Ongoing History Daily: The vinyl shortage, part 1

If you’ve been following along with the market for vinyl records, you’ll know there’s a big supply chain problem, resulting in delayed orders, increased prices, and all sorts of inventory shortages.

One of the issues is that much of the business still uses pressing machinery that was built in the 70s or even earlier. Keeping those old machines up and running is very expensive and there’s a shortage of parts. Okay, so why not upgrade to new gear? They are, but they cost at least $300,000 apiece and they’re a giant backlog of orders, also caused by supply chain shortages.

And there are other issues, too. A pressing plant in Texas lost a whole week’s worth of work because the plant had become invested with raccoons.

The last post was about the dog we year in Jane’s Addiction “Been Caught Stealing.”