being the cut number.¹⁰⁰ Records get recut for ordinary reasons: stampers wear out or get damaged, a test pressing is rejected, a fault turns up in the banding, another plant or country cuts its own masters, or a reissue gets a new number.¹⁰⁰ Sometimes the old cut is reused with the new number added and the old one scratched out.¹⁰⁰

Vinyl Me, Please says a "-1A" suffix "typically" indicates a first pressing of side A, and "RE" a repressing.¹⁰⁶ A UK shop blog lists "A1 B1" (also written A//1 B//1 or A-1 B-1) as a common first-press code.¹⁰⁷ Both are good starting points. Neither is a rule, and the best evidence for that comes from inside a major label.

A former Columbia cutting engineer, Phil Brown, told AnalogPlanet that an initial lacquer order was six sets: 1A and 1B went to the Pitman plant, 1C and 1D to Terre Haute, 1E and 1F to Santa Maria.¹⁰¹ All six are first cuttings, the article concludes, so the common belief that A came first, B second and C third is wrong.¹⁰¹ Another source quoted there says each plant got two sets because lacquers could be lost in plating; Brown says a change of program moved the number to -2, then -3; and the author suggests that if the first lacquer was ruined, the next cut could be 2A and be treated as the first.¹⁰¹

Wikipedia adds two more cautions: a cut 1 may have been rejected, and reissues often restart at 1.¹⁰⁰ A "-RE" suffix also does not necessarily mean the non-RE version was ever sold to the public.¹⁰⁰ Letters can mean people, too. In a lacquer number such as "AM 438-1", a letter suffix like -1R can identify the mastering engineer at that firm.¹⁰³

How do stamper codes like GRAMOPHLTD and BUCKINGHAM work?#

Two big British companies hid their stamper counts in words. At Decca the code word was BUCKINGHAM: B=1, U=2, C=3, K=4, I=5, N=6, G=7, H=8, A=9, M=0, so "NN" means the 66th stamper.¹⁰³ EMI's Hayes plant used GRAMOPHLTD: G=1, R=2, A=3, M=4, O=5, P=6, H=7, L=8, T=9, D=0, so "GG" is the 11th stamper.¹⁰³ A low stamper code means your copy came off early metal, which is as close to "early copy" as the dead wax gets.

Collector Zappa Frenzy's plant table maps the EMI layout: mother number at 9 o'clock, the stamper G-code at 3 o'clock, and a pre-1981 example string "EMI 5499 A-1-1-1-4".¹⁰⁸ The Gramophone Co. used the same system with a tax code, "KT", at 12 o'clock.¹⁰⁸ CBS at Aston Clinton in the UK put the matrix at 12, the stamper at 3 and the mother letter at 9.¹⁰⁸

On EMI records a UK shop blog reads YEX and YAX prefixes as usually stereo and XEX as usually mono, and "1Y//1 2Y//1" as often an early pressing.¹⁰⁷

Who signed my record?#

The most famous name in the dead wax belongs to George Peckham, who started cutting at Apple in London in 1968 and signed his work "Porky" or "A Porky Prime Cut".¹⁰² He also used "Pecko Duck", "Delta Pork" and similar variations.¹⁰² His notes were often funny or cryptic, nodding to the artist or the lyrics, sometimes with a small drawing; Sound & Vision compares the habit to programmers leaving notes in source code.¹⁰² Wikipedia credits him with many hidden runout messages and says he may have cut hundreds of thousands of records, mostly UK pressings.¹⁰⁰

In the US the marks are usually initials. Collectors and guides read RL as Robert (Bob) Ludwig, BG as Bernie Grundman and KG as Kevin Gray.¹⁰⁶¹⁰⁹ RVG marks classic jazz cuts by Rudy Van Gelder.¹¹⁰¹⁰⁹ At Masterdisk, HW is Howie Weinberg and GK Gilbert Kong; LH is Lee Hulko and TJ Ted Jensen, both at Sterling Sound.¹¹¹ Wally is Wally Traugott at Capitol.¹¹⁰¹¹¹

Some are pictures. One collector's list reads bird wings, sometimes replaced by a small flower, as Brian Gardner at Allen Zentz Mastering, and "eyebrows" as David Turner.¹¹⁰ A cent sign is Tom Coyne, a pun on his name.¹¹² In the UK, HTM is Harry T. Moss at EMI and Abbey Road, found on records including Revolver and The Dark Side of the Moon.¹¹²

Initials collide, so read them in context. One collector first listed "GP" as Peckham, then adopted a reader's correction that "AT/GP" is George Piros at Atlantic Studios in New York.¹¹⁰ On the ARSC mailing list, an engineer explains that Piros wrote P plus a number, the number naming a specific lathe and cutter-head combination, and another member recalls P13 and P17.¹⁰⁵¹¹³ And "RE" can be a repress marker or a set of initials, as for Rick Essig at Frankford/Wayne.¹⁰⁶¹¹⁴

What do STERLING, IAM and the other plant marks mean?#

Mastering houses often stamped their names. STERLING, stamped or etched, is Sterling Sound in New York.¹⁰⁶ A "Mastered by MasterDisc" stamp marks Masterdisk.¹⁰⁵ TOWNHOUSE and STRAWBERRY are London rooms.¹¹² Artisan Sound Recorders in Los Angeles used a logo that sources describe differently: Vinyl Me, Please describes a drum with two drumsticks, while one collector blog describes a drafting compass on a record, the compass forming an "A".¹⁰⁶¹¹⁰

Pressing plants used letters and symbols. On Capitol records, IAM in a triangle points to the Scranton, Pennsylvania plant, roughly 1963 to 1973; IAM is the International Association of Machinists, the union.¹⁰⁶¹¹⁰ A rifle- or arrow-like mark is Capitol's Winchester, Virginia plant, and a five- or six-point star is Capitol Los Angeles.¹⁰⁸ Columbia's three US plants show up as P (Pitman, New Jersey), T (Terre Haute, Indiana) and S (Santa Maria, California), with variants.¹⁰⁸¹⁰¹ RCA used a stamped H, I or R for Hollywood, Indianapolis and Rockaway.¹¹⁵ MR in a circle marks Monarch in Los Angeles.¹¹⁰¹⁰⁸

Not every symbol is a signature. A triangle followed by five digits, the delta number, is a job code used by Monarch and other plants, so it does not prove Monarch by itself.¹¹⁶¹⁰⁸ Allied Record Company is listed as "K-###" by one source and as a Q-shaped stamp by another.¹⁰⁸¹¹⁰ The decoder lists more than 100 of these marks, and flags where sources disagree.

How do European plants mark their records?#

European plants have their own dialects. Per Zappa Frenzy's table, Optimal Media in Röbel, Germany, uses an inverted 1 and a downward triangle; Pallas in Diepholz puts four or five digits between hyphens; Sonopress in Gütersloh pairs a three-digit date with an F-number, so "107 F-2654" means July 1991.¹⁰⁸ CBS in Haarlem, the Netherlands, used strings like "OI_7261_IA_I" from 1977 to 1987, and Ljudpress in Östersund, Sweden, etched LP, sometimes with a date.¹⁰⁸ In the UK, a six-point asterisk is Audio Services in Wednesbury.¹⁰⁸ Vinyl Me, Please reads "P USA" as Pallas pressing for US export.¹⁰⁶

What does DMM mean in the dead wax?#

DMM, Direct Metal Mastering, means the record was cut straight into a copper-plated master rather than a lacquer.⁵⁴ Per Wikipedia, Teldec and Georg Neumann GmbH developed it, Neumann building the cutters into its VMS80 lathe series, and the idea came from RCA's late-1970s videodisc work.⁵⁴ The payoff is in the factory: one electroplating stage to make stampers instead of three for lacquer, and in the early 1980s many copies could be pressed from one master without wear-driven recuts.⁵⁴¹⁰⁰ You will see "DMM" on the sleeve or inscribed in the lead-out area.⁵⁴

The sound is argued about. Wikipedia notes that some listeners describe DMM pressings as harsh or forward in the treble.⁵⁴

Wikipedia also says only about 30 DMM lathes were made, about 10 were converted to lacquer, and as of 2009 seven publicly usable DMM rooms remained, in Germany, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic; it says the US lost its last in 2005.⁵⁴ Masterdisk's community-written Discogs profile, however, says the studio began DMM cutting in February 1986 and lists DMM cutting among its services.¹¹⁷ Those two cannot both describe the present, and we have not resolved which is current.

