From Boomers to Zoomers, Vinyl Records are a Hit

And Gotta Groove Records presses plenty of them in downtown Cleveland, Ohio.

This Saturday, April 18 is Record Store Day, an annual event that celebrates the thousands of small businesses that provide fans with their favorite music on vinyl records.

There often is an early morning line at many of America’s independent record stores as music lovers turn out to find rare one-off releases or reissues of once popular albums.

Now in its 19th year, the faces of Record Store Day are getting younger. The local shop may be run by a member of the Boomer generation, but today’s customers are infused with increasing numbers of fans from Generation Z.

This is music to the ears of Gotta Groove Records owner Matt Earley, whose company presses vinyl recordings most every day of the year at its factory in Cleveland, Ohio. New customers mean new and bigger business.

Gone are the days when the major labels had large pressing operations to handle their own artists recordings, such as 1-million-unit orders for a Beatles, Rolling Stones or Barbara Streisand release.

In 2026, records for volume sellers like Taylor Swift and Beyonce are typically pressed by a select few of the largest plants in America. Most other records are pressed by one of approximately 40 smaller independent pressing operations.

Gotta Groove Records is one of these small-scale vinyl pressing plants.

Earley saw vinyl records making a comeback in the early 2000s, so he set out searching for machines and equipment that would allow him to open his own record plant.

“I was looking around the country trying to find machines and I happened to contact a plant in New Jersey called Sun Plastics,” said Earley. “They told me they had just sold everything to somebody in Ohio the day before.

“They wouldn’t tell me who, they wouldn’t give me any information on him, so I wound up sleuthing around on the Ohio Secretary of State website just looking for any correspondence with the words ‘records’ in the title and that’s how I found him.”

“Him” would be his future business partner, Vincent Slusarz, Sr., who had the same idea of setting up a record pressing plant in Cleveland. In 2008, they became co-owners of Gotta Groove Records and officially launched their manufacturing plant in 2009.

The company operates out of a 30,000-square foot downtown Cleveland facility. There are 50 employees pressing about 100,000 records per month with individual manufacturing orders ranging from 100 discs to 60,000 records.

“We don’t do a ton of major label business. It’s usually under very specific circumstances,” said Earley. “Most of our accounts are pretty independent-leaning. The majors have supply contracts in place with a couple of extremely large pressing plants that opened up around 2021 or 2022. Most of the major label work, or most of the frontline giant artists like Taylor Swift pressings will go to them.

“But we are almost always booked at capacity. We try to make sure we are covering the needs of our regular customers who have been with us a long time, before we take on work outside of that.”

Earley operates the business today alongside co-founder Slusarz’s son, Vincent Slusarz, Jr. It is positive sign when a younger generation moves into the manufacturing business and perhaps even more welcome when younger people are purchasing the product.

While streaming and digital downloads remain the strongest source for music listening, the vinyl record business in 2025 surpassed $1 billion in U.S. annual revenue for the first time in more than 40 years. There were approximately 47 million records sold marking the 19th consecutive year of growth, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

“All the statistics that I have been told within the industry is that the U.S. is the largest market for vinyl sales,” said Earley. “Sales at the retail level have skyrocketed in the last five or six years and during the pandemic. I know that level of growth has tailed off but it still remains at a very, very high level. Even if it is growing slowly on a percentage basis, it is still growing.

“I would say the majority of records are still sold in record stores and a close second would be the internet at this point.”

Vinyl records dominated the music listening market for more than 50 years until cassette tapes and CDs (compact discs) came along with a convenient physical size and user-friendly player machines. During the 1990s, vinyl records were flirting with extinction but die-hard baby boomers with large record collections and an ear for the old analog sound kept the death knell at bay.

And, along with so much contemporary music, the favorite music from artists of the 1960s and 70s made a comeback to younger generations.

“We’ve done the Doobie Brothers, James Taylor, Fleetwood Mac and in terms of new artists we’ve done a Beyonce record,” said Earley. “Jason Isbell is a big country guy and we do almost all of his stuff. Turnpike Troubadours are also in that genre, and we do a lot of their stuff.

“We do a lot of neo soul. There is a record label called Colemine and another called Daptone, and we do almost all of their records. The two genres we do the most of at this point is that neo soul and alt country and that just happens to be because two of our largest customers fall into those genres.”

In addition to pressing 33 1/3 rpm albums and 45 rpm discs, Gotta Groove also operates a masters plating facility in Columbus, Ohio. A quality master disc, either lacquered or copper, is the essential first step in producing a high-quality vinyl disc.

“We do a ton of 45s,” added Earley. “A lot of DJs buy into that genre and people today are big fans of that genre. It’s a very singles-oriented genre.”

So, record buying habits have seem to almost come full circle. In the 1950s and 60s it was the adolescents purchasing the two-song 45s with full albums appealing to a more discerning listener.

“Most of our stuff is new titles but we do some reissues as well,” said Earley. “Reissues are not as big as the new music market but it is still big.

“The sales skew younger and younger every year, it seems. And practically everything that comes out now comes out in vinyl in some format.”

Click here for a complete list of records available exclusively on Record Store Day.

The Alliance for American Manufacturing does not receive a commission from purchases made through the above links, nor was the organization or author paid for favorable coverage.

Labeling Note: This story is intended to highlight companies that support American jobs and that make great products in the United States. We rely on the companies listed to provide accurate information regarding their domestic operations and their products. Each company featured is individually responsible for labeling and advertising their products according to applicable standards, such as the Federal Trade Commission’s “Made in USA” standard or California’s “Made in USA” labeling law. We do not review individual products for compliance or claim that because a company is listed in the guide that their products comply with specific labeling or advertising standards. Our focus is on supporting companies that create American jobs.

For more on the Federal Trade Commission’s standards for “Made in USA” claims and California’s “Made in USA” labeling law, please also read this guest post by Dustin Painter and Kristi Wolff of Kelly Drye & Warren, LLP.