Record pressing companies are handling ongoing supply chain issues and accelerating demand for vinyl releases pushes long-playing sales to record highs.

According to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), more than five million vinyl records were bought in 2021. It means that vinyl comprised 23% of all albums sold in the UK last year, the trade body (行业机构) says that vinyl is on course to beat CDs as the dominant physical medium of choice for music fans this year.

Some big-name releases in the latter half of the year are expected to push the sales even higher. The latest release from Harry Styles, Harry’s House, broke records in May has become the quickest-selling vinyl album in the US since 1991, selling 182,000 copies in its first week.

In the US, profits from the sale of vinyl albums grew by 61% in 2021, far outpacing growth rates for paid music and streaming services like Spotify, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. But in the wake of the revival (复兴) are some significant production problems. Dozens of record-pressing factories have been built to try to meet demand in North America — and it’s still not enough.

The industry “has found a new gear, and is accelerating at a new pace”, said Mark Michaels, boss of United Record Pressing, America’s largest record producer, in Nashville, Tennessee. There are now about 40 plants in the US – most of them smaller operations – but challenges remain. Where major record labels may have once pressed the records for their artists, now the manufacture of the discs is increasingly carried out by independent plants. Some, like Jack White’s Third Man Pressing, based in Detroit, are run by musicians themselves.

Backlogs (积压的工作) are preventing new releases, however, as the capacity of smaller firms to press new vinyl releases is held up by growing demand and supply chain failures. Shortages of raw materials melted and flattened into the actual records, have caused widespread problems. It is uneasy to launch a new plant because there are a handful of companies that make record-pressing machines. Those machines are backordered, as well.

In the UK, Press On Vinyl, have been established in recent years to meet increasing demand from acts of all sizes to have their tunes preserved in a physical format. The pressing plant adapts cutting-edge technology to make records with lower energy consumption, better quality control and a smaller chance of adding surface noise to the records than other manufacturing techniques.

But Danny Lowe, co-founder of the business along with David Todd, says: “Widespread problems along the supply chain are leaving record pressers at risk of being unable to meet the growing appetite for vinyl.” “Demand has grown from all quarters,” says Lowe, “whether from smaller independent artists who only order a run of 100 or so records, up to bigger acts who can take up the plant’s capacity for a while at a time.” “We’ve just added more machinery to our production line so that we have more available capacity.” he explains.

For want of a chip, the factory was lost. On May 18th Toyota became the latest carmaker forced to cut production in a global shortage of microchips, announcing it would stop work at two of its plants in Japan. Other car makers have also had to send workers home.

The pain is not limited to the car industry, for the shortage spans all sorts of chips, from the expensive, high-tech devices that power smartphones and data-centers to the simple sensors and micro-controllers that have become a vital commodity (商品). This chip drought is the result of the covid-19 pandemic interacting with an industry that is subject to cycles of boom and bust.

“The most important thing”, says Malcolm Penn, who runs a chip-industry consultancy, “is that shortages are a natural part of the industry.” Chipmaking is a good example of a “pork-cycle” business, named for the regular swings between under- and over-supply in pork markets. As with pigs, the supply of chips cannot quickly react to changes in demand. Capacity was tight even before the pandemic, says Mr Penn, pointing out that investment by chipmakers in factory equipment has been below its long-term average for many years.

The pandemic arrived at the worst possible time. After an early crash, demand in several fields boomed. Locked-down consumers bought laptops and other devices. Cloud-computing operators added servers to deal with the wave of home-workers. The car industry was particularly badly hit by a decision to cut orders early in the pandemic-demand for cars has since recovered. But the complexities of the production process mean it takes time to recover. “I can cancel my orders in an afternoon,” says Mr. Penn. “If I want to start them up again, that takes months--and that capacity is now busy serving other customers.”

But the pork cycle is turning once again. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s biggest chipmaker, plans to spend $30bn on new capacity this year. Two other giants, have also decided on further investment. That will bring relief to the wider economy, but not immediately. The boss of IBM said he thought the shortages might last for two years. And, says Mr Penn, when the drought eventually ends, chipmakers may find they face a familiar problem on a bigger scale: a capacity investment in response to serious shortages today could well mean a sizeable surplus (过剩) tomorrow.

BEIJING — The Chinese economy has shown positive signs of stabilizing (稳定), but it’s hard to judge what it will be next year, governor of China’s central bank said on Thursday.

Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China, made the remarks on a panel discussion with delegates from the financial field to the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which opened here on Thursday morning.

China’s economic momentum (推进力) will depend on not only domestic conditions, but also changes brought by the global financial crisis, said Zhou, who is also a CPC delegate to the national congress.

“It has become increasingly clear that the Chinese economy is now moving towards a better direction,” he said.

Due to the impact of the debt crisis in Europe, China’s economy began slowing this year. The Chinese economy expanded only 7. 4 percent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2012, marking a downturn for seven straight quarters, the National Bureau of Statistics of China said.

As the government adopted a series of fiscal (财政的) and monetary measures and speeded up the approvals of investment projects to spur the slowing economy, the domestic economy has stabilized since September with better indicators, Zhou said.

He said it’s hard to judge how the global financial crisis will continue to affect the Chinese economy because the spreading of the European debt crisis and the so-called fiscal cliff problem in the United States have increased uncertainties of the world economy.

“We need to monitor the effect on our economy of the monetary, easing policies launched recently by the United States and the European Union,” he said.

China is likely to maintain the policy continuity to some extent in 2013, but will leave enough room to make the policy targeted and flexible.