You might recall that I was pretty positive about elasticStage since they allow small musicians to do one-off or small-run vinyl record production and their quality was pretty good given the price. But there’s a few reasons I cannot currently recommend them and have taken my various links and reviews down:
- Even though they have difficulty keeping up with the manufacturing demand for actual musicians, they’ve gone into supporting AI musicians, and are (as far as I can tell) the manufacturing partner behind Suno Vinyl
- They have had a huge uptick in quality assurance problems and miscuts; I’ve had to get some of my personal copies recut and the process for getting them replaced was pretty difficult, and I cannot in any good conscience require that listeners have to deal with them in case things go south
- They’re heavily leaning into Boy George and his awful, culturally-appropriative, anti-Palestinian AI slop “music” and I cannot in any good conscience support any company who would make that decision
Other folks might still be willing to work with this company in light of this but I personally am not.
If there are other short-run vinyl manufacturers who have a better track record and a reasonable price, I’d welcome suggestions. (I already know about Kunaki. They’re a bit expensive and their reviews for vinyl are pretty bad, unfortunately.)
Of course also the way they manage payments means there’s no way for me to withdraw my meager earnings from them, either, but what else is new with these indie-exploiting music companies…
#elasticStage
#Vinyl
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