What are the famous runout messages?#

Per Wikipedia, some copies of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" single carry "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law", believed to have been requested by the band.¹⁰⁰ U2's Rattle and Hum (1988) reads "We Love You A.L.K.", for production manager Anne Louise Kelly.¹⁰⁰ Elvis Costello's This Year's Model in the UK (1978) had a contest message with a phone number, and Emitt Rhodes' self-titled album says "Recorded at Home" in ornate lettering.¹⁰⁰ The practice survived the format change: most US CDs of Happy Mondays' Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches say "CALL THE COPS".¹⁰⁰

Vinyl Me, Please points to "Goodbye Waterface" on Neil Young's Tonight's the Night, and notes that Third Man Records puts messages on every release.¹⁰⁶

How do I use all this to identify my pressing?#

1. Copy the runout exactly. Discogs asks contributors to enter it verbatim, one string per side, keeping capitalization, single spaces for gaps and strikethrough for crossed-out text.¹¹⁸ Then search Discogs by the full string.¹⁰⁹
2. Sort raised from carved. Embossed codes come from the stamper; carved ones from the lacquer or mother.¹⁰³
3. Find the plant. A letter or logo usually does it. If there is none, one collector measures the pressing ring on the label, which differs by plant: about 70mm at Specialty, 36mm at Capitol Winchester, a double 35/72mm at Monarch.¹¹⁰
4. Look for the lowest cut and stamper numbers. A shop guide suggests the lowest indicators, such as -A, -1 or -1S, as a sign of earlier copies.¹⁰⁹ Keep the Columbia caveat in mind: 1A to 1F were all first cuttings sent to different plants.¹⁰¹
5. Check the paper too. Label designs date a pressing; a collector cites the Warner Bros. green label of about 1970 to 1973, followed by the "Burbank" palm-tree label of 1973 to 1978.¹¹⁰ A barcode on a 1965 title means a reissue, since barcodes were not widely used before the late 1970s.¹⁰⁹
6. Cross-check. Discogs has errors, so one collector checks forums and specialist sites as well.¹¹⁰

On CDs the same instinct applies with different codes. Discogs separates the L-prefixed mastering SID, added at glass mastering, from the IFPI mould SID added at pressing, and notes that an "LC" code is a label code, not a matrix or catalog number.¹¹⁸

Track 6

How a turntable plays a record

The short version: A diamond the size of a grain of sand rides a wiggling groove, and a magnet and a coil turn that wiggle into a tiny signal that a phono preamp lifts and corrects. This section covers that chain, plus the settings and storage habits behind most skips, hiss, lopsided stereo and worn records. Two lab studies of record wear disagree about what happens to the groove, and both are given here.

How does one groove carry two channels?#

A stereo LP has one groove with two walls, and the two recording directions sit at 90 degrees to each other and at 45 degrees to the record surface.¹¹⁹ Put a signal on one channel alone and only one wall is modulated; the other stays smooth.¹¹⁹ That is the 45/45 system, which Westrex showed to engineers in Hollywood on August 26, 1957, and which, Ralph W. Wight wrote in 1975, the Record Industry Association of America adopted "as the American standard" on December 27, 1957.¹⁵ A rival vertical-lateral system had backing from Sugden in the UK and Telefunken in Germany, and Decca was experimenting with it too.¹⁵ One reason 45/45 won: both channels were cut the same way, so they used the same equalization and carried the same rumble, where a vertical system would have put more rumble in one channel.¹⁵ The history section tells how stereo records reached the public.

In practice the stylus does not read two walls separately. A 1958 magazine explainer called that idea a misconception, since "it is impossible for the stylus to follow different contours on both walls of the groove at the same time."¹²⁰ The tip moves in a mix of sideways (lateral) and up-and-down (vertical) motion, and real music traces angled, circular or elliptical paths.¹²⁰

Which phase gives which motion is where the 1958 sources part ways. The Westrex engineers wrote that in-phase signals cut a vertical groove and out-of-phase signals a lateral one.¹¹⁹ Norman Crowhurst wrote the opposite: in-phase gives lateral motion, out-of-phase gives vertical.¹²⁰ The split comes from how each defines channel phase. The common modern explanation, that a mono signal moves the stylus purely sideways, follows Crowhurst's convention.

The wall assignment, at least, is not in dispute: the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) states in its transfer guidelines that the inner wall carries the left channel and the outer wall the right.¹²¹ The standard that defines channel phasing, IEC 60098, lists "channel phasing" as a clause, but its public preview does not include the wording.¹²²

The design was also built to stay compatible: Westrex wrote that an ordinary lateral pickup with decent vertical give would still play back the lateral part of both channels, and each 45/45 channel came out about 3 dB below a mono lateral record with the same playing time.¹¹⁹

What is the difference between moving magnet and moving coil?#

Both types make a signal by moving a magnet relative to a coil. In a moving magnet (MM) cartridge the magnet rides on the cantilever, the tiny arm that carries the stylus, and the coils stay put; in a moving coil (MC) cartridge it is the other way round.¹²³ MC designs use fewer turns or thinner wire to keep the moving parts light, which is why their output is lower.¹²³

Sources: Crutchfield for typical outputs and gain;¹²⁴ What Hi-Fi? for the Ortofon examples.¹²³

On price, What Hi-Fi? listed a Goldring E3 MM at GBP 89 / USD 189 and the Quintet Blue MC at GBP 389 / USD 569 in 2023 (reported retail), and advised staying with MM if the turntable cost under GBP 1,000 / USD 1,250.¹²³

The two types are also serviced differently. Ortofon says the styli in its MC cartridges "are non-replaceable," so it runs an exchange scheme that buys back a worn or damaged MC at 25% of current list price against a new one of the same grade or better, while its MM cartridges are serviced by fitting a new stylus (policy as published in 2026).¹²⁵ That is one maker's policy, not an industry rule.

Which stylus shape should I care about?#

The shape of the diamond decides how much of the groove wall it touches. Audio-Technica's 2025 catalogue rates its own styli by shape, and those hours are the maker's figures, not a law of nature.¹²⁶

Descriptions: K&B Audio;¹²⁷ hours: Audio-Technica.¹²⁶

For a sense of scale, Ortofon specifies the elliptical tip on its 2M Red with radii of 8 and 18 µm.¹²⁸ A 1968 RCA study used a 0.2 by 0.7 mil elliptical and a 0.7 mil conical.¹²⁹

How long does a stylus last?#

It depends on whose number you read. Audio-Technica rates its elliptical at about 300 hours,¹²⁶ while Ortofon says the elliptical 2M Red can reach up to 1,000 hours with proper care "without degradation of performance."¹²⁸ A retailer guide puts conical at about 500 hours and credits Audio-Technica, which is the top of A-T's own range.¹²⁷ A turntable brand's blog says styli usually last about 1,000 hours.¹³⁰ The fair reading: check the hours your cartridge's maker publishes, and treat any single universal figure with suspicion.

