Given the temporal proximity to Record Store Day, I didn’t want to keep Microforum Service Group’s Noble Musa long. But that didn’t stop him from giving me a detailed, enthusiastic tour of the company’s 60,000-square-foot, full-service vinyl and CD pressing plant. And it’s most definitely full-service, encompassing printing and even album cover design. But cognizant of the season, I kept our interview to 11 questions, with the illuminating results below. Enjoy Goldmine’s peek into this fascinating side of the music biz!
What is the importance of Record Store Day, and how do you guys participate?
Well, Record Store Day is really a celebration of a culture. We want to support the independent record stores. They’re really the lifeline of this whole culture. And, you know, crate digging is an experience in itself, right? So, when we were approached to become a sponsor in 2017, we jumped at the chance, and we’re like, ‘Yes, we’re all behind this.’ We’re obviously the Record Store Day Canada sponsor as a manufacturer, so we’re the manufacturing sponsor, and being in that position puts us in a great opportunity to help Record Store Day gain traction and a larger audience.
Anything we can do to support them, we do, including things like exclusive videos of the titles that we manufacture at our plant. So this really separates us. And these videos, they use them for marketing and to attract people to the socials. And another big way is just hitting the deadlines. One of the big problems in 2017, when we got involved with Record Store Day, was that they were having trouble getting product guaranteed to be in the stores in time. So, actually, our plant—and this comes from being in the software world and the publisher world doing floppy discs and CD-ROMS for years before we got into vinyl — our plant was built from the ground up to hit deadlines. So, we hit a crazy percentage of deadlines, like over 99% of the deadlines we have.
And how many titles would you make, and how many copies of each title roughly happen?
Yeah, that varies from year to year, but it’s usually five or six titles done here on average every year, sometimes a little more, sometimes less. You gotta remember, they’re limited edition, usually. So they try not to do too many, and then they’re done once, and that’s it. And usually there’s something special about the record too. The runs can be as low as 500 to a couple of thousand. It’s very rare to get more than that. You really want it to be special, right? So, the philosophy there is special runs and, for example, only going into Canadian record stores. Some titles are actually approved for worldwide. Sometimes they’re exclusive. Like, for example, the Honeymoon Suite album that we manufactured (a 12-track album called The Singles), I believe that was actually 2,000 units, so a nice-sized run, and that was for Canada only.
How is the vinyl hobby managing to attract the next generation of collectors?
I think it’s discovery first. I think it’s important that we mention that younger fans do consume music on streaming. That’s their primary method of discovering music. But then they’re looking. Once they discover an artist that they like, then they like to celebrate that artist by maybe picking up a vinyl [record] or a T-shirt or some other paraphernalia. But that initial discovery, I think, streaming is very important. And we’ve seen that it correlates. But streaming is almost like renting; you don’t own anything. When you want to own a piece of something that you love, that’s where we’re seeing more younger people turn to vinyl.
Talk about rarity. There’s this idea forming out there, actually in both CDs and LPs, that if you see it, grab it now, because the bar for having something re-pressed is pretty high. True?
The answer to that is complicated because vinyl is a good profit center for artists. You know, they’re not really making a lot of money from the streaming and from the downloads and stuff. So really, it’s an important model. I think that they want to do reorders as often as they can. It’s their art form, right? But we’re seeing more limited runs. We’re seeing more “bespoke,” as we call it, meaning nice custom works. So, they may do a once-in-a-lifetime splatter or special color that obviously goes with the artwork or the theme of the music. They’ll do limited-edition high-end packaging or luxury packaging, or a gold foil or an emboss. And we have invested heavily in that side of things. It’s whatever effect that they want, whatever their vision is, and that becomes their limited-edition release that’s only done once, and that’s it. But you don’t want to stop making revenue from the product. A lot of artists right now, this is their bread and butter, and a lot of fans know this and want to support their artists. So reorders are common, which is great. But we’re also seeing a lot more limited runs, plus a lot more effects.
What’s a favorite sort of outlandish thing that you’ve done?
We love the highly customized products that make you stand out. We had one title that won a Latin Grammy for packaging, and we’re very, very proud of that. It was for Celia Cruz, a Cuban artist. And the whole premise there was to use some of the fabric from her dresses that she wore when she performed, these beautiful sequined dresses, and use those to create a unique piece so that the fan would have an actual piece of the artist with them. So we actually imposed it into the actual cover and made it into the artwork of her hair. It’s just an unbelievable piece. It’s a hard box, highly collectible, very limited run of 200 units. Those are the kind of projects that we love to do, because they’re unique and they’re creative.
How about going way back? What got you started with these sorts of more elaborate packages?
