Making records out of recycled plastic bottles for Coldplay and Lorde

0:02Hello and welcome to The Price of Music brought to you by Music Ally. And if you want an easy and quick guide to what's going on in the music industry and how it all works each week, well, then here we are. We're looking at the finances of the music industry while also bringing you stories and stuff from the pop biz in the last week. He's Stuart Dredge. I'm Joe Sparrow. And if you listened to last week's show, you'll know that actually me and Stu are on our holidays at the moment in our static caravan in Rill, sunning us ourselves on the beach. But we're still going to have a show this week. And Stu, I'm going to be dispatched shortly across Berlin to chat to some people who are making a new revolutionary type of vinyl.

0:42First of all, let me ask you, Stu, are you a vinyl person?

0:48Stu:Honestly, no. I haven't got around to getting a record player again in the latest boom, which given that the boons have gone for 19 years is a little bit. But yeah, I don't know. I own vinyl. I have vinyl, but I don't really play it. I'm more digital nowadays. It's a sort of a big niche focus, isn't it? It's a bit like, I don't know, it's somewhere between collecting and sport, isn't it? Like you really need to want to do it for a certain reason. It's either because you're a purist or you like collecting or there's just something that scratches your itch about it specifically, isn't there? Otherwise, a lot of people just stream it.

1:25I think vinyl accounts for, is it about 5 % of the overall recorded music sales now, which doesn't sound like a lot, but that's measurable in the billions, isn't it?

1:35Stu:Well, also, I think if you're for individual artists and labels, like it's a meaningful source of revenue for a lot of them, it's more than 5%, isn't it? Because, so I think it's on a macro level, it can be a really meaningful part of your income, especially if you're independent. And of course, if you're Taylor Swift, you're making a lot of money from vinyl. She's the top top LP every year, it seems at the moment. Well, that's because she sells five copies of it in different color variants to her super fans. So you can just multiply a normal superstar's vinyl sales by five with everything. But of course, when we talk about as we've all just experienced a massive heat wave, the climate emergency, we are, as part of that, we like buying vinyl, those of us who buy vinyl, and if you buy traditional vinyl, It is a 180-gram disk of PVC, which comes from oil extracted from the ground.

2:29And there is an ecological issue with that, isn't there, as well? And the company I'm going to go speak to shortly, of course, in a very glamorous environment, by the way, in Berlin, their office, which is the Bertelmann's Group main office, which is the huge media conglomerate, They have a beautiful office, which is a bit like an art gallery that happens to have meeting rooms in it. And it's right next to Museum Island in Berlin and overlooks the huge cathedral there. And they own a company called Sonopress, which is a huge physical media manufacturer. And the reason I'm speaking to them is because a couple of years ago, they produced a new form of vinyl record called EcoRecord, which is made a little bit like CDs are made through injection molding plastic into a mold rather than pressing hot discs of PVC into a record.

3:19And the ecological angle on this, or the argument goes, is they use 85 % less energy because you don't need to heat the material, so they have huge savings on heat. And also they can be made out of the kind of plastic that you make water bottles out of. So you can take, as Coldplay did with their last album, you can take plastic bottles that you can take out of the sea, for instance, you can process them and then use them to be made into new records. These things are all incremental, of course. Getting bottles out of the sea and turning them into records takes energy as well. But there are savings here, and the idea is that the records themselves can become recycled as well.

4:03So when you really start hating that Coldplay record, you can chop it up and make it into a new record. But not that I recommend you should do that. The other interesting thing about this is that EcoRecord, having launched a couple of years ago, Coldplay, Ed Sheeran, Lord, some significant releases have come out on this format. It sounds good and looks good. So I'm going to go and chat to them now and see what they've learned from two years of producing these alternative types of record with the energy savings and what the future is going to hold. um stew uh what what could possibly persuade you to come back around to the side of vinyl would would exciting uh recycled materials do that for you uh maybe i mean i'm not not doing it because

4:50Stu:of the climate aspect but i think um it would certainly help like if i knew that i wasn't you know buying something that had been hurting the planet or at least was hurting less um yeah I think I just need to have a midlife crisis where I go and buy loads of vinyl and have a love of it. Oh, yeah. I think you're obliquely referring to me recently. I haven't bought a lot of vinyl there, aren't you? I mean, I'm not against vinyl. I just haven't had the space in the house, the quality of the record player, and the time and money. So I think as I get, hopefully, some of those things, if the world doesn't burn and I'm not out of work from AI, that's when I'll schedule my vinyl revival and I'll send it up by another percent every year, perhaps.