How much should the stylus weigh on the record?#

Tracking force is the downward weight on the stylus, set with the tonearm's counterweight. Set it to the cartridge maker's figure: too light and the record skips, too heavy and it can damage the groove.¹³⁰ The Ortofon 2M Red, for example, has a range of 1.6-2.0 g with 1.8 g recommended.¹²⁸ Forces used to be much heavier. The 1958 Westrex pickup tracked at 6 g,¹¹⁹ and in 1968 about 5 g was common on everyday players.¹²⁹

There is an engineering reason light tracking mistracks. Westrex wrote that the stylus's static deflection from tracking force has to be large compared with the biggest vertical modulation in the groove, or the tip leaves the groove.¹¹⁹

There is no single right number across makers. Audio-Technica says the recommended force "varies from cartridge to cartridge," and its 2015 setup guide gives 2 g for its AT95E and 3.5 g for its ATP-2XN.¹³¹

What does anti-skate actually do?#

A pivoted, offset tonearm has a quirk. Friction drags the stylus along the groove, but the arm can only resist force along its own length, and the leftover pulls it toward the center of the record.¹³² That is skating force. Louder passages and a dirty stylus or record mean more friction and more skating, and a 12-inch arm skates less than a shorter one.¹³² Left alone, the stylus leans on the inner groove wall, which can cause mistracking and uneven wear on both stylus and record.¹³² Anti-skate is an outward bias that cancels it.

How much is in dispute. Kogen measured skating at about 20% of tracking force for an elliptical and 15-18% for a conical in 1967; Boisclair estimated about 10%; Stereophile suggests starting near 10% and adjusting by ear.¹³² Then the advice conflicts. House of Marley says to set the anti-skate dial to match the tracking force, and to back it off if the stylus skips outward.¹³⁰ Stereophile calls anti-skate equal to tracking force "way too high."¹³² Both can be right, because the dial is not a force gauge: Korf measured actual anti-skate at roughly 5-30% of the number on the dial.¹³² The Library of Congress says to check tracking and anti-skate at least monthly, or whenever mistracking shows up.¹³³

Do I need a phono preamp?#

Yes, built in or separate. A cartridge's signal is far below line level, and the phono preamp (or phono stage) does two jobs: it adds gain, and it applies the inverse RIAA curve.¹²⁴ A PHONO/LINE switch on a turntable turns its built-in stage on or off.¹²⁴

The RIAA curve exists because of cutting. The lathe boosts treble and cuts bass so the groove's swing stays more even across the range, and playback does the reverse to get back to flat.⁵⁷ The curve is defined by three time constants, 3180, 318 and 75 µs, with corners near 50 Hz, 500 Hz and 2,122 Hz.⁵⁷ A true constant-amplitude cut would need about 60 dB more gain at 20 kHz than at 20 Hz; RIAA settles for about 40 dB.⁵⁷ IEC 98 was first published in 1964, and a 1976 amendment added a 7950 µs infrasonic roll-off, -3.0 dB at 20 Hz, which drew criticism.⁵⁷ Nearly all vinyl follows RIAA, apart from some pre-1954 records.¹²⁴

The RIAA Technical Committee approved the curve on January 29, 1954, and the document circulated that June, according to Kohji Matsubayashi's History of Phono EQ Curves, which also notes that the original 1954 text has not been located.¹³

Does direct drive or belt drive matter?#

In direct drive the platter sits on the motor; belt drive turns it through a belt; idler drive uses a rubber wheel.¹³⁴ For a listener at home, makers sell good decks of every type. For a DJ, direct drive changed everything: high torque, near-instant start, steady speed and a platter you can push around or spin backward without harm.¹³⁵ The DJ section picks up from there.

Two sources disagree on the first direct-drive deck. IEEE Spectrum says the Technics SP10, designed by Shuichi Obata, came out in 1969.¹³⁵ Technics' own history page says the SP-10 launched in 1970 as "the world's first direct drive turntable."¹³⁶

What do wow, flutter and rumble mean on a spec sheet?#

Wow is slow pitch wobble and flutter is fast pitch wobble; both are given as a percentage, and lower is better.¹³⁴ Rumble is noise from the deck's own moving parts that the stylus picks up, and makers often leave it off.¹³⁴ As a reference point, Panasonic lists the SL-1200MK7 at 0.025% wow and flutter (weighted RMS), 0.7 seconds to reach 33 1/3 rpm and 0.18 N·m of starting torque, and gives no rumble figure.¹³⁷

How should I clean records?#

Start with hands. The Library of Congress says to handle discs by the edge and label, with clean, dry hands, and to let discs from cool storage reach room temperature before playing.¹³⁸ It also says to brush the stylus with a dense bristle brush before each side.¹³³

For the records, the methods line up like this, with views differing on which is best:

The same archival source notes that no published microscope study of ultrasonic cleaning on records exists, even though some archives endorse it.¹³⁹

Why does static matter?#

Fresh PVC records come out of the mold with a strong negative charge, which pulls in dust.¹³⁹ A 1980 microscope study in Audio rated static a minor cause of crackle next to groove fracture; its main harm is attracting grit that scours the groove.¹⁴¹ Remedies in the literature include carbon-fiber brushes, conductive mats, polonium-210 neutralizer bars and anti-static compounds, while the same archival source says detergent sprays give only "very temporary relief."¹³⁹ The Library of Congress recommends high-density polyethylene inner sleeves.¹³⁸

How should I store records?#

Upright, on edge, with immovable dividers every 4-6 inches, and without mixing sizes.¹³⁸ Records are heavy: the Library of Congress puts grooved discs at more than 35 pounds per shelf-foot.¹³⁸ At home it suggests room temperature or below and about 35-40% relative humidity, away from attics and basements; for permanent storage, 46-50°F and 30-40% RH.¹³⁸ The Library's own advice has shifted: its older 2002 "Nutshell" sheet gave 45-50% RH for long-term storage.¹³³

What warps a record?#

Heat. It relaxes the stresses molded into the PVC, and a hot car is the classic case; one archival summary says keep records below 70°F (21°C) and out of light, and that flattening with heat and pressure is "never certain."¹³⁹ A 2026 press piece puts the point where warping is all but guaranteed at about 140°F (60°C), and cites, via Vorby, a 2021 Discogs survey (reported, not seen here) in which 22% of collectors named warps as their most common damage.¹⁴² Short dividers and mixed diameters on a shelf may contribute to warping too.¹³³

Why does my record keep skipping?#

A skip is the stylus losing the groove. A turntable brand's checklist covers most causes: a deck that is not level, tracking force too light, anti-skate wrong (skipping outward means too much), a dirty or worn stylus, a warp, worn grooves (white streaks, skips in the same spot), and dust.¹³⁰ A record weight can flatten a warp but is not a permanent fix.¹³⁰ Sometimes the record arrived that way: a 1980 microscope study found small holes and surface flaws even on an unplayed audiophile pressing.¹⁴¹

Does playing a record wear it out?#

Yes, and the two best-known studies disagree about how. In RCA's 1968 electron-microscope study by Woodward and colleagues, a 0.2 by 0.7 mil elliptical at 1.5 g left visible "plastic-flow of the groove wall" after one play, building over 10 and 50 plays; a 0.7 mil conical at 5 g nearly wiped out 20 kHz detail after 50 plays; the same conical at 1.5 g showed essentially no wear after 50.¹²⁹ The study put a critical tracking weight somewhere between 1.5 g and 5 g, and its authors still preferred the elliptical, since the conical's first-play distortion was more than twice as high.¹²⁹

In 1980, Walter E. Davies played records at 1 g with anti-skate set, at an estimated 30,000-69,000 psi of contact pressure, and found mostly small chip-like fractures rather than large permanent deformation.¹⁴¹ After 50 plays one record was "almost unlistenable," critical listeners heard loss after 2-10 plays, and the vinyl's formulation strongly affected wear.¹⁴¹ So Woodward saw flow and Davies saw fracture, in different decades with different vinyl and pickups. The overlap is practical: lighter, correctly set tracking and a clean stylus and record go easier on the groove.

