Jack White Urges Major Labels To Build Their Own Vinyl Pressing Plants | News

Jack White Urges Major Labels To Build Their Own Vinyl Pressing Plants | News

Jack White has posted a video message urging major labels to build their own vinyl pressing plants.

The new message follows 12 months of severe delays in the vinyl pressing industry, with a lack of available space at plants pushing schedules further and further back.

Jack White knows a thing or two about vinyl – his label Third Man Records have their own plant, and he wants the major label system to follow suit.

The new video is aimed at Warner, Sony, and Universal, and invites them to help “alleviate this unfortunate backlog”.

Speaking from his own Third Man Pressing plant in Cass Corridor, Detroit, Jack White says: “It’s 2022 now and it’s no longer a fad. Vinyl records have exploded in the last decade, and the demand is incredibly high. A small punk band can’t get their record for eight to 10 months, and I now ask the major labels Warner Brothers, Universal and Sony, to finally build your own pressing plants again.”

He continues: “With industry-wide turnaround times for vinyl currently leaning towards the length of a human pregnancy, it’s obvious, in a world so contingent on being of-the-moment and timed just right (a single, an album, a tour etc.), these timelines are the killers of momentum, soul, artistic expression, and far too often, livelihoods.”

The songwriter insists that the independent communities and the major labels are all part of the same eco-system.

He explains: “There are people who will say – isn’t this good for Third Man? More demand than you can handle? To which I say, even though Third Man benefits in the short term, in the long term it ultimately hurts everyone involved in the vinyl ecosystem given the bottlenecks and delays. Something needs to be done.”

“While the entirety of vinyl investment and framework in the past decade has originated from independent companies and investors, the bigger problems we now see require major solutions. “In this spirit, I turn to our collegial big brothers in the music world, Sony, Universal, and Warner, and politely implore them to help alleviate this unfortunate backlog and start dedicating resources to build pressing plants themselves.”

He adds: “To be clear, the issue is not big labels versus small labels, it’s not independent versus mainstream, it’s not even punk versus pop. The issue is, simply, we have ALL created an environment where the unprecedented demand for vinyl records cannot keep up with the rudimentary supply of them.”

Jack White finishes: “We’re all on the same team with the same goals. I truly believe that with a good faith investment in the infrastructure that got us here, we can continue on this upward trajectory and further inspire the worlds around us. Now is the time. Thank you.”

Watch the video below.

Ever industrious, Jack White intends to release two studio albums in 2022: ‘Fear Of The Dawn’ arrives on April 8th, while ‘Entering Heaven Alive’ will follow on July 22nd.

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