Dublin Vinyl, Ireland's only record pressing plant, have announced the launch of The Record Hub, a new online record store designed to help music lovers new and old discover the joy of vinyl. Dublin Vinyl founder Hugh Scully writes for Culture about the joys of vinyl - and how Ireland is leading the charge.
For anyone with even just a passing interest in music, it has been difficult to ignore the impact that digital streaming has had on the music industry. The arrival of services like Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer have helped bring renewed energy to the business the world over, one that looked down and out just five years ago. By making unlimited quantities of almost every genre of music available in a legitimate way, to anyone with a mobile or PC, streaming platforms have changed the way in which music is discovered and consumed.
What is perhaps less well known is the fact that streaming has also resurrected the vinyl record business. Here was a 70-year old format, first launched by Columbia Records in 1948, that had dominated the musical revolutions of the '50's, 60’s and 70’s, but had been almost consigned to the scrapheap in the 1980’s, when CD’s arrived.
But for many music fans, CD’s and all of the various digital formats that followed never quite lived up to the tactile and aural experience of vinyl. In a recent book entitled Why Vinyl Matters, Lars Ulrich, the drummer and co-founder of Metallica, captured it well when he said that "Vinyl’s resurgence is, in part, the anti- MP3. I think people are looking for better sound quality, looking for a more physical relationship to music, and probably a more one-on-one relationship with music rather than it being just a background element."
From RTÉ Radio 1's The Business, Liam Geraghty reports on Record Store Day, and how all over the country shops have their masts flying high for vinyl.
The truth is that digital is feeding analogue, with 45 percent of vinyl sales being to consumers who first heard an album or EP via streaming. Today global vinyl sales are at their highest in 30 years and continue to grow year on year. By the end of this year, vinyl is set to outsell CDs for the first time since 1986, as a whole new generation of music fans discover the unique experience of physical records.
In Ireland’s case, total annual vinyl records sales were estimated to be worth just €500k here in 2014 – this was forecasted to reach €5 million by the end of 2019.
In the last five years, we have witnessed the re-emergence of vinyl as a physical format, in an era dominated by all things digital, seemingly against all odds. The major labels are reissuing classic back catalogue albums weekly as well as all the new releases, while many independent labels and self-publishing artists are seeing vinyl as a better opportunity to earn money from their fan bases.
But the resurgence of vinyl has come with its own challenges. Worldwide, there are roughly only 60 pressing plants, mostly operating at full capacity and many of them using outdated, inefficient equipment. And that’s where we, as an Irish startup, saw the opportunity about three years ago. We knew that there were lots of Irish artists with brilliant new music who needed to get it out there and earn money through vinyl - but were restricted from doing so by the international production bottleneck. At the same time, there were rights holders across the globe with libraries of great recordings which new fans wanted on vinyl but which the economics of smaller production runs made cost-prohibitive.
Huge thanks to @DamoDempsey for taking the time to sign copies of his stunning album 'Union' for some of the @lovesvinyl_com members. #lovesvinyl pic.twitter.com/zlGfGFyoYV
— Dublin Vinyl (@DublinVinyl) March 31, 2019
So in late 2017, my partner and I combined our own savings, a bank loan and the funds from a successful Employment and Investment Incentive Scheme (EIIS) campaign to create Ireland’s only vinyl record pressing plant, Dublin Vinyl, in Glasnevin on Dublin’s Northside. We bought and installed two brand new WarmTone™ presses from Viryl Technologies in Toronto. They were the first pressing machines to be developed in over 30 years and have made the vinyl production process faster, more efficient and with unrivalled quality and consistency in the records they produce.
It’s two years now since we pressed our first piece of Dublin Vinyl, a great U2 covers album, The Joshua Tree: New Roots, in conjunction with Universal Music Ireland and RTÉ 2FM, in aid of the Laura Lynn children’s charity. With a full-time staff of 10 people, our facility now has the capacity to produce 100,000 records per month.
Within a couple of months of opening, we experienced significant demand from vinyl fans to buy albums we pressed directly from the plant. In response to this, we expanded our label partnerships and began shipping directly to customers. Through launching our subscription club LovesVinyl we now had the ability to deliver directly to customers across Ireland, and opening a retail outlet was a logical next step.
And we're live :D Welcome to https://t.co/Acn7oy5EXb pic.twitter.com/fq2AMtFNLP
— The Record Hub (@therecordhub) December 9, 2019
With that, we have just launched TheRecordHub.com, an online vinyl-only store to supply music lovers with records not just pressed at Dublin Vinyl, but also from our favourite labels around the world.
The vinyl adventure continues and for us it is great to be part of the Irish music eco-system which brings quality music to fans at home and overseas.
TheRecordHub.com is now live and shipping worldwide - find out more here.