Track 7

Records and DJs

The short version: This section is about how DJs turned the record player into an instrument. A Japanese direct-drive turntable launched in 1972 became the club standard, scratching came out of the Bronx in the mid-1970s (the sources disagree on the year and on who was first), and since the early 2000s timecode vinyl has let DJs keep the feel of a record while playing digital files.

How did a hi-fi turntable end up in every club?#

Matsushita, now Panasonic, launched the Technics SL-1200 in October 1972, developed the year before by a team led by Shuichi Obata.¹⁴³ It used direct drive, with the platter sitting on the motor (drive types are covered in playing records). For DJs that meant high torque, a near-instant start and steady speed with less wow and flutter, and a platter that could be pushed around by hand or spun backward without harm.¹³⁵ Belt drives were less consistent and prone to failure, so in the belt era DJs developed the slip cue (hold the record still while the platter turned, then let go), which IEEE Spectrum says works better on direct drives; in its words, "Scratching was impossible on belt drives, because it would destroy them."¹³⁵

Technics' own history says that in August 1973 DJ Kool Herc used "a pair of Technics direct drive turntables" in the Bronx for his breakbeat technique; the page does not name the model, and it is a maker's account.¹³⁶ The 1979 SL-1200MK2 is billed by Technics as "the first turntable specifically developed for use in discos,"¹³⁶ and per Wikipedia its main change was braking that matched its acceleration.¹⁴³ As the club scene grew from the 1980s, Technics says, the series became the de facto standard turntable in clubs.¹³⁶ Per Wikipedia, an SL-1210MK2 is on display at London's Science Museum.¹⁴³ IEEE Spectrum calls the direct-drive turntable "the only music-playback device to become a musical instrument itself."¹³⁵

How many were sold?#

Nobody independent has counted, and the two figures in circulation both trace back to the maker. Technics says 3.5 million units "over the past 35 years," without saying when that period ended.¹³⁶ Wikipedia says "more than 3 million units sold," citing a Technics history page and press.¹⁴³ Read both as manufacturer-reported cumulative totals, not audited sales.

When did it stop, and when did it come back?#

Per Wikipedia, Panasonic announced the end of Technics analog turntables on November 1, 2010, through the DMC World DJ Championships home page,¹⁴³ and IEEE Spectrum counts 38 years of production ending that year.¹³⁵ At CES 2016 the deck returned as the SL-1200G and a limited SL-1200GAE of 1,200 units; the GAE shipped in April 2016 and the G in October, at a reported launch price of about USD 4,000 / GBP 3,100 / EUR 3,499.¹⁴³ The SL-1200MK7 followed at CES 2019,¹⁴³ which Technics calls "a full revival of the feel of the SL-1200MK2."¹³⁶ Per Wikipedia, production moved from Japan to Malaysia in 2021, though the source it cites for that is thin.¹⁴³

What do the numbers on a DJ deck mean?#

The MK7 is a fair modern reference. Panasonic lists:¹³⁷

Pitch control is the fader that speeds the platter up or slows it down to match tempos. Per Wikipedia the classic range was ±8%, and the MK5G, released in 2002, added a ±16% button and was the first Technics deck with digitally controlled pitch.¹⁴³

Who invented scratching, and when?#

The usual story: Grand Wizzard Theodore (Theodore Livingston), about 12 years old in the Bronx, found it by accident, moving a record back and forth while his mother told him to turn the music down.¹⁴⁴ KEXP dates that discovery to 1975 and his public debut to 1977 at the Sparkle club, with Grandmaster Flash and Theodore's older brother, Mean Gene, as mentors.¹⁴⁴ KEXP also hedges: it is "difficult to attribute specific people or dates," and he "might not be the first person" to rock a record back and forth, only the first known to see what it could do.¹⁴⁴

The dates do not agree across sources. KEXP says 1975 for the discovery and 1977 for the debut.¹⁴⁴ The Vinyl Factory places it in the "early 1980s" and calls it legend.¹⁴⁵ IEEE Spectrum says club DJs developed scratching in the "early 1970s."¹³⁵

Is turntablism older than hip-hop?#

Records as instruments go back further. John Cage's Imaginary Landscape No. 1 (1939) used records switched between speeds, Pierre Schaeffer's Etude aux Chemins de Fer (1948) was built from manipulated recordings of steam locomotives, and Cage's 33 1/3 (1969) was written for 12 record players.¹⁴⁵ DMC has run its annual World DJ Championships since 1985, and in 1995 DJ Babu of the Beat Junkies coined the word turntablism.¹⁴⁵ Technics dates the concept of turntablism to the 1990s.¹³⁶

How does timecode vinyl work?#

A DVS (digital vinyl system) swaps the music on the record for a control signal. The turntable's output goes into an audio interface or mixer, software reads the signal for speed, direction and position, plays a digital file to match, and sends that audio back to the mixer like any other deck.¹⁴⁶ There is always some latency, and lower is better.¹⁴⁶

Open-source developers on the Mixxx project have taken the signals apart. Serato's control record carries a 1,000 Hz tone with the right channel shifted a quarter cycle (90 degrees) against the left; comparing the two at each zero crossing tells forward from backward, and counting crossings, 2,000 a second at normal speed, gives speed.¹⁴⁷ In relative mode the software uses only speed and direction; in absolute mode it also reads where the needle is, so dropping the needle further in jumps the track.¹⁴⁷ Position comes from bits riding on the carrier: Serato uses amplitude modulation and a 20-bit sequence with up to 1,048,575 states, while Traktor's MK2 timecode uses a 2,500 Hz carrier, about 2.5 times Serato's resolution, and a 110-bit sequence.¹⁴⁸ These are reverse-engineered findings, not vendor specs.

Where did DVS come from?#

Wikipedia cites Chris Bauer's Spacedeck project, dated 1998, and says Final Scratch, released in 2001, was "the first DVS software sold publicly."¹⁴⁶ Serato began in 1997, when Steve West was at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and wrote a pitch and tempo algorithm, and Serato Scratch Live came out with Rane in 2004.¹⁴⁹ Native Instruments' Traktor Scratch reached stores worldwide in May 2007 at a suggested USD 669 / EUR 599, with a cheaper crossgrade for owners of FinalScratch and Serato Scratch Live.¹⁵⁰ In 2011 the DMC championships began allowing vinyl-emulation systems.¹⁴⁵ For how turntables, CDJs and DVS rigs sit together in a working club booth, see https://showfile.cold.fyi/.

