The vinyl shortage is about to get worse. Blame Adele.

For the last several months, vinyl records have spiked in price as supply chain shortages get worse. Everything has been disrupted: manufacture of the lacquer discs need to press records, raw polyvinyl chloride, pressing plants that are old and busted, new pressing equipment that’s on forever backorder, and some weird COVID fallout. It’s awful. And it’s about to get worse.

With Adele about to release her 30 album in a couple of weeks, her label, Sony, has an order for 500,000 vinyl editions (and given the chances of this being a record-breaking release, that’s probably nowhere near enough).

Getting those records into stores by November 19 is going to be a challenge. To free up production, Sony has moved the pressing of non-Adele stuff to its overseas plants. That, of course, will just delay their releases. Some acts report having to wait nine or more months for their order to come in.

Interesting point: To have these records ready, Adele would have had to turn over the finished songs to Sony at least six months ago. That there haven’t been any reports of leaks is incredible.

Also not helping are new vinyl releases from Ed Sheeran, Coldplay, Taylor Swift, and Elton John.

I found this quote from Variety interesting. This is from Carrie Colliton, one of the founders of Record Store Day.

There are things you don’t ever think about happening. Like, there is a shortage of pellets because Dallas was cold, and because lumber is expensive, more people are putting vinyl flooring in their houses. And it’s the same materials, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to sell vinyl pellets to the flooring companies. Those are all things nobody thinks about when they can’t get their record made or can’t pick up the record they preordered because the stores got allocated. Some of the reasons this is happening are just kind of mind-blowing.

Looks like it’ll be a rough Christmas for vinyl fans.