Our first opportunity to do a bespoke came in 2017 when we were just starting out in vinyl, and that was for a blues artist called Johnny Nicholas, an album called Too Many Bad Habits. And the vision that the designer and their team had was very specific. They wanted it to look like an old Ampex tape box, and very rustic inside. And we had to manually stick on post-it notes and tape things on it. It was such a beautiful piece. In the end, it felt like you were going through something Johnny Nicholas made for you. That’s what the artist and the designer wanted, and we made it come to life. So that was our first foray into super-customized bespoke. And that experience… we just loved it, and we’ve since invested heavily in that whole area. We believe that it’ll continue to grow, because that collectability, the customizability, that bringing of a vision to life, that connection with the artist … you just can’t get it any other way than marrying packaging with really good vinyl and putting the two things together.
Is there anything a band has asked you to do that you just couldn’t do or didn’t want to do?
We really try to do everything, but there are some times when you’ll get a request that you worry about. We’re now doing shaped records too. It’s a process called CNC, where you can actually cut a record into a shape. But then you get asked, you know, can I do a gear shape with sharp edges? Yeah, technically we can, but I don’t know if I would want to sell that. I wouldn’t want the responsibility of having someone get cut with sharp edges or have their expensive styluses broken or shred the packaging.
How about blood?! Has anybody wanted their blood in the ink?
We’ve gotten requests not for not blood, but to make it look like blood. Oh yeah, that’s another one. And we have been doing some R&D on those types of things. We’re just not 100% confident that in five or 10 years, those won’t leak and cause issues. So we’ve kind of stayed away from doing liquids inside the records. We’re a little worried. I mean, we’re cautious too, so we’ll try and guide the customer into things that we think maybe are better for their interest than to do something where it’s just unique for the sake of being unique. As a manufacturer, it’s our responsibility to say, yes, we can do this. We’ve tried it out. The liquid kind of stays in there, but we don’t know what happens if the sun hits it at the right time of day and it expands and ruins someone’s collection because it leaked out.
Are you seeing an EP trend at all?
Oh, we’re doing EPs, but I wouldn’t say it’s a lot more. We’ve been getting requests for some unique stuff on the marketing side, like the mini three-inch vinyl. So, we’re doing some cool stuff. It’s just a great marketing piece. The 12-inch EP, yeah, we do quite a bit of them, and 10-inch records is also another part of our offering. We’re seeing those more now. The three-inch records are playable only if your stylus can go that far in, because a lot of them stop where the labels are. And we’re actually now manufacturing the three-inch records with the standard hole. This is just very recently. We just got the tooling for three-inch, four-inch and five-inch as well. You might want to do a 12-inch with a three-inch bundle. A lot of times we do a 12-inch or a double LP with a CD in the same package. So, we’re getting requests for everything. And just having all these services under one roof makes it easier for us to logistically put something like that together.
What goes on in the quality control room?
We have quite a few employees in the quality control side of our business that are DJs, and they’re just … you watch them, and you see that they know how to handle a record. And they’re fast. They know how to drop it to a certain spot to check it. It’s just amazing to watch real pros, right? So they play it through at least once on a new set of stampers. And we typically record it for our files, not for the customer. But if we see something that is questionable, we’ll ask, you know, ‘We heard a noise; is it in the recording?’ So sometimes we’ll share a piece of the recording with the customer if we flag it as something that needs to be investigated.
But this listening to the records in its entirety is in real time. There’s no fast way to do it. So if it’s a 20-minute per side record, you’re putting in 40 minutes to listen to it. So quality control is very hands-on. And then there’s the recording of it for our files, and then it’s spot-checking during the run. There are certain areas where you just have to make sure that the grooves are still intact, and they don’t need to replace the stamper. Because, typically, a set of stampers will last anywhere between 500 records and maybe 1000, 1500 or 2000, before they start to wear. So you have to change out the stampers and put new ones in and then continue pressing.
What they’re looking for are anomalies in any of the processes before, so like the plating department, if anything happened chemically while it’s in the bath, where maybe it didn’t take properly. So we try to catch those in the QC process. And then obviously loud pops or dents. I mean, these stampers are moving and changing hands from one department to another. We’re fortunate that we’re on-site so we don’t have shipping to worry about. We didn’t get our plating in-house until 2018. But before we had plating in-house, we’d get stampers shipped to us, and you’d have dings or other things that would happen in shipping too, right?
So finally, do you have employees who work in the plant who love working there because they’re crazy music fans themselves?
Not so much in the CD department, but you know what? Most definitely in the vinyl department. The people that are looking for those jobs are either DJs or collectors or musicians. And sure, some of them are eclectic (laughs); we have this array of people. It’s a natural thing to want to work with something you love, right? So if you’re a fan of the format, you’ll be looking to work in a place where you’re surrounded by it. And we do see that in vinyl, for sure. So yeah, not particularly on the CD side; our operators there are not necessarily collectors. But on the vinyl side, it’s a different mix there.