5:31Okay, right. Well, let's see if this interview can persuade you otherwise. I'm going to go speak to a nice man called Sven Deutschmann now,

5:37Stu:overlooking the cathedral in the middle of Berlin. Well, thanks, Joe and Stu. This is Joe again across the other side of Berlin now, and I'm in probably the fanciest part of the city. I'm standing right next to the Humboldt Forum, which is a huge old palace. I can see just over the road there the Berliner Dome, which is the enormous and beautiful cathedral. To my right is the Fernseherturm, which is the sort of high pointy thing that you'll recognize in photographs. Just over there is the Altusmuseum, which is the old art gallery. Just over there is the Deutsche Historische Museum, which is the history museum.

6:15And right next to that is a beautiful building which houses the headquarters of the Bertelsmann Group. The Bertelsmann Group is the huge German media conglomerate that owns Sonopress, which is the company that makes these eco-records. So I'm going to mosey over there now and try and hustle my way past the intimidating-looking guard on the door

6:41Stu:and speak to Sven Deutschmann about the eco-records. So I'm back here with Sven Deutschmann. Great to see you. we spoke first I think two years ago just as this product was launching and you've come a long way since then so I'd like to sort of just catch up really on what's happened in the last two years so in the last two years you know this new technologies come out what's what the what are you most satisfied by in that time first of all I think within these two years a lot has happened and starting with one machine, the first big releases. Now we are running four machines globally, and this is further to increase, and this shows there's a really huge acceptance of the format by all stakeholders, by the artists, by the labels, but also by the fans, the super fans, and it's fantastic to see this in operational business.

7:39And what has the reception been like? Because when you first described this to me, I thought well this is great you've found a way to reduce the use of heat and the carbon footprint it sounds good it looks good it's one of those things that seems to be you think it would be an easy sell to people so what have people said to you I'm thinking artists labels, fans what's the reception been like of this eco-record? First of all we were experiencing a lot of skepticism it was a lot of unknowns it was like changing the behavior and changing the product the method it was like like a mountain and climbing the mountain in the very beginning was like a challenge because the questions were like moving targets and in the very beginning it was like challenging how do you realize that the footprint is coming down so drastically so the first question was really concentrating on the carbon footprint with all aspects like on the material on the process and is is it possible in the process to reduce by more than 80 85 percent in the process like reducing which is no longer fossil based energy on natural gas one hand but also on reducing anything which is like cooling water steam energy this was huge and i would say this was phase one to convince and to prove by external partners that this is real and then once this was a proven thing that the carbon footprint can be drastically reduced, then it was like a moving target.

9:20Okay, then let's talk about the features. Is the product as stable as everybody knew the vinyl record for 75 years? Is it as stable? Is the quality the same? Is it like long lasting or something there in the background which we do not know? So it was like in one word, we had moving targets from months to months to months and we had to address each of them and not forget about also the pricing point and all of these features but we've taken this way up the mountain and i would say we are close to the peak now to really come to the next phase and really rolling this product out globally i mean for those of you who are listening um the difference really between the traditional vinyl and this is that these eco-records are sort of injection molded as opposed to being pressed, and you don't need the huge amounts of heat that are needed with the traditional vinyl technique to press the record.

