Why Are Vinyl Pressing Plants Closing Despite Record Vinyl Sales?

The State of Vinyl: Rising Sales, Falling Pressing Plants – What’s Going On?
I explore the surprising trend of vinyl pressing plants going out of business, even as vinyl record sales continue to rise. What’s causing this paradox? And what does it mean for collectors and the future of physical music formats?

Topics include:

The challenges facing vinyl pressing plants
Consumer expectations: Vinyl vs. CD
The state of the physical music market in 2025

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Phil Aston | Now Spinning Magazine

[freeman]

Vinyl has become stupid expensive, thank goodness for Compact Discs.

[twisted]

To me. The biggest part that keeps me from buying records is the price.

[GrahamBartholomew-hk]

Listening to a lot of classical on vinyl in the 70s and early 80s, I was nearly convinced that all the majors actually employed someone to add clicks and pops in all the quietest places. The quality was generally abyssmal, a fact only confirmed when I started to work at HMV in Oxford Street and noted all the returns. Not just scratches, but warping, wow and flutter, you name it. The arrival of CD was a revelation.

[stephensdygert]

CD, Blu-ray Audio/Video is the greatest format of listening to music, watching movies and concerts in the history of mankind.

[kawasakiaddiction]

Records I bought 5 years ago have more than doubled in price. Retail greed is killing sales. Whereas I used to buy a couple Albums a week, I now only buy occasionally, an Album that is well recorded and not warped. I'm back to buying 90% CDs. I have a Technics 1200G, a Sumiko Songbird MC, and a Chord Huei Phono stage, but the quality of most new Vinyl is simply not worth buying.

[terrydaktyllus]

I probably last listened to my own vinyl albums some time around the mid to late 1990's, by which time I'd replaced my vinyl collection with CD and got rid of my turntable.

I still have a "good enough" hi-fi system for CD playing and I already have a reasonable number of vinyl albums that I couldn't play inside CD box sets like the ELP, Nazareth and Wishbone Ash ones. A month or two before Christmas, I was talking about vinyl with my cousin and he said a friend of his was selling a Pro-Ject turntable at a good price, so I purchased it.

I must say that, as a result, my love of music has changed for the better. Having ripped a very large CD collection to my home server over the years (I've no interest in Spotify or online streaming which I think is the "commoditisation" of music and bad for the entire industry), I hadn't realised how I took even my own collection "for granted" and was spending so much time buying new stuff without listening to the existing stuff properly where I wasn't doing something else in the background.

I've discovered for myself that the great thing about vinyl is not that it's better or worse quality that CD or digital - but the fact that there is more of a "ceremony" when it comes to playing it. You probably have one turntable and therefore one place in your home where you can play it, and if you've paid out a reasonable amount of money for a nice hi-fi system, then there's probably a nice comfy chair to sit in and enjoy it too. So sticking on a vinyl album means you're probably taking time out of your day just to sit and enjoy it, with a coffee or a beer in hand.

I'm learning to listen to music again with the same focus and interest that I did in my early years, the "pops and clicks" really don't matter that much and when you're just being truly drawn into the music, they disappear anyway (okay, bad scratches excluded!)

On his channel recently, Rick Beato did a great video on how music has changed over the years, and how the music industry has got progressively worse over the years with the commoditisation of music and where AI is just going to "plasticise" music even more. He ended one of his videos appealing to music lovers to get into a mindset of just putting on an album 2 or 3 times a week and just sitting and listening to it - put your phone away, don't be jogging in the street or in the gym with it playing, just sit down and immerse yourself in it.

And he's absolutely right - and I even get Phil's "music and mental health connection" now, because there's such an absolute buzz from just enjoying a great piece of music. Vinyl and a turntable, to me, is just providing a focus and a space in which you can do that very easily.

[SafeAndSoundTXAudioExcursion]

Phil, thanks for the discussion as I predicted in my year end video that there would be record pressing plant closures or consolidations coming as the growth of capacity was more keyed to the peeks of volume growth expectations during the pandemic and those have leveled off, if not decreased. The good news may be that the better plants remain and those with quality inconsistencies will fall off. At least we can hope so. Cheers for 2025!

[SaintMartins]

1) In the business world when an industry is hot, bigger businesses tend to buy up all the smaller businesses & shut them down so they will have less competition.
2) Maybe sales have been going down for the past year & they're projecting the bubble will burst due to the high prices of albums which is a result of the rising cost of materials that just keep rising. (when it's considered a bad investment they jump ship)

[stephenswann]

I usually buy the cd and vinyl versions of most but I do send the vinyl’s back when there are sleeve imperfections or they are marked/warped.

