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A Vinyl Story: Roy Matthews-Engineering and Production Director Vinyl Factory Group

When I left technical college the UK was at its peak as a centre of manufacturing and where I lived at the western edge of London there existed a number of large companies offering 5 year apprenticeships.
These included aircraft builders, Fairey Aviation (later Westland Helicopters), AEC who made heavy goods vehicles and buses, Nestle of coffee and chocolate fame and EMI. All of these offered engineering training schemes with time off to study for HNC and after careful thought I plumped for EMI.

As its full name implies, Electric and Musical Industries not only epitomised the fully integrated manufacturing organisation of the time it also had an intriguingly diverse range of products. Although still heavily involved with its foundation business of records and record players, studio equipment and magnetic tape, activities on the site included; radar equipment, military electronics, commercial electronics, radios and televisions, domestic heaters and, through its Morphy-Richards subsidiary, a wide range of domestic electrical items such as fridges and cookers.
What was so fascinating was the extent to which virtually everything was made in-house.
Metal pressings, castings, plastic mouldings, wooden cabinets, metal cabinets, all the necessary tooling and even nuts, bolts and screws were all produced on site.
The whole of this was run by some 14,000 people and was serviced by electricity from its own generating station and water from deep artesian wells.

After a five year tour of all these activities there was a choice to make and I had no difficulty in opting for the company’s Record Division where I began life as a design engineer. What a wonderful place the record factory turned out to be and how remarkable the series of operations that transfer musical sounds so accurately from a performance to as many thousands of discs as are wanted. What fascinating people worked there in those days when a job was for life and when quality was almost entirely a matter of personal care and attention. But things were ‘a-changing’. As a result of Elvis, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, The ‘Stones, The Beatles and the rest, music was increasing in popularity especially among the young and with the war now well past people were becoming better off and the latest chart-topping records were ranked high among the ‘must-haves’.

Production had to increase and costs had to be held so the order of the day was productivity and the solution of the day was automation and process control. One of the great joys of the work was the range of engineering disciplines involved in pressing records. Added to mechanical engineering were; electrical, electronic, audio, hydraulic, pneumatic, plastic, thermal, material handling and production technologies.
It was into this engineers’ dream world that I had unwittingly landed.

True to its culture EMI which had well over 20 factories worldwide, designed and manufactured almost all of its record making machinery at its Hayes factory and engineers from there provided equipment, know-how and service visits to the overseas operations. This job looked better by the day.

So, as part of a great team and beginning with the design of quite small elements of production machinery I learned the first and perhaps most important lesson. How to introduce a person to the first radical change in his or her job for 20 years in such a way that they don’t ensure its failure.
Driven by the bourgeoning pop culture of the great 60’s groups, things moved fast.
Whole processes had to be automated and controlled, equipment was designed developed tested and proven before being manufactured installed and commissioned.

Every operation in the production of a record was covered including the development of a vinyl copolymer specifically for record moulding, a programme undertaken jointly between EMI Records own laboratories and those of ICI Plastics.

I was fortunate to be involved in most aspects of this work and by being in the right place at the right time I became, in a series of steps, Factory Manager, Director of Operations and Director of International Operations. Whilst I was in the first of these roles the growth of EMI’s recorded music business outstripped the capacity of the existing factory and it was decided to move to a larger site. Doing this presented an opportunity to apply the latest technology in layout, services, machinery and employee conditions.
Preparing and equipping a site with 360,000 sq ft of space, 2,000 employees and a whole new range of equipment posed an exciting challenge and one that EMI’s engineers and management tackled with enthusiasm. The Project Management was an in-house affair and the final result was a factory with a capacity of 300,000 pressings per day.

This was also the day of the pre-recorded tape cassette a fast growing product, forecast at the time to eliminate vinyl within five years. In 1988 cassette production did reach 150,000 per day but was quickly superseded by the CD so that now, in 2006, cassettes are but a memory and to our amazement, and against all the odds, vinyl lives on in a small but strong and important sector of the market.

The largest record factory in Europe closed in 1993 but vinyl simply refused to die and a home had to be found for an ongoing pressing facility. The one place immediately available was the original site now largely vacated and here, in the place where in 1907 the first plant was established, EMI was the last major company to produce its own vinyl.

In line with most large enterprises EMI followed the current business fashion of outsourcing its non-core activities and as a result in 2001 the vinyl plant was acquired by Vinyl Factory Ltd* a group of companies with a strong commitment to the future of music on vinyl. The company also has pressing plants in Dagenham and in Sydney, Australia.

Now operating as Portalspace Limited and still on the historic site, the factory prides itself on quality and service and is pressing for some of the biggest and best known labels.

It is almost unbelievable that I find myself today making vinyl records on the very site where I began around half a century ago. What is also amazing is the way that shiny black vinyl disc spinning gently on a turntable and still producing music of unmatched quality retains its magic for me and, it would seem, for many others, in this high tech era.

* Vinyl Factory is based in the heart of Soho where it has a vinyl record shop, an internet shop, a specialist vinyl magazine and an event space.

