Amazon Clogs Up Pressing Plants With Most Pointless Reissue Series Ever
FACT:
Reissues make up a fair chunk of the vinyl market, so it’s no surprise that Amazon wants a piece of the action. However, its attempt isn’t a Death Waltz-style endeavour with bespoke artwork and coloured vinyl, it’s a shameless cash-grab that will no doubt clog up more of the world’s already stretched pressing plants.(
*The five reissues up for pre-order are soundtracks for five of the most 80s movies to come out of the 1980s: Dirty Dancing, The Goonies, Top Gun, Footloose and Rocky IV. Great for a Spotify playlist, but probably not worth mining our planet’s precious resources for.
All well and good, and the world is full of unnecessary reissues, but when you realise that all five are available for under £10 on Discogs, the choices are somewhat more mystifying. All five will be available on the 9th October.
It’s been a strong week for wholly necessary soundtrack reissues though, with first Jackie Brown and now The Sopranos getting the wax treatment in the last few days.
Admittedly, that Jackie Brown soundtrack is pretty solid.
It may be a bit elitist to poop on these opposite-of-hip vinyl titles, but it’s hard to argue that there’s any demand for them. They were probably very cheap to license due to pre-existing soundtrack agreements, and Amazon sees this as a potential nostalgia-fueled win. If you have never pressed a record, or haven’t done so in at least a decade, then you may not understand why some are up in arms over this news. Clogged up plants and incredibly slow (or even unpredictable) production times make things very difficult for a by-the-seat-of-one’s-pants independent label. With a limited number of record presses available (previously) any major entry into the production line will have a decelerating impact.
Update: Errol Kolosine comments:
To be fair, this says they are “getting into the vinyl pressing business” – they aren’t, although one can certainly imagine Amazon doing so if it made sense.
Also, these do actually seem like pretty standard soundtrack reissues that are on the reputable Legacy imprint (Sony). Yes, they are only available via Amazon, but maybe that’s because they already surmised that their audience wants this stuff. A little investigation into the track listings of these records reveals pretty quickly who the demographic might be – both ironic and un-ironic.
