“They want to keep the quality and service the whole industry,” Astor says. (Discarding some vinyl is a factor in quality control.) Furnace has been pressing copies of the band’s forthcoming album, 72 Seasons, since January.įurnace will not change much, Astor says, and plans call for the plant to keep working on other projects, as well as ones for Metallica. “We’d rather throw out some bad records than make as many as we can,” says Furnace COO Ali Miller. (As it happens, the first record Furnace worked on was the 2008 re-release of “the black album” as an audiophile edition.) Furnace, like Pallas, has a reputation for doing quality work at a time when some pressing plants have sacrificed quality for output. “We looked at them as more of a partner than a client,” says Furnace CEO Eric Astor. Eventually, as Furnace started pressing more records itself, they started pressing more for Metallica as well.įour Takeaways From RIAA’s 2022 Year-End Report: Paid Subscription Growth, Ad-Supported Dip & Vinyl… “I didn’t want our release plans to be dictated by manufacturing timelines.”Īt that point, “any vinyl shortages ceased to be,” Reiter says. “We never want to be out of stock on Metallica vinyl,” Weil says. A couple of years after the band got back the rights to its older albums, its management team realized that it needed a steady supply of vinyl that could live up to the bandmembers’ high standards.įurnace, which then also brokered vinyl pressing capacity at other plants, arranged a deal with Pallas, a German pressing plant with a reputation for high-quality work, and Q Prime was able to arrange to essentially lease its own presses there. “The catalog is always being pressed,” says Brant Weil, head of marketing at Q Prime, the band’s management company. Its relationship with furnace, which goes back almost a decade, has been part of that. in 2022 Was by Taylor SwiftĪlthough the band hasn’t released a new album since 2016 – a new album, 72 Seasons, comes out April 14 – the band has kept its catalog in stores while also releasing box sets. “The fans enjoy owning the physical product.”ġ of Every 25 Vinyl Albums Sold in U.S. “Metallica over-indexes dramatically with physical product,” says Marc Reiter, who helps run Blackened Recordings, the band’s label. accounts for roughly half of the group’s vinyl sales worldwide. (In 2022, the group’s most popular release was Master of Puppets, which sold 91,000, followed by “the black album” and Ride the Lightning.) In most years, the U.S. That’s especially remarkable for a brand that hasn’t released a new album since 2016. In 20, Metallica rated among the best-selling acts on vinyl in the U.S., according to Luminate – No. Those fans are already buying a good deal of vinyl. James Hetfield, the singer-guitarist who co-founded the band with Ulrich, said that the plant had been “great to Metallica and more importantly to our fans,” and that the purchase would ensure that potential vinyl buyers “will have continued access to high quality records in the future.” “We couldn’t be more happy to take our partnership with Furnace,” and its founders “to the next level,” said Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich in a statement. The band sells roughly half of these in the U.S. (Its most recent “black album” box set includes a double LP of the album, three live LPs, 14 CDs and 6 DVDs.) Last year, the group pressed more than 902,500 pieces of vinyl for more than 620,000 packages, according to management, not all of which are made at Furnace. At a time of supply-chain issues and manufacturing delays, the plant helped the group keep most of its albums available, plus a growing number of ambitious box sets. Now, a decade after getting the rights back to their biggest albums, the band is buying Furnace Record Pressing, a plant in Alexandria, Va., to serve its vinyl business, which has grown by keeping catalog albums in print and releasing ambitious box sets aimed at its legions of hardcore fans.įor a decade, Furnace has pressed records for the band, which has a reputation for releasing high-quality vinyl. Metallica has always had a strong independent streak for a band that spent its formative years on a major label.
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