Corrow Pressing is 26 weeks behind

Anything ordered from Corrow now arrives in March. The lead time was fourteen weeks in January and has roughly doubled since, and three of the labels we cover have already moved release dates because of it.

Corrow is two counties away and is the nearest plant that will take a run under a thousand, which makes it the default for almost everything released here. The plant confirmed the figure and attributes it to a press being out of service since June and to demand that has not fallen back after the winter.

Pale Interval has moved two releases, one of them twice — a record originally scheduled for May is now provisionally February, which is eleven months from delivery of the masters. Fathom Street Recordings has moved one and has stopped announcing dates in advance, which its founder describes as "the only thing we can control". Notch & Co. has split an order, taking three hundred from a plant in another country at a materially worse price to hold a date it had already announced.

The knock-on that nobody sees is the sleeve. Print is quoted and booked against a pressing date, and a pressing date that moves twice leaves five hundred printed sleeves sitting in a lock-up for nine months at somebody's cost.