“Before the vinyl shortage is over, kid, they may have to make your Jethro Tull albums out of earwax.”

Shortages of vinyl, paper, gasoline and a variety of other substances already have hit the record industry hard, and the impact will be much greater in 1974, according to a variety of industry sources. However, the shortage is probably not severe enough to prevent the availability of hit records, though older records, and particularly classical and budget discs, will be harder to obtain.

Most significantly, the rising cost of Vinyl/ coupled with increased shipping and other production costs, means that the records you do buy in 1974 will cost about $1 more — an increase of the “suggested list price” from $5.9,8 to ''.98.

Like" the oil shortage, the lack of poiy-vinyl chloride (PVC), the petroleum-based chemical from which records are made, is world-wide. It is further complicated in Japan, where an explosion recently destroyed a major production facility, and in Canada, where a strike at Dow Chemical’s Sarnia, Ont., plant has been a major factor.

In addition to the vinyl crisis, the record industry is affected by the paper shortage, problems with album delivery due to the gasoline shortage, problems with travel for artists on tour due to reduced airline flights, and a minor shortage problem of certain substances Used in the manufacture of tape, cartridges arid cassettes. We have, according to 'almost every record company executive questioned, probably seen the end of the elaborate, and often extravagant, packaging procedures of recent years.

Industry estimates of the duration of the vinyl shortage range from six months to five years. Whatever its duration, it is certain to be a major factor in expected price rises. CBS has already instituted a return tp variable pricing, a policy which means, in effect, that records made by “stars” cost an extra dollar. The raise was approved by the Cost ol Living Council, which said it was “cost justified.”

However, Mel Posner, president of Elektra/ Asylum; Art Kass, president of Bucfdan Records, and Billy Gaff, manager of Rod Stewart and the Faces, have all called for an overall price increase in recent weeks. Gaff was the most vehement. “With a product pinch approaching, the U.S. record industry should take advantage of the shortage by raising" the price of LPs to perhaps $8. Returns should be stopped completely. Manufacturers should stop discounting.” Gaff noted that in Britain, where records are rarely discounted more than 10 to 20 cents ait the retail level (versus 75 cents to $ 1 in the U.S.), price is not the determining factor in record sales.

Proposed solutions abound. Most of them involve some kind of waste cutback — up to and including cutbacks on the signing of new artists — recycling “cut outs” (albums deleted from a company’s catalogue, which are normally sold at reduced price), an end to over-production and, as a corollary to all, the end of ‘the companies’ 100 per | cent return policy. This policy means that a wholesaler or retailer can safely over-order on a “hit,” knowing that whatever he does not sell can later be returned for full credit. This results in over production.

Budget, classical and catalogue albums are most severely affected by pressing plant shortages. Companies are saving their share of vinyl to press current hit albums, to achieve maximum sales.

Basically unaffected are 45 RPM singles and cassette and cartridge tape, which are not manufactured from vinyl. Some tape parts — the plastic cassette/ cartridge cases, lubricants used to coat the tape — are in short supply, however.

According to a Society of the Plastics Industry report, vinyl production, which reached a peak of 4.9 billion pounds per year in March, 1973, had dropped" 15 per cent by July. The record industry represents only 4 per cent of the use in this country, however, and it pays only about half as much — 20 to 25 cents per pound, as Opposed to 50 cents — as its nearest conipetitor, the plactiopipe industry.

“Vinyl’s turning into gold,” Robert Altschuler, a. CBS Records executive quipped. CBS, which owns plants that produce vinyl for many other record companies, has “been able to stockpile,” Altschuler added. ‘‘The Company can live with the situation.”

Nonetheless, certain CBS albums “have been delayed. We have also stopped production on our $ l .98 Harmony line, although we are continuing to produce $2.98 Harmony alljums.”

Among other labels reporting delays of albums normally scheduled for December release were Elektra/ Asylum and Vanguard. Vanguard’s October releases were, in fact, delayed until December.

Industry spokesmen used tones of caution but not panic. Bob Regehr, Warner Bros, director of artist relations, commented: “We have probably seen the end of impulse buying. I think records will now be more like books;, you’ll enter the store with a specific purchase in mind.”

Bob Rolontz, Atlantic Records vice president, was concered primarily that “opening new pressing plant accounts is not possible. Normally, we use 27 different plants when we want to rush a product out. We can’t do ,that right now. We’re all going to have to be more cautious about our output.”

Larry Uttal, president of Bell Records, was the most vociferous record industry spokesman. He recently issued a statement which condemned the industry’s panic response to.. other “crises”: of the past 4notably government investigations of payola and lyrics suggesting drug use. “Labels will have to listen harder to the material that’s submitted to them and not put out products that, they don’t truly believe in,” he added.

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Vinyl Crisis

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“Paper shortages,” he contineud, “are partly the result of zany , complex and often pointless packaging. Labels aren’t in business to sell album covers. ”

Althought the vinyl export situation is so severe that Stanley GortikoVj head of the industry lobby, the Recording Industry Association of America, recently flew to Washington to make a plea for less exports, if help comes from anywhere it will have to be from abroad. Only one country claims to have a surplus of vinyl — the U.S.S.R.

Indeed, according to Vasily Pakhomov, head of the Russian record label Melodiya, 'when he was here , for a business trip recently, the Russians may even be willing to sell some of their vinyl surplus. Should that come to pass — and Pakhomov indicated he was speculating unofficially — Americans may find they’ve traded Wheaties for Rolling Stones. Detente or not, both will be more expensive.