Making Vinyl Europe 2024

Introducing a new format of discourse at Making Vinyl: Just like the ball in a pinball machine, attendees will be given the opportunities to ‘bump’ into the several and manifold steps of the record making process. Tables set up in the PHIL will resemble the bumpers, with each dedicated to a section of the supply chain and its periphery. The ‘bumper’ tables will allow attendees to take a seat and discuss topics dedicated to the respective part of the industry or to learn about technology, techniques, challenges and details coming with it. Functioning as some kind of guided ‘meet the industry’ event the tables will grant the opportunity for much more in-depth talks and information flow than a discussion panel could and will help attendees to arrive at the conference with ease and sharing some content in a casual atmosphere. Results will spice up and guide the panel discussions happening on the following days and are to be expected to leave more than a scratch mark on the surface with allowing us to dig deeper into topics than ever before.

Tables are expected to focus on the following sections of our industry:
Cutting And Mastering
Raw materials
Innovations in periphery
Pressing Plants
Plating
Quality Assurance
Sustainability and social practices
Customer service
Vinyl Culture and consumer relationships
Hardware and HiFi

Each table will have one industry-related person not ultimately acting as speaker but to overlook discourse and discussion and take notes for a later synopsis and to feed possible results into the panels following the next two days. Attendees are invited to come prepared or unprepared and just follow the rather casual setting.

The enduring popularity of vinyl is about to enter its 17th year of growth with headlines making the news of it outselling other formats and becoming the leading physical format of music conservation (again). Disruptions in the supply chain and raw materials during the pandemic while demand grew significantly seem to have overcome. The shortage of manufacturing capacity that has hindered seamless and streamlined growth in the past years has ended. New technologies, new machinery and the demand for more eco-friendly solutions are driving vinyl in 2024 and added more complexity to sustaining this remarkable revival. Let’s listen to key figures in the industry giving insight to several aspects of the current state and setting the pace for discussions in the two following days of the Making Vinyl conference.

The significant growth in demand during the pandemic years has not only put back the format itself on the recognition map of society. It also has helped to ignite a global and culturally driven discussion about how we’d like to deal with preserving our cultural expressions. Vinyl has proven to be the file format of choice for a majority of music lovers and artists. This has created a diversification in demand as well. The result? New players have come to the marketplace promising a better understanding of individual needs, existing players are being forced to analyse demands much more meticulous and some players even origin directly from cultural background. This panel shall connect the preceeding discussion about the state of the industry the with the unfolding tendencies in our industry and how they are being tackled by gatekeepers to the manufacturing business, their portners and newer players which have gained traction in the past years.

With increased transport costs, shipping uncertainties and the social demand for local businesses to surge, vinyl is emerging into new territories. And by doing so it creates new markets and helps keeping local communities to survive, socially, economically and cultural. This discussion will represent such markets, some of them being created by the obstacles to engage or parttake in bigger markets, some of them coming from markets which are big and striving in other industries and you might have asked yourself when they will become part of a vinyl record supply chain as it seems logical for them

This shall be the panel for finding out how the consumer market drives decisions at sales point. Planning a vinyl release for years was a nice additional thing to have, allowing labels and artists to make a few extra bucks from a specialized community with sales at shows and from underground sources. With news about vinyl outselling CDs it has become a serious turnover creator and A&R decisions as well as artwork, packaging are based on vinyl. I’d like to hear from label representatives and their associated partners how they analyse demand, how they plan and adjust marketing and POS activities and what their vision is of the future with record stores still dying and the challenge to get accurate figures from the market.

This panel on first look seems to tackle similar topics and as the one before although it goes into the opposite direction. With label reps and managements being in the middle trying to align consumer and artist demands we see entirely different structures and ways how to deal with challenges on both sides of the same coin. Especially for manufacturers it very often is hard to understand in what challenges their clients are woven in with artist demanding their creative vision to be embedded in pressings. Most of these requirements are rooted in artwork and sound but other topics are starteing to play significant roles such as sustainability, uniqueness, equity and diversity content. We will hear from artist and manufacturing managers on the frontline of these discussions which can be mutual but often require very advanced mediation and communication skills with a backend of tremendous knowledge what is possible in manufacturing and what not.

