Supply chain shortages and delivery delays – disrupting manufacture and distribution of products ranging from computer chips to cuddly toys – are now bogging down production of vinyl records, one of the biggest success stories of the recording industry in recent years.
“[G]lobal sales of vinyl are up by more than 700 percent in the past decade, says the IFPI [International Federation of the Phonographic Industry],” James Tapper reports for The Guardian. But a shortage of polyvinyl chloride, from which records are made, “after a storm in February halted Texan petrochemical plants, and a fire in 2020 at a lacquer plant in California [that] left only one factory in Japan making the master discs that records are cut from,” have led to delays of months for recordings already in the pipeline and postponements of new releases on vinyl:
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