An example of this was Paul Young’s album - No Parlez (40th Anniversary) vinyl. I got into this album/artist due to your videos Phil.

The vinyl arrived with the sleeve totally bashed/folded and the vinyl with tons of noise and crackles on it. When you’re paying £40 for it you expect it pristine. 2nd copy that arrived was perfect.

I worry that for most purchasing a vinyl is for show and some of the labels and companies pressing them know that and don’t care what they are sending out these days.

Also bought the SDE No Parlez CD set in the 7inch sleeve and what a thing of beauty that is on a side note.

Keep up the great work as always Phil. Love your content, unboxing’s and videos

[ИванИванов-улг]

A point re the silence before the music starts on a cd is exactly one of my very well remembered moments of the very first listenings to compact discs 🙂
And overall one more very good episode / discussion as usual 👍🏻

[colintitterington]

Bought quite a few records off Amazon at Christmas,
Several have split inner sleeves and marks on them it’s nearly always records pressed by GZ in the Czech Republic that are like this!,
Others on YouTube have also mentioned about GZ quality control issues!,
For example my brand new copy of Yes Singles the inner sleeve was split on all three corners!!!,
People have also mentioned problems with box sets which cost over £100 pressed by GZ as having issues!!!,
This is not good when you are spending a lot of money to get the vinyl versions!

[oddwareect]

I was born and raised in the u.s. in a Mexican household. I returned to vinyl a few years back. I've imported vinyl pressed in mexico during the the 70s thru the 80s and into the early 90s. The cutting engineers as well as the pressing plants did a good job back then. I think they reopened a plant and started producing again. Well, the engineers and employees are new so that quality is no longer there. Hopefully they improve.

[roncooper]

Very interesting as always. One quality point that no one ever seems to speak about is why some vinyl records scratch more easily than others? It seems that the type of material vinyl composite utilized plus maybe manufacturing thermal properties can influence this, but I have no idea of how to measure this (that is the material softness/harness Mohs Scale …its resistance to plastic deformation of the actual vinyl pressing). Some vinyl's even with just a few small particles on them will scratch easily when just simply inserted into those thin cardboard inners & where the particles are rolled across the grooves. You just have to be so gentle when inserting some discs. Of course placing the vinyl into a soft antistatic 50micron HDPE inner sleeve will help avoid this type of damage. Also certainly do not move/sweep the cleaning brush across the grooves so as to avoid the particles cutting across/into the grooves.

[MrSlipstreem]

I think others have said basically the same thing, but the biggest turn off for me was buying brand new vinyl in the early 80s that sometimes had chunks of paper label sticking out of the tracks. I was told at the time that this was due to old vinyl album recycling where the paper label hadn't been accurately stamped out of the centre. My local record store was fantastic at providing quibble-free replacements, but it always soured the experience for me. I got into CDs in 1986 and breathed a massive sigh of relief. I still love old vinyl and have around 250 albums from the 60s and 70s, many of which really do sound great still within the limitations of the medium, so I haven't turned my back on vinyl completely.

[rogertemple]

I really enjoy watching Now Spinning Magazine for your updates on Vinyl especially here in the new year thanks again Phil.🎶💿📀🎶

Superbe video. I am from the 50's and still have hundreds but buying a new LP in Argentina is almost impossible. There are almost no shops and the price is too expensive for Argentina. Cheers from Patagonia.

[davidrichardson]

I grew up with records in the 70s and 80s. Then just started back in 2024. What I have been finding is that some modern pressings are absolutely clean, no noise... And then some are horrible. Quality control seems hit and miss. But I don't send them back.

[dogfight]

Most of the streamers don't realize that a CD or Vinyl is a piece of art. The artist or the band has put a lot in this production despite a lot of others were involved in distribution and production. Only streaming is a part of art. Is anybody interested to look on 80% of the mona lisa? So buying is more meaningful to me.

[DavidEdwards-dt]

You raise an interesting point about the quality of modern vinyl over CDs, Phil. When I started buying music on vinyl in the late 70s I don’t think I ever got a bad or scratched record in hundreds of purchases. Like most of us I switched to CDs in the 80s and must have several hundreds, if not thousands. Again, I can’t recall ever getting a faulty one. Last year I decided to venture back into vinyl. Since Christmas I have received/bought 6 new vinyl albums to get the ball rolling. 2 of these had to be returned due to scratches and surface marks. Not an auspicious start! I feel like buying any new vinyl is a gamble nowadays.

[watdanuqta-mfms]

I live a mile away from one of the largest sellers of specialty vinyl and it's very easy for me to look over my purchase before ever leaving the dealer.