United Record Pressing Marks 75 Years

Nashville, TN (September 4, 2024)—Music City may be the home of revered studios and legendary artists, but that glorious reputation would never have happened without the presence of vinyl pressing plants to export all that music out into the world. Chief among the region’s pressers is United Record Pressing, which marks its 75^th anniversary this month, having been in operation continuously since 1949.

That journey began due to the over-the-top popularity of the Francis Craig Band’s “Red Rose / Near You”—a big band record so wildly popular that it spurred the construction of United Record Pressing’s first plant as an offshoot of one of Nashville’s first independent labels, Bullet Records. Over the next 75 years, United would go on to press everything from The Beatles’ first U.S. 7-inch (“Please Please Me / From Me To You”) to rare punk 45s by acts like Minor Threat, to new releases by modern-day musical heroes like Kendrick Lamar and the ubiquitous Taylor Swift.

Still, vinyl is a veteran format at this point, having been around for well over 100 years, which means there’s been some peaks and valleys along the way. “The market demands on vinyl are at an all-time high, but United has kept the doors open through downturns too, operating with as few as 12 employees in the ’90s,” confirms Cam Sarrett, United’s director of Sales and Marketing.

While technologies have changed to the point where anyone can distribute a digital track from their desktop at a moment’s notice, United has soldiered on, weathering the move to digital in the late ’80s, and riding the modern-day resurgence of vinyl over the last two decades. The format’s comeback shows no signs of ending, too, having hit $1.4 billion in sales last year.

While vinyl has undergone a remarkable comeback, that rise has coincided with a growing consumer awareness of environmental concerns. Vinyl is not the most ecologically friendly format, and the pressing industry as a whole has been making strides towards achieving better sustainability. With that in mind, United became the first North American plant to earn a Sony Green Partner Certification last year, and the company additionally points to its efforts to recycle vinyl manufacturing scraps and shipping boxes, use unleaded vinyl and reduce its carbon footprint.

Today, United employes more than 120 people as it operates 64 presses in a 160,000-square-foot facility—24 new Pheenix Alpha pressing machines in addition to 40 restored Lened and SMT machines. As a result, the facility now has the capacity to press more than 100,000 records daily. Lacquer cutting and electroplating are handled in-house as well, and the company is exploring how AI-powered technologies can detect plating issues before they affect production. “Our ability to scale up to the size of our major label partners while staying accessible to independent artists and labels is something we take a lot of pride in,” says Sarrett.