Why do DJs still buy records?#

No survey of why working DJs buy vinyl in 2026 was among the sources, so this answer stays short. What the sources do support: direct-drive decks were built to be handled, pushed and reversed,¹³⁵ DVS exists to keep that hand-on-platter control while the music comes from files,¹⁴⁶ and Technics judged demand strong enough to restart production in 2016 and add the MK7 in 2019.¹⁴³

Published sales data is scarce and mostly about hardware. Citing MI Salestrak figures, DJ TechTools reported that turntables took about 14% of US unit sales of DJ technology in May 2016, against 6.3% for CDJs and 42% for controllers.¹⁵¹ On the record side (see what a record costs), Resident Advisor reported in 2023 that pressing costs and plant delays had labels and shops asking whether the dance 12-inch was on the way out; one label cofounder said pressing 300 records had gone from little more than GBP 1,000 to close to GBP 2,000, and 12-inch singles from about GBP 9 to GBP 14.¹⁵²

Track 8

Collecting and grading records

The short version: Collectors chase first pressings, but the codes in the dead wax only get you part of the way, and collectors themselves disagree on what counts as a "second pressing".¹⁰⁰ Condition is graded on a shared ladder from Mint to Poor; in the US and on Discogs that is usually the Goldmine scale, in the UK the Record Collector scale.¹⁵³¹⁵⁴ Discogs users added 114.2 million items to their collections in 2025, a company record, and Record Store Day has run every year since 2008.¹⁵⁵¹⁵⁶

What makes a first pressing a first pressing?#

A first pressing is a copy from the first production run, and Wikipedia is blunt that matrix data alone does not prove it: cut 1 may have been rejected, and reissues often restart at 1.¹⁰⁰ The word gets stretched, too. Per Wikipedia, collectors may call any change of track list, running order, label design, typo or cover a "second pressing".¹⁰⁰

So collectors stack evidence. One collector's routine starts with Discogs and its photos, then dates the label design, reads the dead wax, measures the pressing ring on the label, and cross-checks specialist forums because Discogs has errors.¹¹⁰ A shop guide adds the jacket: tip-on construction, inserts, copyright years and label addresses, and the barcode test, since barcodes were not widely used before the late 1970s.¹⁰⁹ The runout section covers the codes themselves, including why Columbia's 1A to 1F were all first cuttings.¹⁰¹

The most collected records are not old. In Discogs' 2025 figures, the most-collected releases included a 2015 180 gram reissue of Nirvana's Nevermind and a 2017 picture disc of Taylor Swift's Reputation, and none of the top releases predate 2012.¹⁵⁵ Plenty of people want the record, not the first one.

How does record grading work?#

The common US yardstick is the Goldmine standard.¹⁵⁴ The table gives its definitions as summarized by the Jazz Collector site, which quotes them.¹⁵³

Goldmine's own guide, on an undated page opened in 2026, says Mint "should never be used as a grade unless more than one person agrees" and that Near Mint records are "shiny, with no visible defects."¹⁵⁷ It describes VG+ as a record that, "except for a couple minor things, this would be Near Mint," and says a VG record "has surface noise, and some scratches may be audible."¹⁵⁷ It puts VG at no more than 25% of the Near Mint price, Good, Good Plus and VG- at 10 to 15%, and Poor and Fair at 0 to 5%, and says most records are graded visually.¹⁵⁷

Two things trip up new buyers. Mint should be rare on any honest listing. And the in-between grades you see on listings are not all official. Glide Magazine says NM is "a true Goldmine grade" while M-, VG++ and VG- are not.¹⁵⁸ Goldmine's current guide does list VG- alongside Good and Good Plus, so the two sources disagree on that grade.¹⁵⁷

Grading is done by eye and by ear. A record can look clean and still crackle, which is why the VG definition is written in terms of what you hear in quiet passages.¹⁵³

Which grading scale: Goldmine or Record Collector?#

There are two main scales, and they mostly line up. A UK shop blog describes the Record Collector scale as the UK standard and Goldmine as the one used more by US sellers and Discogs.¹⁵⁴ The visible difference is a grade called Excellent, which the same blog places at roughly Goldmine VG+.¹⁵⁴ If you buy from another country, ask which scale the seller means.

What is a grade worth?#

There is no official conversion, only rules of thumb. Glide Magazine's version: a VG+ copy is worth about 50% of the Near Mint price and a VG copy about 25%, with price guides using NM as the base.¹⁵⁸ Treat those as a seller's shorthand, not a law; rarity, demand and the jacket move prices too.

What does Discogs actually know?#

Discogs launched in November 2000, started by Intel programmer Kevin Lewandowski, and is operated by Zink Media, LLC; per Wikipedia it holds over 19 million user-submitted releases as of 2026.¹⁵⁹ Its collection figures are the company's own. In its 2025 report, Discogs said users added 114.2 million items to their collections that year, a record, up from 105.7 million in 2024; more than 920 million items were catalogued in all; the average collection held 191 items, with an average estimated value of $571.77 in the fourth quarter of 2025.¹⁵⁵ The company projected the total would pass one billion in 2026.¹⁵⁵

Its 2025 Year in Review named The Beatles global artist of the year, Taylor Swift's The Life Of A Showgirl global album, and Columbia the top label.¹⁶⁰

Marketplace figures are older. In December 2017, Resident Advisor reported over 37 million items for sale on the marketplace, about 27.5 million of them vinyl, and 130,000 orders in the first week of that December, a site record at the time.¹⁶¹

Discogs' own list of its most valuable sales from January 2020 to September 2023, published in September 2023, names Scaramanga Silk's "Choose Your Weapon" (2008) at $36,585 as the "most expensive item ever sold on Discogs."¹⁶² We did not find a current official Discogs figure for annual marketplace sales or orders.

For identifying an exact copy, Discogs' database rules matter as much as its size: runouts are entered verbatim, one string per side, and minor differences can be added as variants.¹¹⁸

What sells for big money on Discogs?#

The press now reports Discogs' top sale month by month. Reported examples:

Loudwire called the White Stripes copy the top Discogs sale of 2026 to late July, one of only 15 known copies, from an edition with hand-painted covers.¹⁶⁵ Per Wikipedia's list of most valuable records, Prince's The Black Album sold for $27,500 on Discogs in 2018, and Scaramanga Silk's "Choose Your Weapon" sold there for $41,095 in an unstated year.¹⁶⁶ That price differs from the $36,585 Discogs gives for the same record, and we have not resolved which is right.

What is the most expensive record ever sold?#

The vinyl answer, per Guinness World Records, is Ringo Starr's mono copy of The Beatles' White Album, numbered 0000001, which sold for $790,000 (£522,438) at Julien's in Los Angeles on December 5, 2015.¹⁶⁷¹⁶⁸

Wikipedia's list adds other reported sales: the Elvis Presley "My Happiness" acetate for $300,000 in 2015, bought by Jack White; a signed Sgt. Pepper's for $290,500 in 2013; Frank Wilson's "Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)" 7-inch for $133,818 in 2020; a sealed Capitol US Yesterday and Today for $125,000 in 2016; and an Aphex Twin Caustic Window test pressing for $46,300 on eBay in 2014, bought by Minecraft creator Markus Persson.¹⁶⁶

The biggest number on that list is not vinyl. Wu-Tang Clan's Once Upon a Time in Shaolin sold for $4,000,000 in 2021, after an earlier $2 million sale in 2015, and it is a CD.¹⁶⁶ The Quarrymen's "That'll Be the Day" acetate, owned by Paul McCartney, appears with a guide valuation of £200,000, which is an estimate, not a sale.¹⁶⁶

What is Record Store Day?#

Record Store Day grew out of a 2007 gathering of US record-shop owners, and the first official day was April 19, 2008, according to the UK organizers; the UK joined in 2008, brought over by Spencer Hickman, then at Rough Trade.¹⁵⁶ Wikipedia gives both 2007 and 2008 as the founding year, lists the founders as Eric Levin, Michael Kurtz, Carrie Colliton, Amy Dorfman, Brian Poehner and Don Van Cleave, and says Metallica launched the first event at Rasputin Music in Mountain View, California.¹⁶⁹

