I was really hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but I have noticed a severe lack of quality control when it comes to newly pressed records. This open letter is an attempt at alerting the vinyl pressing plants around the world that they need to step up their game.

In the past month, I have had to return several different titles, mostly because they were scuffed up so bad that they created an obscene amount of surface noise and pops, which is NOT something that should be present with a brand new record. I have purchased 40 year old used records that look 10 times better than some of these “brand new” records I’ve been getting. I actually gave up on one specific release, because I kept getting bad copies. Apparently, I’m not the only one lucky enough to be frustrated by this. There are plenty of people out there complaining about how badly the condition of their brand new records are.

This is just not acceptable! Granted, there are plenty of ‘vinyl hipsters’ out there that buy vinyl with no intention (or ability) to play them; but there are, however, plenty of us out there that actually LISTEN to the records we buy. It is THIS demographic that record pressing plants should cater to.

Please, for the love of music, step up the quality control before you completely kill all interest the new generation may have when it comes to the pursuit of vinyl.

No record that leaves the plant should look like this…

-Max ‘ManJewky’ Wallis

KM Co-Founder / Blog Editor