As the hoopla surrounding last Saturday's Record Store Day dies down, there's some sad news to report that first bubbled up over on Matador Records' message board. It turns out that venerable indie label Matador Records lost their
vinyl masters when 33 1/3, the pressing plant they used, went bankrupt in 2006. It's a considerable setback that may affect some of your favorite albums in the Matador catalog.

Matador's general manager Patrick Amory confirmed that Matador "and many other labels lost lacquers, films and product as well" when the plant shut down. When I asked if anything had been recovered, Jesper Eklow, Matador's director of production, told me via email, "Nothing was recovered from 33 1/3 unfortunately. We lost everything. The doors were locked due to the chapter 11 bankruptcy."

What does "everything" entail? "Pretty much everything up to May 2006," Eklow writes.

This is a galling counterpoint to the numerous trend pieces noting vinyl's resurgence. Some industry observers have applauded the recent
vinyl upswing; after all vinyl sales last year were up 89% in 2008! What they conveniently forgot to tell you is that the 1.88M LPs sold accounted for just .43% of total album sales.

Contrary to those who see only blue skies for vinyl, Eklow shared that "it isn't any harder than it was [to produce vinyl records], it
just takes longer and costs more money." He adds that

as the economy [dwindles] it actually makes it easier for smaller labels to get things pressed (even if isn't any easier to sell what they manufacture) - the printers and pressing plants who used to exclusively cater to the big major labels now actually seem to embrace any customer regardless of size.

It turns out that the costs Eklow mentions -- time and money -- actually are important as Matador looks to bounce back. Eklow admits
that the notion of reproducing the lost titles for the vinyl market is a daunting one. To this point, Eklow writes,

"Some titles prove difficult to reissue unless we go back and basically remaster the albums from scratch - so, yes, it's a slow, expensive and quite an annoying process. There shouldn't really be any titles that we couldn't ever bring back but the question of course would be if it would be worth spending a lot of money on remastering and reprinting components we already should have on hand on certain titles... the money lost on the 33 1/3 adventure is quite substantial."

But the news isn't all bad, as Matador have recut some fan favorites by Pavement and Belle and Sebastian, which are now being reissued on
glorious 180 gram vinyl from RTI. .However, in this Matador message board post, Amory highlights some titles that will require considerable effort to recover including Yo La Tengo classics 'Painful' and 'And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out.'

Ultimately, the future of some of your favorite records will come down to a cost/benefit analysis. As the music industry looks for new sources of
revenue, it can be tough to justify the expense for a niche product like vinyl. Amory admits, "the problem is that if people aren't willing to pay close to the same amount, it is difficult for us to make them work economically. Our vinyl margins are razor-thin even at the prices we charge."

Message Edited by JT_Ramsay on 04-21-2009 04:37 PM