With the manufacturing industry, its peripheral businesses, labels and media one might get the impression that as much as we are promoting an ancient format, our practices are also quite hidebound. Is this only an impression or does it bear some truth? Let’s find out in a discussion how much our industry feels challenged by changes and approaches in society. Let’s talk about social and sustainable practices targeting at topics such as B-Corp certificate, minium wages, offering above the norm working environments to become forerunners with new ways to do business. After all, we are in it for the music and music always was a driving force for behavioural change, addressing political issues and bring social mischief into public discourse.

This presentation will provide a view of the performance of the global recorded music industry in 2023, with figures taken from IFPI’s Global Music Report and from IFPI’s Global Charts. We will first take a look at the recorded music market as a whole, identifying which markets, formats and trends have driven revenue growth for industry. We’ll then look specifically at vinyl sales and discuss which markets have been driving the format’s growth. Finally, we’ll look at which artists have been driving vinyl’s continued growth, using IFPI’s Global Charts data.

With ongoing discussions about how to tackle greenwashing and identifying inappropriate claims in a very complex process the record manufacturing industry might reach a point of communicating less about ecological topics. Other industries already are facing such issues and a term describing it has come up already: Greenhushing – the tendency to rather not communicate than to become vulnerable for accusations. With forceful initiatives working on getting our industry to speak with one voice the set up is already in place to avoid such tendency. With ESG coming at businesses in the EU, ISCC to become the gold standard in proving sustainable practices there’s also a set of assets helping the industry to reach transparency. This session will give insight how industry players market their approaches. It will shed light on carbon balancing, governmental approaches coming into place and how industry bodies are working together.

With more capacities becoming available and clients gaining more freedom to pick a supplier, quality approaches will become more important. The panel should shed some light on how these issues are being sorted out in the different operations, tackling hard facts and in-depth aspects that used to be quite common in the past and are about to fade, like polishing/dehorning of stampers, mother ticking/repair, playing mother stampers from start to finish to identify issues. How do we preserve expertise and knowledge?

The general approach to sustainability in our industry has been a hot topic since years. It is now time to focus on several aspects of ecological and sustainable management. Material being the most obvious. With different collection schemes in place in different regions, recycling facilities existing in different efficiency and media rightfully investigating into f.e. waste export issues plastic has been moved into a corner of defense. Industry associations trying to change the narrative of ’plastic is bad’ and on the other side initiatives demanding to ban all plastics. In our daily business we very often are confronted with claims and statements weighing out different plastics, mostly PVC, PET and PE/PP. Recycling is being talked over from different perspectives but most of the times a clear vision of how recycling works, what collection schemes exist in different areas and how it actually is really done are rare. Most manufacturers have spent time and efforts in the past years to establish inhouse re-usage of excess materials to different extent and are actively engaging in marketing their efforts. This panel should shed light on two issues: Is plastic really that bad and where does the record manufacturing business sit in this industry? Which approaches promise to be successful and are truly ecological? And how can we help changing the narrative of plastic which requires to connect public discourse to the purpose of the product. In other words: a yoghurt pot is nothing like a vinyl record and how do we get this message across?

Once you’re a fan of something and even more when you consider yourself a cultural addict you want to talk about it. No scene would exist without opinion leaders and the people singing the praises for their love. This panel shall give insights in their daily work, the self exploration and the leadership they take on targeting issues, obstacles and the connecting strings that are spun between consumers, artists and manufacturers. This panel is designed for us to learn something about the dedication and passion of the people that are our buyers. The industry can hear some more about this to understand how public opinion is formed and that it’s never only numbers, charts and hard facts. This panel is designed to let us all leave the conference uplifted and energized for the culture that we are part of.