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Not old news to me, as I don't follow it. I do think the increase in demand is a good thing, and there's every chance that those difficulties will be overcome sometime.
Oliver Schick-
I'm sorry to say I don't believe that the big labels will change their mode of operation. There are very few factories capable of pressing big numbers and none of them have a reputation worth a light dating back many years.
There are a few good pressing plants but the majors don't use them. It's just a massive opportunity missed because they've licensed these albums to independents like Music Matters or Analogue Productions, Mofi etc in the past for limited release and those records are selling for multiples of their original price.
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I am into more people getting into vinyl, I mean I sell it too and it's great to have customers for records I don't play anymore. That's the problem though, I can't sell a poorly pressed or damaged record in good faith and keep my reputation.
Airhead
Well this is kind of old news at the moment. Vinyl production has been lurching from one crisis to another for some years. Any time they try to speed up the process it results in faults. Lack of capacity meant the big factories were overstretched and the quality control in some of them was very poor, changed to be not so bad and then lapsed again due to changes brought about by the pandemic.
Analog mastering has been a fully confirmed part of the 'vinyl revolution' plenty of collectors insist on it and there are a few ways to go about it. Another approach is half speed mastering which is a largely digital cutting process. Abbey Road are consistently f**king that up on behalf of the British.
The few names in the world for mastering right now are all well known working out of well established studios. Kevin Gray came under a lot of scrutiny when people started hearing pitchy pianos in the Blue Note Tone Poet series.
The mastering on the 80th series is very good but they've let it all down with the pressing and handling of the records in the factory. So now the mastering barely matters because so many sides are damaged from the off. I suppose in percentage terms only a tiny part of the musical content is affected but it's really annoying!