10:20So there's enormous savings in terms of heat energy, but also the plastic that's used is different and can be recycled or used from recycled plastic. So that's briefly where the savings are. And as you said, traditional vinyl, the PBC vinyl, is 75, 80 years old. It's a very old technology. And you're asking, essentially, people who've been doing this for a long time to change from this one thing to a new thing. Did you find, you were saying there, a series of moving targets. Change is hard, right? When people go from a thing that they used to, a system that they used to, to another. What was the main sort of pushback or the main challenge asking people to switch over from this one to this one?

11:11I'd say it's everybody in this industry, but also in the beautiful background of music labels, is everybody wants to see a certain product in a certain category. So once we started with this and really promoting this under the brand name of EcoRecord, one of the i do not want to call it a pushback but it was like putting it in a certain category and in the first instant it was put directly into the category a sustainable product and so it was seen like okay if somebody asked for a greener alternative or for a lower footprint then everybody in the supply chain would open up the drawer and say like hey we have an alternative this is the eco record but honestly even the music climate pack was was around since 2021 it is not that 100 of each project globally is seen as a sustainable project only there's a lot of demand for do the reorder in the same way it was 25 years ago do the same cutting here use the black material and others and so it was not like the majority of products is seen in the category of sustainability and once we were like perceived eco record as a sustainable product this was only reflecting a certain percentage let's call it like below 10 percent of the market so therefore on a lot of projects we did not have the access in the first instance only when we changed from the attitude from the approach into the direction no this is not only in the category in the niche category of sustainability, it's like a real standard product.

12:52Then it became obvious, yeah, we should be perceived as eco-record as a normal standard, maybe the new standard even. And then we got access to the bigger projects, first instance, but second is also that it becomes like a very normal project oriented as another alternative. So it's sort of perception and trust around what it is. Of course, let's talk about the big artists that have used it in the last couple of years. You've had Coldplay releasing their last album in large numbers on Eco Record. It wasn't just a limited run. It was a lot of records being pressed. You had Ed Sheeran as well and Lorde.

13:38I can imagine that these artists are, of course, people who really care about the environment and they're interested in it from that environmental perspective, but they're also huge artists who like making money and selling a lot of records, right? So first of all, can we touch on the Coldplay one? Because I remember you pointed out when we first spoke about it, we were talking about, you know, wouldn't it be great if you could get a big artist like Coldplay to do it? And little did I know that you had actually signed that contract, but you couldn't tell me. So now you can tell us. Can you tell me a bit about that?

14:14Coldplay and their team, of course, huge, huge global artists, but very interested in doing the right thing ecologically. So what was it like working with them? And how closely did they look at the technology and sort of think about it in those terms? This is really amazing to talk about this. First of all, this has impressed ourselves absolutely and very much about their attitude of environmental aspects because it was not only limited to talking about an alternative kind of LP record. It was going beyond. It was like that it's like an entire system which is behind in taking care of each and every aspect of the product, of the supply chain, starting even from that they have invested in certain equipment, the river cleaning equipment.

15:03They have certain boats which clean the rivers in Indonesia and South America and others. and chris martin was giving interviews in late night shows in the us explaining what what they did and this is absolutely amazing to clean the rivers before plastic touches the ocean but even if if plastic is made its way to the ocean then there's a dutch based ngo which is cleaning the oceans the ocean cleanup and these contacts companies ngos and the band like the management of Coldplay and speaking directly to them. This was impressive overall to learn that they are really taking care of this. And of course, on the front of those Coldplay records that were pressed with Eco Record, there's a sticker saying, hey, this is made out of nine or ten plastic bottles, which is an amazing thing to think about, isn't it?

15:56So you've got artists like Coldplay who are very openly focused on doing this environmental work. you've got other artists like Ed Sheeran and Lorde who care about the environment, but they perhaps don't have boats cleaning rivers in Indonesia, which is fine. But of course, to them, this is still a high selling point, isn't it? Again, they're balancing scale, global scale with wanting to find an alternative. How important is it to get these big artists showing that it works the system works and they prefer this format in terms of helping convince other people that this format works, it's better for the environment It's a mix, it's a balance, if this would be only the big artists then I would say this is seen as okay maybe top notch selling volume based big projects, of course this is I would say the essence of the industry.