Vinyl Love: Andy Cuddihy-Managing Director,Vinyl Factory Australia

The last ten years or more have been a very interesting time for the music industry. Sales and revenues were stable when vinyl ruled. Then we all got sold a bit of a dud with CD's by the tech heads and the equipment manufacturers. We were told that CD's would be everything that vinyl is not and to a degree they were right. Portable, durable, capable of storing more music. What we didn't see coming was the ability for people to burn their own copies on any home computer. Whilst this looks like a good thing on one hand what it really does is reduces they value of music to nothing. A CD burnt by a friend with the name of the artist written in marker pen has no personality and is essentially a storage device for data. I-pods and other Mp3 players are also just that... storage devices in pretty colours. When someone offers to load 10000 songs on to your i-pod it just doesn't really excite you that much , one: because you didnt have to go out and find them and two: you got them for free so you assign no value to them. Anyway, most of them are usually rubbish.

We have a situation now where CD sales are dropping and record labels are lookingfor news ways to get music out there. You hear about this label and that label going under and in dance music there has definitely been a contraction. The last 3 years have seen a few record stores and labels close.There are a few factors affecting this. There will always be a steady bunch of new recruits going out every weekend but what we see now is the general population have made dance music just part of their overall lifestyle and are choosing a few events like Field Day or Good Vibes as their "lifestyle choices" for dance parties. A few of the big names who play at these events have come out saying that vinyl is dead and they only play cd's or mp3's. You have to remember that these guys spend all their life travelling and lugging 400 records around the world just means you cant take your golf clubs or that extra surfboard on the plane. The ones who put on the best show still use vinyl. There is not a lot of joy seeing someone wave a cd over their head or sit there on their laptop clicking a mouse. On the other side of that, at a grass roots level, we are seeing a bit of a return to small parties and there is a real early nineties sort of feel to them. 100 people or more, underground and out there. I think that is where the really interesting stuff is going on and vinyl is definitely still strong at this level.

People who buy vinyl are collectors. Dj's are just one subset of this group. Humans like to collect things because its enjoyable. It gives a sense context and of history. There is a whole generation of music that has never been released on vinyl that the new breed of collector is just waiting to get.

Another thing we are seeing is the return of other genre to vinyl. The guitar driven indie rock sound is finding that they have stolen the jump on the major record companies by creating a demand for "must have" 7" singles. These small labels are putting out short runs of 500 to 2000 limited release selling at retail for less than $10 then turning up on ebay the next month for over $50. These labels are now putting so much attention and love into the art for their vinyl release's sleeves that they are in themselves become collectable. It just adds to the overall vinyl experience. Releasing music on vinyl demonstrates a real commitment to the music by the label. Not just putting it up on some website and waiting for the cash to roll in.

Good Vinyl record shops will always survive because they are doing more than just selling records. You want to go down there.These shops provide a meeting place , build sense of community and the actual act of buying a piece of vinyl, feeling the weight of it,checking out the sleeve ,is enjoyable. Sitting in your front room on the internet, buying vinyl online and having it turn up a week later whilst being very clever doesn't give you any of the things that make spending time in a record shop enjoyable. Phonica records in Soho London is a seriously cool record store with decks , listening booths and chill out areas with sofa's and cool things to read and are finding music buyers to treat the store as a the place to hang out ( they also have a killer online store!) The HMV's and Virgin megastores of this world are scrambling to catch up, rolling out their own version of the same.

What we are seeing in the UK is the move toward releases on vinyl and mp3 only and the real challenge is for labels to manage their releases to maximise sales. It is useful to look at how novels are sold. Your first release comes out in hardback with an attractive sleeve, printed on nice paper and it is something that you want to keep.It is collectable. It is also a premium product and is priced accordingly. Months later the paperback is released to fulfil the residual demand. Cheap to make ,cheap to buy. and you give it to you friend when you've finished with it. By doing it this way the book publishers get the maximum return, can make a profit and can afford to publish a wider range of books. Good for the reading public.

Record labels are now devising release schedules that follow the same idea. Putting out 1500 12" records, building a buzz, getting it out there and played in the clubs builds the demand for the download. Releasing the 12" and the mp3 simultaneously is not really helpful.

Like most people who are mad about music I can clearly remember buying my first record. I wont say what that record was as it would be a constant source of embarrassment but I will say that as an 11 year old I thought it was the coolest thing on the planet and I still to this day have it tucked away somewhere. There is something magical in being able to see the music on vinyl as valleys and peaks. I couldn't tell you what the first CD i bought was and Im sure it doesn't play any more .....if I still have it. CD's are one removed from the earthy, physical nature of vinyl, sort of hiding behind their mirrored surfaces.

Audiophile's will bang on for hours about vinyl being more faithful reproduction than CD's and there is that. But I think there is so much more to the whole history of a record, its owners, scratches, scuffs, fingerprints and dirt. Vinyl has a certain dilapidated charm. The same as why people holiday in Venice rather than some cookie cutter housing estate built by Meriton.

It's said that evidence of blind love is knowing the limitations of the object of your love and accepting them as charming.....be it vinyl or anything else. Humans are analogue beings. We are a rich tapestry of everthing that has got us to this point, not a combination of one's and zero's. Vinyl is about context, history ,music with a story. A vinyl record is fragile and does need to be looked after, respected if you like. So much of vinyl is "music as object". CD's just dont last , Mp3's are this untouchable,intangible entity that you cant hold in your hand and you can get for free. Makes it pretty hard to charge for.

Anyway.......... who will remember their first download?