Has Adele broken the vinyl frontier?

Adele asks to go ‘easy on me’ but is she to blame for the global vinyl shortage?

With her new album “30” releasing this Friday, Adele has sparked controversy due to her decision to create 500,000 copies of her new album for vinyl. In a period of drastic vinyl shortages across the globe with some artists having to delay albums up to 6 months to stock vinyl, many regard Adele’s actions as selfish and irresponsible. But are we too quick to judge, and perhaps could Adele’s decision actually have a positive impact on the vinyl sector as a whole?

Despite the recent news surrounding Adele, Vinyl shortages outdate the Covid 19 pandemic. On the 9th February 2020, a fire started at the Apollo Masters Corporation, Banning, California. The plant destroyed in the fire was responsible for around 75-80% of the worlds Vinyl lacquer production, an essential component in the transferring of sound onto records. As one of only two facilities across the world, this historic fire caused a standstill in new record production across the world.

Exacerbated by the pandemic, many musicians suffered delays due to vinyl production, and notoriously indie artists and debut bands struggled substantially more. Alternative indie band ‘The 1975’ had originally planned to release their 2020 album “Notes on a Conditional Form” on February 21st. But due to the vinyl shortage, the album was delayed twice, first to April 24th then again to May 22nd. This trend has continued far into 2021, where Ed Sheeran’s new album ‘=’ was finished two months early to allow time for vinyl production.

“Adele has basically booked out all the vinyl factories so we had to get a slot and get in there”

-Ed Sheeran

However, despite shortages, vinyl sales are better than ever; Adele may be to thank.

Despite streaming’s grasp on the digital market, Vinyl in 2020 outsold CD’s for the first time since the 1980s. with a 4% increase in sales in the same year and with Taylor swifts ‘evermore’ breaking historic vinyl records the ‘vinyl revival’ is flourishing and it’s not being slowed down by the pandemic. Adele’s 2015 album ’25’ is the 4th best selling album of the 21st century and 2nd best selling album of the 2010s (only behind her 2011 album 21) For Adele to sell half a million copies of her new album it would have to be record-breaking, but as we can see Adele isn’t new to breaking records.

So, has Adele made too many copies of her new album? With Boycotts of her new album now happening in record stores across England is Adele the bane of the vinyl community? Probably not. Sure, Adele may not have helped the situation but to blame Adele on the entirety of the vinyl shortage is unreasonable and in reality, the onslaught of press may increase sales of the album for local record stores across the world.

And finally, Will I be buying ’30’ myself? with songs including the experimental “I drink wine” I’ll wait until the album releases on November 19th to make that decision!