Jack White urges Warner, Sony and Universal to build own vinyl pressing plants

In a new one-minute video on YouTube, Jack White shares a message for major record labels Warner, Sony and Universal, urging them to help with the vinyl backlog by building their own vinyl pressing plants.

White says in the video, which was filmed at his own Third Man Pressing plant in Cass Corridor, Detroit, "It’s 2022 now and it’s no longer a fad. Vinyl records have exploded in the last decade, and the demand is incredibly high. A small punk band can’t get their record for eight to 10 months, and I now ask the major labels Warner Brothers, Universal and Sony, to finally build your own pressing plants again."

In the video description, White writes, "With industry-wide turnaround times for vinyl currently leaning towards the length of a human pregnancy, it's obvious, in a world so contingent on being of-the-moment and timed just right (a single, an album, a tour etc.), these timelines are the killers of momentum, soul, artistic expression, and far too often, livelihoods."

He continued, "There are people who will say - isn’t this good for Third Man? More demand than you can handle? To which I say, even though Third Man benefits in the short term, in the long term it ultimately hurts everyone involved in the vinyl ecosystem given the bottlenecks and delays. Something needs to be done."

"While the entirety of vinyl investment and framework in the past decade has originated from independent companies and investors, the bigger problems we now see require major solutions," White wrote. "In this spirit, I turn to our collegial big brothers in the music world, Sony, Universal, and Warner, and politely implore them to help alleviate this unfortunate backlog and start dedicating resources to build pressing plants themselves."

"To be clear, the issue is not big labels versus small labels, it's not independent versus mainstream, it's not even punk versus pop," White added. "The issue is, simply, we have ALL created an environment where the unprecedented demand for vinyl records cannot keep up with the rudimentary supply of them."

White concluded, "We’re all on the same team with the same goals. I truly believe that with a good faith investment in the infrastructure that got us here, we can continue on this upward trajectory and further inspire the worlds around us. Now is the time. Thank you."