17:04But not to forget, music is always like, nobody knows who's a big music star in five years or 10 years. And we see a lot of independence. We see like a movement, which is even in the comparison, at least as, I would say, yeah, deep through impressive, like the big labels and artists and look at the independence. Sometimes independence even take this view on sustainability even more serious than everybody else. So there are some labels and we work together with like K7 and there are labels and working with form manufacturing, which is just so impressive because they are dedicated to really take care, like in reduction in carbon footprint, scope one, scope two, scope three, and really go through this thing and take it, I would say, so serious that they are like a closed system in reducing the footprint.

17:58So therefore, it's a mix, having the big artists, the big projects, but also the independence. And even this goes beyond pop music. We've seen projects, even with house music, rapper, we have classical music, classical music on an eco record. You would not expect it. But I would say it's not to be underestimated how far reaching the interest is in reducing the carbon footprint all over the place. I'm really interested in the independent labels element because when I speak to people in the music industry you look at the people who are driving this change forward it's often groups of independent labels working together you mentioned the Music Climate Pact a lot of people involved but there are very, very passionate people who believe in a better future and they're often working for independents because they have a little bit more ability to make decisions and make changes.

18:58So when you approach them with, I'm just trying to think of the mindset of a K7 or an independent like that. When you approach them with the technology,

19:11what are their main points of interest in terms of adopting it and using it? obviously they can check the reduction calculations for the energy and those kind of things. But what are their other concerns? Because they're printing shorter runs of records, maybe for niche markets, or their fans might want different colorways or something. So when you're introducing a new product and trying to make people feel comfortable with it, what are the independents looking for? I'd say this is a kind of identity. so what we have seen is and sometimes the artists are the best ambassadors for the product even better than any marketing agency or communication agent who's doing I would say promotion on this the artists themselves I would say this is amazing we've seen the recent release of it's a UK based artist Macy Peters Macy Peters the last album was just released a couple of weeks ago and we've done it in a new methodology we call this it's kind of a splatter technology we call this inkplosion and she the artist Maisie Peters she was taking a 60 second video which was then released on Instagram on X on all the social media formats and she was telling by herself all the advantages of the product it was like the best ambassador we as Sonopress could imagine of She was she was telling all the stories behind like reducing footprint, no longer PVC, PVC free products using PET with all the examples.

20:52And she was, I would say, the best salesperson in this moment for our product. And this is just one example. We see the same with Supergrass for Record Store Day with the release. We see this with a lot of independence. And once somebody is convinced he is the best ambassador for the product, it's much even much more I would say serious realistic then if we would do this we as a manufacturing company everybody would say like okay if Sonopress is telling positively about the project of course what else should they do but if the artists are telling this this is so convincing for everybody and this is like a movement I would say and the first word was identity it's about the identity they love it they like it they like the quality and they are the best ambassadors for the project.

21:42And to go to the fan end of things, one of the interesting things about these eco records is that in their natural state, if you like, they are transparent. So they come transparent as standard, but they can also be any other color. And they have these, the new sort of ink splatter look ones, which are really interesting as well. So you have all the variety that people want from a visual perspective. I want to talk to you about the audio perspective because I've listened to a bunch of these records and to me they sound great. They sound just the same as a PVC vinyl record. But I'm also aware that the audiophile community of consumers, people who are very...

22:28I'm going to say that they must have better ears than me because they can hear things in records that I can't hear. But they're very exacting about quality and sound what are they saying? I mean, I looked on Discogs the other day, right, for the Lord release. And again, you've got people there saying, hey, this sounds really good. And these are Discog people who are very, you know, particular about this. What are people saying about the audio quality and how important is that when you talk to fans and labels and things? This is, I would say, the most interesting part of the whole story Because in the very beginning, when the driver was look at the carbon footprint, climate, music climate pact and other things, everybody was concentrating so much on these aspects.

