Music
Records – it doesn’t always have to be black
Collectors, fans and artists love colorful records. photo
© Uli Deck/dpa
The world is colorful, and that has long been true for records as well. Collectors love colored vinyl – and like to treat themselves to LPs with even more bells and whistles. There is a very special niche.
Record refiner Nico Michaelis is in his element in his small vinyl factory in Pforzheim and has discovered a very special niche for himself. He doesn’t just design records by decorating or printing them. But by filling them with liquids depending on the order. The whole thing is called “Liquid filled vinyl” – and he keeps how he does it top secret.
The vinyl world is not all black
Records are no longer simply black; the vinyl world has become bright, colorful and very idiosyncratic. “It is happening more and more often that a band releases limited special pressings in colored vinyl or splatter vinyl in addition to a black standard edition,” says vinyl expert Manfred Krug, author of the blog “Vinyl Fan”.
Record pressing plants such as Pallas in Diepholz or Optimal Media in Röbel, for example, have colorful vinyl in all colors in their portfolio. Other refinements are also offered: For example, the so-called picture discs, where an image can be incorporated into the surface if desired. And Pallas also offers vinyl with liquids.
Secret production
According to Michaelis, he and Pallas are among the few who even offer liquid-filled vinyl. Michaelis also keeps quiet about how it is produced. The 41-year-old only tells this much: A band or an artist’s label asks him to design a specific LP – not the cover, but the vinyl itself. Then the transparent discs with the music printed on them are sent to him, front of each – and back extra.
He puts protective film over the grooves so that they do not suffer during the production process. Then the slices are sandwiched together using a specific process. They are welded with heat – but in such a way that a gap remains. This is also sealed at the edges and specially suitable colors are filled into the gap through a filling hole on the inside of the pane. The hole is then also sealed. Complete.
The thing with the numbers
According to the Federal Association of the Music Industry, there are no figures on how many colored or differently refined records are sold in Germany each year. Pallas or Optimal Media do not provide any information about this either.
“In recent years, customers have been increasingly ordering the production of records in different color versions or with special effects,” says a spokeswoman for Optimal Media.
Collectors, fans and artists love colorful things
Elaborately designed vinyls are collector’s items. Colored records are undoubtedly listened to “and today they usually sound identical to normal black LPs,” says Krug. “Picture Vinyl”, on the other hand, has significantly higher noise. The LPs refined with liquids can be played normally and the listening quality is not affected, says Michaelis. He now creates 15 to 20 LPs per hour, all entirely by hand.
He invested around 50,000 euros to perfect the process with the liquids. In the three years he has been doing this, he has already produced between 2,500 and 5,000 such records, including for artists such as the bands Slayer, Tocotronic and the Fantastischen Vier. He has decorated, filled and refined around the same number of records in other ways and, all in all, he has already supplied around 100 artists or their labels
Michaelis believes that colored vinyls now make up a large share of the market. However, at most one percent is as special as the LPs he has refined. The discs filled with liquids in particular would always remain a niche. By the way, such editions are not cheap either. Retailers would charge between 120 and 200 euros for this. Too expensive to sell off and therefore always produced in three-digit quantities, he says. At Michaelmas there is a margin of around a third of the final price. He wants to be self-employed by the end of the year.