Why the great vinyl shortage is over

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2025

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There have now been a few major vinyl booms. And unbeknownst to many, a small village in the Czech Republic has been responsible for manufacturing a large number of these albums. On today's show, how this dominant player became a problem for its competitors in the U.S.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:11.7	This is the indicator from Planet Money.
0:13.8	I'm Daryam Woods.
0:14.9	And I'm here today with music reporter Justin Barney from member station WNXP in Nashville.
0:20.5	Welcome, Justin.
0:21.3	Thanks for having me, Daryan.
0:22.5	What have you been listening to?
0:24.1	Darian, bim-bop, boom, boom, boom, boom, bam.
0:27.3	The kind of stuff I'm on you wouldn't understand.
0:29.3	I'm listening to Kendra's Lamar.
0:31.3	Of course you are.
0:32.4	I've been a big fan since Good Kid Mad City, course he's done a lot since then. Yeah, his new album, GNX, is flying off the shelves, selling close to 100,000 copies on vinyl
0:43.4	recently.
0:44.3	That is a lot of vinyl.
0:46.0	We've covered on the show before how there was this big vinyl shortage a few years ago.
0:51.9	It was a disaster and named the great vinyl shortage.
0:56.1	Well, good news today. The vinyl shortage is over.
1:00.1	Hooray!
1:01.1	And that is largely due because of one company based in a small village in the Czech Republic
1:06.4	that has come to dominate the vinyl manufacturing industry.
1:09.7	For this year, we have a realistic plan to press about 70 million records,
1:19.0	and we can do theoretically 50% more.
	...

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