In February, Sony had our eyebrows raised with the news that they had installed a record cutting lathe in their state-of-the-art studio outside Tokyo. It seemed like something they were keeping under wraps, which was strange considering how popular the vinyl format has become in 2017.
Today their formal announcement on the matter reached our ears. Their lathe will form part of a plan to throw their hefty weight into the vinyl industry, and to begin making their own records for the first time since 1989.
Throwing their weight in: as vinyl continues to dominate the physical formats, Sony has announced plans to finally jump on the bus.
The Tokyo studio where the lathe was installed will serve as the hub of their first wave of pressings, to begin March 2018. Seems like they have been gathering the equipment to become an entirely self-sufficient plant, rather than outsourcing the work to third-party factories as they have been doing for decades.
Applications are still open to Happy Mag’s very own vinyl competition Needle in the Hay, giving one artist the chance to have their album or EP pressed on vinyl. Enter here.
READ: What does it take to run the only vinyl plant in Australia? We chat to Paul Rigby of Zenith Records
Via Salon.