23:19But everybody knew that the underlying reality is we have to match the quality. And even if the quality would have been like 5 % less, 10 % less or so, this product would never make it in the mass market. So therefore, this was one of our key emphases to look at quality. number one and then it was amazing because when we started we we saw that like surface noise is almost not not there it's much better than on the traditional vinyl and there are more aspects like from the groove structure from the appearance of certain things no warping and the cleanness the centricity of the whole thing centricity is a major thing also and then on the material base of the cleanness and the structure of the material itself so there are a lot of aspects and then in this i would call it the second phase it was like let's prove that we are as good as a traditional vinyl but when we came closer to the end of this phase two to prove it's the same quality we found out it might be even better and then it got really interesting because then this was like a proof of concept where we're talking to the experts and who is experts yes people from the music industry themselves of course second is also those with equipment so we made our way to the big shows like the high-end show in munich and this year in vienna it was like going to people who are manufacturing turntables and we're talking about turntables in the range of more than 100 000 euros per unit so so they are really keen on on having the best quality and then when i talked about the ambassadors for sustainability which have been the artists themselves now we are talking about ambassadors for the product in the hardware industry and we organized here in berlin a couple of weeks ago a listening session with one of the korefin we would say in germany is like max schlund And he's known as one of the experts of the high-end quality hardware equipment.

25:26And he was talking about the product. We were impressed more than everybody else because he was speaking about all the positive features of the product. And it's really amazing. And one of these initiatives was also driven by that we did like a certain test run. And I've brought it with you. Which we have here, yeah. We can have a look. This is what we call the soundtrack, and this is one of the classic albums of Kruder and Dorfmeister. And what we did is we did exactly the same cut, a lacquer cut, in comparison on traditional vinyl with eco record. So what we have here is a fold-out vinyl with three records in it, and it's the same record cut the traditional way, the eco record way, and the vinyl way.

26:17We have like in the mastering, we want also to see the comparison between DMM cut and lacquer cut. And what is the difference for people who don't know between DMM and lacquer cut? Yeah, DMM cut was introduced in the 70s by Teldeck. This was instead of cutting the master, the music into a soft lacquer, relatively soft layer, it was into metal. And the direct metal mastering was like 50 years ago or so intended to have a cleaner version, no pre-echo, no post-echo effects on the record. And it has made it to the mass industry. And still, a lot of people believe DMM could be a very, very future-oriented element of the industry.

27:04We agree. So DMM cut is certainly something you should have in mind as one of the alternatives. very clean with all the effects positively like no pre-echo and no post-echo and other effects this was why it was developed years ago on the other hand certain music is definitely preferred by a lot of people in the industry to use a classical lacquer cut and this is why we wanted to see the same lacquer cut and the luffy taking through then for eco record and which is pet in comparison to vinyl, the traditional. So same stamper, same cut. It's a real one-on-one comparison. And then we let the experts listen and see, like, can you detect, is there a difference?

27:51If so, which one has which effects and which effects on the eco record and on the other one? What do they say? So you've got these, you can side-by-side play on these 100 ,000 euro record players, of course. so they can play them side by side these are people who are let's say the experts at listening and detecting these sound artifacts and surface noise and things what did they think? This was exactly the purely I would say most fascinating result because they could detect and they probably have better ears than myself or others so we were a little bit in a very suspenseful mood when we listen to them and it was like all across they loved it then with the sound with the frequency even they they are talking in a different language so i cannot repeat everything of this sometimes they were talking about like there's more depth there's more room there's more space it's like if if people are doing their comments on a soccer game the experts have a different language we are listening and watching and here it's the same they have a different language to really understand each other and it was fascinating to listen it and this was at all this was exactly the moment where he said like oops if the result is now the eco record is perceived as a better product by a lot of people in the industry what do we do with this information and we decided to keep very quiet we always say like we don't want to sell the product with the argument of more quality, better quality.