It grew fast: about 300 US stores in 2008, over 1,000 worldwide in 2009 and 1,400 in 2010, per Wikipedia.¹⁶⁹ A Black Friday edition launched in November 2010, and in 2020 the day was split into three "Drops".¹⁶⁹

The UK rules show how it is meant to work. Releases are sold only in participating shops on the day, with no reservations or pre-orders, first come, first served, and no online sales until 8pm on the Monday after (April 20 in 2026); shops that break the rules can be banned.¹⁵⁶ The UK site lists 314 shops in the UK and Ireland and more than 500 releases, and the organizers say "more than 95%" of stock reaches fans rather than resellers.¹⁵⁶

Is Record Store Day good for records?#

Both sides have numbers. Billboard reported, from Nielsen Music, that US vinyl sales rose from 990,000 units in 2007 to more than 13 million in 2016, and that the 2015 Record Store Day week was independent stores' best in 12 years, with scans up 46.7% on the week before.¹⁷⁰ Wikipedia credits RSD 2024 with the highest weekly vinyl sales in 30 years.¹⁶⁹

Luminate, the data company formerly known as Nielsen Music, put the 2025 Record Store Day week (April 12) at 1.2 million albums sold, just over 1 million of them vinyl, and counted about 673,000 RSD-exclusive albums and vinyl singles bought at independent stores, which it called more than 75% of the units made for the day.¹⁷¹ The same 2025 post says 32% of US vinyl buyers surveyed attended and bought at Record Store Day in 2024.¹⁷¹ For 2026 (April 18), Billboard's Luminate chart report named Pink Floyd's Live From the Los Angeles Sports Arena, April 26th, 1975 the top-selling album of the week, with no total given.¹⁷²

Wikipedia's Record Store Day article lists criticisms raised in the UK: the day crowds pressing capacity, major labels are heavily involved, shops buy on no-return terms, and limited releases get flipped on resale sites.¹⁶⁹ Whether that is a fair price for the attention it brings to shops is a question the article leaves open, and so do we.

The money section covers who gets paid for a record. Our sister guide covers the money in live music: https://tickets.cold.fyi/

Track 9

What a record costs, and who gets paid

The short version: This section is about the money in a record: what pressing costs, who gets paid from a sale, and how big the market is. Pressing costs a few dollars a record at 1,000 copies and $10 or more at 100, because setup costs land on every run whatever its size, and a $24 indie-store LP, in one label's breakdown, leaves about $3.19 each for the label and the artist. US vinyl revenue passed $1 billion in 2025 for the first time since 1983, per the RIAA.

How much does it cost to press 300 records?#

On one US plant's published 2026 price card, a 300-copy run of black 140 gram LPs in a full-color jacket comes to $5.56 a record.¹⁷³ That is National Audio Company in Springfield, Missouri,¹⁷⁴ and its "combo" package, effective June 1, 2026, prices every quantity in the open.¹⁷³ These are official list prices, not negotiated quotes, and the per-unit figure is what you pay for each finished, shrink-wrapped record:

National Audio Company 12-inch combo package, per unit, official list price, June 2026.¹⁷³

Going from 140 to 180 grams adds only 13 to 23 cents a record at these quantities, so the heavier pressing is not where the money goes.¹⁷³ Color costs more: about $1.10 to $1.47 a record over 180 g black.¹⁷³ The real swing is quantity: the 100-copy record costs about three and a half times the 1,000-copy record.¹⁷³

Whether 180 grams sounds better is a separate, argued question; the card only shows it is cheap to choose.

What is in a combo price, and what costs extra?#

A combo package is a plant's bundled price for the whole object, not only the vinyl.¹⁷³ On the National Audio Company card it covers the lacquers (the lacquer-coated aluminum discs the grooves are first cut into),¹⁷⁵ two-step plating, up to 21 minutes 59 seconds per side, center labels, poly-lined dust sleeves and a full-color jacket with a spine, shrink-wrapped.¹⁷³ The extras are priced line by line, as of 2026:¹⁷³

A test pressing is a handful of early copies, made from the same material with the same grooves, that the artist approves before the full run goes through.¹⁷³¹⁷⁵ A tip-on jacket is the "old style" construction, with the print on a separate sheet of paper wrapped and glued over a thick corrugated core.¹⁷³¹⁷⁵

Other plants split the bill differently. Gotta Groove Records in Cleveland prices records and jackets separately on its 2024 card.¹⁷⁶ Its 180 gram "Step 1" price (records only) includes lacquers, plating, five test pressings, black ink on white paper labels and plain white inner sleeves:¹⁷⁶

Gotta Groove Records 2024 price card, official list price.¹⁷⁶

Divide it out and 300 black LPs with standard jackets come to about $9.90 a record, and 1,000 to about $5.41, before shipping and sleeves. That is our arithmetic from the card, not a figure the plant quotes.¹⁷⁶ The same card adds shrinkwrap at $0.35 a unit, extra test pressings at $5 each, asks a 50% deposit before work begins, and leaves shipping to the buyer, with a rough estimate of $200 minimum for 100 LPs and $350-600 for 1,000.¹⁷⁶ The two cards are from different years and bundle different things, so they are not a like-for-like comparison.

Why does 100 cost so much more per record than 1,000?#

Because a run of 100 and a run of 1,000 share the same expensive first steps. Somebody cuts lacquers, a plating shop grows metal parts from them, test pressings get made and checked, labels get printed. Those costs do not shrink with the order, so they divide over fewer records. Gotta Groove's card makes the lacquer cost visible: deduct $400 if you supply your own.¹⁷⁶

Plating comes in steps. Gotta Groove includes 2-step plating for orders up to 499 records and 3-step at 500 and up.¹⁷⁶ The third step adds a metal "father" that can make more "mothers", and mothers are what stampers (the metal negatives that press the grooves into the plastic) are made from.¹⁷⁵

What is the minimum order?#

Minimums are set plant by plant, and the price card is where to look. National Audio Company's combo packages start at 100 units, and its budget package goes down to 50 (2026).¹⁷³ Gotta Groove's 2024 180 gram card starts its price table at 100.¹⁷⁶ Below that, people usually turn to lathe cutting, a different process covered in how a record is cut.

How long does pressing take?#

It depends on the year. In 2018 plants could deliver in four to six weeks.¹⁷⁷ By mid-2022, GRAMMY.com reported, orders across the industry "routinely" took 9-12 months, and one new plant was quoting five to six months.¹⁷⁷ The same report quoted that plant's owner saying the price of PVC had increased three times since the plant opened in 2020.¹⁷⁷

Capacity grew to meet it. North America had about 15 plants in 2014; the Vinyl Record Manufacturers Association projected 43 in the US by summer 2022, plus nine in Canada and three in Mexico (an estimate, reported 2022).¹⁷⁷

By 2026, National Audio Company lists six to eight weeks as its standard turnaround, with paid rush tiers at four to five and three to four weeks.¹⁷³ That is one plant's official card, not an industry average.

