Recently I stumbled across Naked Record Club, a vinyl subscription service that presses exclusive releases for its members. It's not unlike Vinyl Me, Please, Vinyl Moon, etc. but their twist on the offering is that they are highly eco-conscious about the records they create. Unsurprisingly, the vinyl manufacturing process is a bit outdated in that regard. This announcement video from one of the founders of NAKED Record Club covers a lot of the details of why vinyl is such a rough manufacturing process - namely the materials and the steam-powered process to flatten said materials. They are making the shift to injection molded records, which should be a huge improvement in regards to the environmental concerns.

I've been following this technology for awhile but it seems to be increasing in popularity now. Not only is NAKED Record Club embracing it but the latest Shellac record is also pressed in the same way. As I understand it, Green Vinyl Records in the Netherlands is leading the charge with this new process and Good Neighbor Music is the company actually booking the jobs to use said tech.

It's worth noting that injection molding for records has actually been around since the 1950s but this modern twist is using Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET), the same plastic used in recyclable water bottles. I'm not going to claim for one second that I know anything about the substance or how it is leveraged in the manufacturing process of records. It's even possible that the usage of the material is a lateral move from the current Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) material.

There's more reading and learning to be done but it's an advancement that I'm excited to see continue to get attention. Vinyl manufacturing is expensive, takes forever and is bad for the planet. I am optimistic they can actually solve all three.