29:29We just say, leave it to those who are buying the product, those who love the product, those who are listening to the music. They shall decide for themselves. So we just would say it's on par. It's the same quality. Some may say they love it more with less surface noise, but we leave this out. So we don't use it as a sales argument. It's more like the experience that we want to share. let's look forward a bit then because um we're now in a place where okay the technology works it's being adopted by artists of all levels um

30:10how do you sort of judge the success you've talked about it downplaying it and sort of saying look it's a valid alternative you want to scale the business up you've you've now got four machines running i believe you've got one in north america as well now and i guess you're going to keep increasing that what is the sort of point where you see it becoming more normal in terms of it being part of the normal industry is it is it when you see i don't know another huge artist like taylor swift releases her records with with it um or is it when you have lots of independent artists sort of releasing short runs what is that what does that success look like in terms of normalization of it this is i think the next stage the next phase for the product for the eco record also with a global rollout first of all i'd like to mention also consistency for the product for the artist in considering also their back catalog with the experience of coldplay for example it was from our point from their point of view making it to the number one in the charts on billboard charts after the release two years ago in autumn it was the decision was taken taken to change all of the back catalog into equal record and this is absolutely a major move because you know the back catalog of each and every artist is normally unchanged so if some some album was released 20 years ago in a certain format it will never change it will always be the same color it will be black it will be on vinyl so on and on nobody will even touch the cutter again or the lacquer cutting or how it was done the stampers everybody's would keep it in the same state here it was showing the first change today all of the back catalog of coldplay albums 10 albums are all manufactured in eco record by ourselves now and also even more they changed it from a former black vinyl into now a transparent pet based eco record this is amazing to see this and it's so consistent because this was not a one-time shot with a nice marketing no it was really the belief that the product is the right product as a physical product number one number Number two is I would say that for the industry, now the rollout is really a planned version that we really roll it out on a global level with our own capacities, mainly focusing in Europe.

32:47Yes, this is where our strengths are lying. If we look at the North American market, like you mentioned our machine that we have installed in Charlotte, we see that North America with the US is the biggest market for media in the world. By far, by far biggest growth rates. It's like multi-million LPs manufactured and also sold each year in North America. So we took the decision to have this as an open format. This should not be a closed format only being provided by certain companies or by a few companies. We believe this should be open to each and every territory with production. And this is why we took the decision to make it available as a licensed product to other companies.

33:33So we have taken the decision, yes, we are open to sell the equipment, build new equipment, and this is what we right now do. So we are building machines with partners, with experts in machine building and engineering, and we are realizing and building up the machines. number one it's like a certain uh yeah pre-time has to be uh required like six months but each six months we can install the next line and we are making these lines available to other companies number two is we bring the know-how how it's done to other companies as well so we open up our secret treasures to make it available and to train other people, other engineers, other staff globally to do the same quality of PET based records all across the globe.

34:30And we signed recently an agreement with Connective, formerly known as Technicolor. And Technicolor has started with the LP record production a A couple of years ago for North America was tons, I would say, so it's really a battery of a lot of vinyl presses. And they are as convinced as we are that the PET injection molded based principle for EcoRecords is part of the future of the industry. And we will install the equipment later this year and then make all the technology available. And then together with Connective will provide EcoRecords for the North American market. having said this this is not limited to one company and one territory we will open this also up for other territories so this is why we are reaching out to far east Asia like it can be China it can be Korea South Korea and it can be also Japan and so the music climate pact which you mentioned earlier it has this very aggressive carbon reduction goals aiming for 2030.

35:43So four years away. And of course, yeah, we've talked about the reduction in carbon use in several ways for eco record production. So when you look, you're talking there about rolling this production out around the world. there are other, I don't want to say competitors, but there are other formats of vinyl alternative that have eco-savings, using recycled offcuts of existing PVC or using processed cooking oil to make a sort of alternative. So you've got all these alternative approaches. When you look forward at the whole record-pressing industry in sort of five years' time, do you think it will be a case that the traditional PVC is going to be starting to phase out and be replaced by these alternative, more carbon-friendly alternatives in a sort of general sense?