The backlog was already easing in 2023: new plants had helped reduce it, Marketplace reported that May, and a plant owner said most supply-chain issues had eased.⁸⁶ Gotta Groove Records' planning page, undated when opened in 2026, puts most orders at about two to three months and advises planning for at least three.¹⁷⁸

Why does a new LP cost $30 or more?#

In dollars, records used to cost far less. Single-disc LP list prices in the 1970s and '80s ran from $5.98 to $8.98; an $8.98 record in 1982 works out to about $26.63 in 2022 dollars, per GRAMMY.com.¹⁷⁷ In 2022 a new major-artist record could cost $45; a record-store owner said buyers balked at $40, and the head of the VRMA said demand would hold as long as buyers would pay $30 for a black record (reported, 2022).¹⁷⁷

Measured against pay, the picture flips for recorded music overall. Matt Brennan of the University of Glasgow found that recorded music cost about 4.83% of an average US weekly salary in 1977, the vinyl peak, against about 1.22% in 2013 (academic research, reported 2019).¹⁷⁹

Who gets what from a $24 LP?#

In one label's published numbers, the artist and the label each take home about $3.19 from a $24 record sold in an independent shop.¹⁸⁰ Colemine Records shared the breakdown, reported by Digital Music News in 2024, and the report notes the figures are specific to that release:¹⁸⁰

One release, label's own figures, reported 2024.¹⁸⁰

The label and artist halves come from about $6.37 left over, split evenly.¹⁸⁰ A different contract, a bigger run or a direct sale at a show would change every line, so read it as one example, not a rule. The money in live shows works on different math; tickets.cold.fyi covers that side.

Why are there so many versions of the same album?#

A variant is the same album in a different color, cover or retailer-exclusive edition. Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl, released October 3, 2025, sold 1.2 million vinyl copies on its first day, beating the previous single-week vinyl record of 859,000 set by The Tortured Poets Department (Luminate, reported 2025).¹⁸¹ Its first-week report listed Target CDs, a Target vinyl, several vinyl "collections", a standard LP and a cassette.¹⁸¹ By March 2026 Luminate counted 27 physical editions.³¹

The same report counted 4.002 million equivalent album units (sales plus streams and track downloads) and 3,479,500 pure album sales (purchases only) in week one.¹⁸¹

Whether a run of editions rewards superfans or squeezes them is argued in both directions. Luminate data reported by Billboard put the average number of variants among Billboard 200 top-10 albums at 3.3 a week in 2019 and 8.9 a week in 2023.¹⁸² Industry executives quoted in that piece describe variants as a way for fans to show loyalty, support a favorite shop, or find out-of-print catalog again.¹⁸² On the other side, in a 2024 Northeastern University piece, music professor Andrew Mall called staggered preorders that make fans pay shipping several times "a wasteful aspect," while also arguing that records are mostly kept rather than thrown away.¹⁸³ This guide does not pick a side.

How big is vinyl now?#

In the US, the RIAA's 2025 year-end report put recorded-music revenue at a record $11.5 billion, with vinyl revenue passing $1 billion for the first time since 1983, up 9.3%, the 19th straight year of growth.³⁰ Vinyl was 75% of US physical revenue; CDs brought in $312 million, down nearly 8% (official, 2025).¹⁸⁴ In the first half of 2026 the RIAA reported about $6 billion in total revenue, physical up 25.9%, vinyl up 17.7%, and CDs up 58.6%.³²

The two main US counters give different unit totals:

The RIAA also counted 29.5 million CDs in 2025.³⁰ Luminate put Q4 2025 vinyl up 13.1% on Q4 2024.³¹

Who bought them: The Life of a Showgirl sold 1.6 million US vinyl copies in 2025, over 3% of all vinyl units; Sabrina Carpenter's Man's Best Friend sold 292,000 and Kendrick Lamar's GNX 279,000 (Luminate data, reported by Axios, 2026).¹⁸⁵ Roughly half of vinyl buyers were nonwhite, and about two in five records were sold at independent stores.¹⁸⁵

How big is vinyl outside the US?#

The UK bought about 7.6 million vinyl LPs in 2025, up 13.3% after 9.1% growth in 2024, its 18th straight year of growth, per the BPI; streaming was still 89.3% of album consumption.²⁹ The Life of a Showgirl topped UK vinyl too, with over 147,000 copies, the most for any release in a calendar year since the Official Charts Company launched in 1994, and 126,000 of them in its first week.²⁹¹⁸⁶ Germany's numbers, and where all these records are pressed, are in where records are made.

Track 10

Vinyl and the planet

The short version: This section is about what records are made of and what making them costs the environment. Most are pressed from PVC (polyvinyl chloride), a petroleum-based plastic, and one academic estimate, by Kyle Devine of the University of Oslo, finds the US recording industry used far less plastic in 2016 than at the vinyl peak of 1977, but produced more greenhouse gas, because storing and streaming digital files takes energy too. Makers are trying bio-based PVC, bioplastics and injection molding, and the gains they report are their own claims, not independent measurements.

What is a record made of, and how is it pressed?#

A conventional LP starts as a lump of PVC called a biscuit (or puck), placed between two stampers in a steam-heated press and squeezed flat (how pressing works).¹⁸⁷ On a manual press, Vermont Public reported in 2015, one cycle takes about 25 seconds.¹⁸⁷ Heat, then cooling, then the next one.

The plastic itself is a commodity with a price that moves. A plant owner told GRAMMY.com that the price of PVC had increased three times since his plant opened in 2020 (reported, 2022).¹⁷⁷ That feeds into the cost of every record, and is part of why some plants have looked at other materials.

Is vinyl worse for the planet than streaming?#

It depends what you count. The best-known numbers are an academic estimate for the US recording industry as a whole, not for any single record. Kyle Devine of the University of Oslo calculated the industry's plastic use and greenhouse gas emissions at four points, as reported by University of Glasgow news in 2019:¹⁷⁹

Academic estimate (Kyle Devine), reported 2019.¹⁷⁹

Plastic fell by more than 85% between 1977 and 2016, while estimated emissions rose, with the 2016 figure attributed to storing and transmitting digital files.¹⁷⁹

Two ways to read that. One: physical formats were never the whole footprint, and streaming is not weightless. Two: 2016 is one year in a format cycle that keeps moving, and a table of industry totals says nothing about what one LP costs the planet compared with one month of streaming. Both readings are fair to the data; neither is in the data.

The same Glasgow research found the price of recorded music fell from about 4.83% of an average US weekly salary in 1977 to about 1.22% in 2013, the economic half of the study, by Matt Brennan.¹⁷⁹

The industry's first carbon footprint report, published in June 2024 by the Vinyl Record Manufacturers Association and the Vinyl Alliance, put a record at about 1.15 kg CO2e on average, measured cradle to factory gate at one pressing plant over 2022-2023.¹⁸⁸ For 12-inch LPs it ranged from about 1.07 kg at 140 grams to about 1.28 kg at 200 grams, with PVC compound about half the total and factory energy about 30%.¹⁸⁸ The report calls the figure partial and leaves out distribution, use and disposal; it is the industry measuring itself, not an independent audit.¹⁸⁸

What is BioVinyl?#

BioVinyl is still PVC, made differently. optimal media in Germany¹⁸⁹ launched it with PlastChem in July 2023: the petroleum feedstock in the PVC is replaced with recycled used cooking oil or industrial waste gases.¹⁹⁰ That makes it bio-attributed (or bio-based) PVC, and the supply chain is certified under ISCC PLUS, an independent certification standard.¹⁹⁰

The claims, all the manufacturer's (2023): the records are "acoustically and optically identical" to conventional vinyl, come in black plus 11 colors, and have a "significantly reduced" CO2 footprint.¹⁹⁰ The text of the announcement gives no number for that reduction.¹⁹⁰ Because BioVinyl is chemically PVC, what changes is where the raw material comes from.

Can a record be made without PVC at all?#

Two companies say yes, by different routes.

Evolution Music, a UK company led by CEO Marc Carey, presses records from a bioplastic whose recipe includes sugars and starches, not PVC, CBS News reported in 2022.¹⁹¹ The company said the records would cost about the same as vinyl at full production.¹⁹¹ On sound, a producer quoted in the report estimated "Maybe 95%" of vinyl.¹⁹¹ That is one listener's estimate, reported in 2022, not a measurement.

