Vinyl presser meets growing demand

Vinyl LP sales were up 14% this past year, and also the format has proven a 41% increase in 2011.The renascent vinyl LP is cresting right now, and true believer Chad Kassem is very easily surfing increasing tide.Vinyl, a business-mandated whitened elephant within the compact disk era, has become bouncing back as Compact disc sales plummet. LP sales were up 14% this year, and also the format increased an astounding 41% throughout the very first six several weeks of 2011, based on Nielsen SoundScan data.While last year's sales of two.8 million LPs weren't immense, rapid growth has taxed meager existing manufacturing facilities. With major U.S. pressing plants shuttered because the 1990's, less than 20 American companies presently press LPs.Captured Kassem filled the void by opening their own plant, Quality Record Pressings, in Salina, Kan."I have been swimming from the grain because the day the Compact disc is made,Inch the malapropism-prone Kassem states. "I reliable my ears, guy. It's all regulated with different passion for vinyl that began like a hobby."The Louisiana-born Kassem started selling and buying and selling LPs from his two-bed room Salina apartment in 1986. Within the last two-and-a-half decades, he's built a little vinyl-based empire of their own.He founded Acoustic Sounds, a catalog shopping and Web store of audiophile LPs and high-finish audio equipment a vinyl reissue label, Analogue Production a subsidiary label, Analogue Production Originals, which marketplaces Kassem's own blues tracks an LP learning facility (since offered) and Blue Paradise Galleries, a recording facility and gratifaction space constructed from the floor up within an old chapel.Pressing didn't have in the mix. "Lots of our clients stated, 'C'mon, dude, start your personal press, guy,'" Kassem states. "I understood it had been a great deal to bite off. But each time someone pointed out it, I'd have that much closer."Push found shove when growing vinyl sales along with a surge in LP production through the major labels forced Kassem's labels towards the rear from the queue at Record Technology Corporation. (RTI), the Camarillo, Calif.-based pressing plant that handled the majority of his business."When Warner Bros. and all sorts of these large dogs began calling, i was started towards the curb, kinda," Kassem states. "This is not on purpose, however they were serving individuals men -- these were carrying out a lot bigger amounts than us. Out of the blue it's taking me and everyone else 6 to 8 days to obtain our records. That got me thinking."Kassem started purchasing up presses 2 yrs ago. "I did not have immediate plans," he states. "There is a contact on offer relating to this guy in England selling some (presses). And So I approached him and that i bought Them. I sitting on Them for any year I purchased (Hollywood-based audiophile vinyl label) Classic Records, and that i bought their presses. Now I have got each one of these presses."In spring, Quality Record Pressings finally opened up its 21,000-square-feet plant, a part of a 3-building, 70,000-square-feet facility which houses offices and record warehouses. QRP's first job was Analogue Production's 180-gram vinyl reissue of Cat Stevens' 1971 album "Tea for that Tillerman" QRP-pressed Analogue albums by Muddy Waters, Freddy King and Ben Webster follows this season.Other labels came calling: Kassem notes, "We are already pressing Jimi Hendrix's 'In the West' for The new sony along with a Randy Travis album for Warner Bros. and 100 Blue Note albums for EMI Japan."He needs to possess 10 presses operating at full blast eight to 10 hrs each day by year's finish, making 1,000-2,000 LPs each day.Nevertheless, he states the endeavor wasn't spurred by economic chance but instead with a simple belief within the format he's always admired."It is not like I had been doing that because I am searching to create lots of money in pressing other peoples' records, because this revival of vinyl. That isn't how I am searching in internet marketing. I would like probably the most badass records in the world for my very own label." Contact the range newsroom at news@variety.com