If this factory falls, the entire vinyl revival could vanish overnight.
Vinyl records have made a massive comeback in the digital age. They’ve charmed new listeners and stayed essential for audiophiles who crave a real, physical connection to their music.
But behind the warm crackle of a spinning record hides a fragile truth: the global vinyl supply chain is hanging by a thread.
How Lacquer Discs Built (And Nearly Broke) the Vinyl Industry
Before a record can spin under a stylus, it starts as a delicate lacquer disc.
If that first lacquer isn’t flawless, every pressed record will carry its imperfections.
That’s why mastering engineers swear by lacquers. Nothing else captures the fine details and warmth that make vinyl so timeless.
But when digital media took over and vinyl sales tanked in the late 20th century, the writing was on the wall. One by one, those suppliers shut down. By the late 1990s, just two players were left: Apollo Masters in California and Public Record Co. in Japan.
Apollo was doing most of the heavy lifting, supplying between 70% and 85% of the world’s lacquer discs, with MDC handling the rest.
It wasn’t exactly a rock-solid foundation — more like a shaky balance — but it kept vinyl alive.
Until disaster struck.
The 2020 Apollo Masters Fire: A Turning Point
On February 6, 2020, a fire tore through Apollo Masters’ factory in California, leveling it within hours. In one night, the world lost its primary source of lacquer discs — and decades of hard-earned expertise.
Without Apollo, the entire burden shifted to Public Record Co., a much smaller company that had only handled a slice of the market before.
Shortages started immediately. MDC, already running at full tilt, had to start rationing its discs. Longtime customers got priority, while new orders were shut out. Pressing plants faced growing delays. Labels scrambled to reshuffle release schedules.
Ironically, some mastering engineers found MDC’s lacquers more reliable than Apollo’s later batches. Still, depending entirely on one factory thousands of miles away made the whole industry nervous — and rightly so.
Why Replacing Public Record Co. Is So Hard — and How the Industry Is Managing
Making lacquer discs isn’t just technically tricky — it’s dangerous.
Each one starts with a thin aluminum platter coated in nitrocellulose lacquer, a material so volatile early movie reels used to catch fire with barely a spark.
Building a new plant today is a nightmare of environmental regulations, costs, and red tape.
But even if you cleared those hurdles, you’d still be missing the secret knowledge; the recipes and techniques that only existed in the heads of Apollo’s lost engineers. Starting over would take millions of dollars, years of R&D, and a brutal learning curve.
As of 2025, no one has succeeded. Vinyl’s survival still leans heavily on that one facility in Japan.
Faced with scarcity, mastering studios and pressing plants have gotten creative:
- They’re rationing lacquer discs.
- Cutting fewer test pressings.
- Reusing metal stampers whenever possible.
- Treating every blank like a bar of gold.
Some studios have pivoted to Direct Metal Mastering (DMM), cutting music straight into polished copper discs instead of lacquer.
Even so, scaling up DMM isn’t easy. True DMM lathes — like the Neumann VMS-82 — are rare, mostly tucked away in Europe.
A few American studios have retrofitted their equipment for copper cutting, but it’s not a perfect replacement.
Meanwhile, stockpiling and stretching lacquer supplies has bought some time. But everyone knows these are Band-Aid fixes, not real solutions.
Searching for Alternatives While Walking a Tightrope
In the scramble for answers after the Apollo fire, the vinyl world explored a range of high-tech alternatives.
One of the biggest hopes was HD Vinyl — a system using lasers to engrave ceramic stampers straight from digital files. In theory, it would mean cleaner grooves, longer playtimes, and a safer, greener production process.
But reality had other plans.
Other experiments — like 3D-printed or laser-cut records — have also caught some attention.
Sure, you can drop a needle and hear something. But serious listeners won’t be impressed: noisy playback, limited frequency range, and more novelty than real fidelity. For now, these approaches are better suited to art galleries than actual record collections.
Meanwhile, the future of vinyl hangs by a much thinner thread.
Vinyl sales are still rising, and the industry’s resilience has been nothing short of remarkable. But the risks haven’t gone away.
One fire, one supply chain breakdown, one stroke of bad luck — and global vinyl production could come to a halt.
New lacquer production projects are underway, but they’re slow, costly, and filled with uncertainty. Until a second supplier steps up, every album you spin remains a quiet miracle — proof that vinyl’s survival is built on ingenuity, stubbornness, and more than a little luck.