Green Vinyl Records, in the Eindhoven region of the Netherlands, came out of the CD and DVD industry as a project of the Symcon Group.¹⁹² Instead of steam presses, it uses injection molding, forcing molten material into a mold, with its own non-PVC compounds, and prints directly on the disc instead of using paper labels.¹⁹² It claims 93% less energy than conventional steam pressing, by its own measurement (company claim, reported 2021).¹⁹²

Do these records sound as good?#

That is the contested part. optimal media says BioVinyl is acoustically identical.¹⁹⁰ The Evolution Music report put the bioplastic at "Maybe 95%," per one producer.¹⁹¹ No independent listening test or lab comparison was among the sources used here, so this guide reports the claims and leaves the verdict to your ears.

What about shipping, jackets and shrinkwrap?#

A record also travels: plant to distributor to shop to home, in board, paper and plastic film. The 2024 industry report counts packaging inside its 1.15 kg figure: print packaging (jackets, inserts, sleeves) was about 13% of the footprint and transport packaging about 3%.¹⁸⁸ A printed single jacket came to about 0.10-0.15 kg CO2e and a gatefold to 0.20-0.30 kg, while shrinkwrap was about 8 grams CO2e.¹⁸⁸ Freight sits outside the figure, and the report's own examples show why it matters: Prague to Melbourne adds about 0.1 kg a record by sea and about 3.46 kg by air, and the report calls international air freight "the elephant in the room."¹⁸⁸

What can a buyer or an artist do?#

With one industry estimate per record and no independent ones, the list is short. Artists pressing a run can ask a plant which materials and certifications it offers and what evidence sits behind any environmental claim. Buyers can weigh how often they will play a record against how many editions of it they are tempted to own. The pricing side of those choices is in what a record costs.

Track 11

Where records are made

The short version: This section is about where the world's records are pressed. The biggest presser sits in a small town near Prague: GZ Media, which pressed more than 55 million records in 2021 and runs plants on two continents. North America went from about 15 plants in 2014 to a projected 43 in the US alone by 2022, while Japan still had at least one fully functioning plant in 2010 and Brazil had a second plant on the way in 2016.

Where is the biggest pressing plant in the world?#

In Loděnice, a small town near Prague, where the state-run Gramofonové závody pressed its first record in 1951.⁸⁸ Today it is GZ Media, which Radio Prague International called the world's biggest vinyl producer in 2022.⁸⁸

In the mid-1990s the plant made about 300,000 records a year.⁸⁸ In 2021 it made more than 55 million, and by 2022 it was turning out almost 200,000 a day, according to the same report.⁸⁸ That is, in one day, two-thirds of what it once made in a year.

GZ Media had grown to eight plants by 2022, including three in North America (Burlington, Ontario; Memphis; Nashville) and one in France (reported, 2022).⁸⁸

How many plants are there in North America?#

Far more than a decade ago. North America had about 15 plants in 2014; the Vinyl Record Manufacturers Association projected 43 US plants by summer 2022, plus nine in Canada and three in Mexico.¹⁷⁷ Those are estimates reported by GRAMMY.com in 2022, made during a backlog when industry lead times "routinely" ran 9-12 months.¹⁷⁷

Some US plants publish their prices, which is how this guide can show what a run costs. National Audio Company in Springfield, Missouri,¹⁷⁴ posts a full 2026 price card;¹⁷³ Gotta Groove Records in Cleveland posted its 180 gram card in 2024.¹⁷⁶ Both are named here because their cards are public, not as a recommendation.

Mexico's plants include Vantiva's in Guadalajara, which the company describes, on an undated page opened in 2026, as a 273,000-square-foot facility with a future capacity of more than 17 million units a year on 40 presses.¹⁹³ That is the company's own figure; the other Mexican plants are not covered by the sources here.

Is there still a pressing plant in Japan?#

Yes, at least one, and for a stretch it was described as the only one in Asia. Toyo Kasei's Suehiro factory in Yokohama was called "the only active record pressing plant in Asia" in the late 2000s, per Time Out Tokyo.¹⁹⁴ In 2010 the Japan Times called Toyo Kasei the owner of "Japan's last fully functioning pressing plant."¹⁹⁵ It handles cutting, pressing and label printing in-house, Time Out reports, so a record can go from cut to labeled under one roof.¹⁹⁴

Those descriptions are from 2010 and the late 2000s, and more presses have come since. In June 2017 Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) said it would resume vinyl production for the first time since 1989, with a press installed at a factory in central Japan; the Japan Times then described Toyo Kasei as "believed to be Japan's only remaining record maker."¹⁹⁶ The same report cited the Recording Industry Association of Japan: 799,000 records made in Japan in 2016, up from 105,000 in 2010.¹⁹⁶ The label P-Vine finished its own plant, Vinyl Goes Around Pressing, in 2024, per Brutus magazine in 2025, which names Toyo Kasei and Sony as other Japanese pressing factories.¹⁹⁷ None of these sources gives a current national plant count.

How big is vinyl in the UK?#

The UK bought about 7.6 million vinyl LPs in 2025, up 13.3%, the 18th straight year of growth, per the BPI (official, 2025).²⁹ Its top vinyl album of the year, Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl, sold over 147,000 vinyl copies, the most for any release in a calendar year since the Official Charts Company launched in 1994.²⁹

On the making side, the UK is home to Evolution Music, which presses records from a sugar-and-starch bioplastic rather than PVC (reported, 2022).¹⁹¹ The sources here do not cover UK PVC plants.

Are records made in Germany?#

Germany is where optimal media¹⁸⁹ launched BioVinyl with PlastChem in July 2023, a PVC whose petroleum feedstock is replaced with recycled used cooking oil or industrial waste gases.¹⁹⁰ The details are in vinyl and the planet.

As a market, Germany leans physical more than most. Per the BVMI, the German industry body, 2025 retail turnover was EUR 2.42 billion, up 2.3%; physical formats were 14.2% of revenue; vinyl grew 2.8%; and CDs were still 44.2% of the physical market (official, 2026).¹⁹⁸ The release did not give a separate euro figure for vinyl.

Are records made in the Netherlands?#

Green Vinyl Records, in the Eindhoven region, came out of the CD and DVD world as a Symcon Group project and injection-molds records from its own non-PVC compounds, printing straight onto the disc instead of using paper labels.¹⁹² It claims 93% less energy than steam pressing, by its own measurement (reported, 2021).¹⁹²

Who presses records in Latin America?#

In 2016, Brazil's Polysom in Rio de Janeiro was described as Latin America's only pressing plant, at about 40,000 records a month.¹⁹⁹ That January, The Vinyl Factory reported a second Brazilian plant on the way: Vinyl Brazil, in São Paulo on the former Continental Records site, founded by Michel Nath and set to open at about 140,000 records a month.¹⁹⁹ That capacity was a projection at the time, not a confirmed output.¹⁹⁹

By 2022 the VRMA counted three plants in Mexico.¹⁷⁷

Argentina was set to get its first new pressing plant in 2016: Laser Disc, which The Vinyl Factory reported that February would start manufacturing at the end of March with two presses, aiming for 40,000 records a month once in full swing.²⁰⁰ That target was a plan at the time, not a confirmed output.²⁰⁰

Where are records pressed, country by country?#

Why does it matter where a record is pressed?#

For a buyer it mostly stays invisible; plant marks in the runout groove are covered in reading the runout. For an artist, location sets shipping costs and, in a crunch year like 2022, the queue you join. The pricing details are in What a record costs, and who gets paid.

Track 12

Test yourself, and where to go next

The short version: Questions drawn from every section, the full glossary, the best outside sources, and what this guide could not pin down. If you can source any of the open questions, the corrections desk wants to hear from you.