Vinyl Record Manufacturers Still Struggling to Keep Up With Demand

Manufacturers are struggling to keep pace with vinyl record demand forty years after CDs nearly killed off the record format.

Major record labels sold or dismantled their vinyl pressing machines en masse with the dawn of the compact disc era. Forty years later, dozens of record-pressing factories have been built to keep pace with the $1 billion demand for vinyl albums, which still isn’t enough.

The demand for vinyl records has been growing exponentially for over a decade. Mass merchandisers like Target carried bolstered selections of albums just in time to be met with the unexpected boom provided by the pandemic. While tours were cancelled, with people stuck at home, music enthusiasts started snapping up record albums faster than manufacturers could produce them.

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