Kerry Doole, writing for FYI Music News, looks at a new vinyl pressing plant opening in Ontario. The plant will be the second largest in North America:

The company has been pressing vinyl in Prague since January, filling orders for Universal and Sony Canada plus some independent labels. “In phase one we can do 4.5 million units out of the Burlington plant plus 2 million from the Czech plant,” says McGhee. “We’ve already put phase two into motion and that is adding five new automated presses. That’ll put us over the 11 million mark, making us the second largest plant in North America. We’ve already bought a plant in the US based in the Midwest and there’ll be a west coast plant so we’ll have three in North America.”

I saw this question posed in our forums and found a really good answer from the mastering engineer Scott Hull:

It’s a simple question with a complex answer. Many websites publish charts explaining how much music fits on one side of a vinyl record. The main purpose of those guidelines is to make it easy for the cutting engineer to do his job. But do you want to have an average record or an extraordinary one? Ah, I thought so. You need to read on.

Christopher Heine, writing for AD Week, on how a chatbot is helping sell vinyl records. And it’s working.

Here’s how it works. People sign up to receive text messages and then get an album recommendation every day on their phone. Upon seeing such an offer, they can text back either “yes,” “like” or “dislike” to inform the chatbot of their musical preferences—and the reply affects what 12-inch slabs of wax are pitched their way in the future. If they answer “yes,” a link appears to let them buy the album in a couple of clicks. The Edit has sold some 50,000 records that way to tens of thousands of subscribers. What’s more, if a subscriber asks a “human question”—such as, “What is currently playing in the office?”—a customer service rep quickly steps in and provides a contextual response to further engage the patron. If the consumer seems ready to buy something but hasn’t pulled the trigger online, the chatbot—not the rep—sends that person a message to call a rep to complete the order.