With a new plant opening doors on the city's north side, Nashville could soon be known for a new nickname: Vinyl City U.S.A., according to The Tennessean.
Albums began spinning last month out of Nashville Record Pressing, a $13 million operation from GZ Media, a Czech Republic company with existing North American operations in Toronto and Memphis. The company aims to bring 36 new pressing machines online — a needed capacity addition in an industry fighting to meet rocketing demand.
When teaming Nashville Record Pressing with a landmark expansion at longstanding plant United Pressing and independent operation Vinyl Lab, it could be argued that no city in U.S. produces more vinyl albums than Nashville.
Add in a $30 million expansion planned for GZ-owned Memphis Record Pressing and Tennessee could be considered the vinyl capital of North America, said Drake Coker, CEO of Nashville Record Pressing.
He later added: "There's going to be a tremendous amount of capacity here."
The new plant began pressing records on six new machines by late June. Nashville Record Pressing plans to add 12 to 24 machines — depending on international shipping and installation logistics — by the end of the month.
When the plant hits 36 machines, Nashville Record Pressing should produce about 96,000 albums a day out of the 100,000-square-foot space.
What does a new plant mean for record collectors? More albums and — hopefully — shorter wait times for a release to hit shelves.
Last year, U.S. sales reached nearly 42 million units, according to Luminate, a media consumption company formerly known as MRC-Nielsen-SoundScan. Vinyl accounted for more than half of all physical music sales in 2021, growing dramatically from 3.9 million records sold a decade ago.
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