đź“° PMDC Propaganda Blog
🛑 Paper and Plastic Cartel
In the so-called vinyl revival, a powerful cartel has quietly formed, exploiting the very foundation of what once made records revolutionary. This isn't a cartel of musicians or DJs, but of paper vendors, plastic brokers, and middlemen monopolizing the means of vinyl production. Companies like Colonial Purchasing and Making Vinyl are the gatekeepers of record manufacturing—not because they make the music, but because they control the raw materials.
These entities have convinced American record labels and indie artists that colored PVC, embossed jackets, and bulk-ordered sleeves are what define vinyl culture. But that's a lie. They don't sell lacquer blanks. They don't support stylus cutters. They don't manufacture or distribute any of the precision tools actually required to make records. Instead, they sell glitter and packaging—smoke and mirrors designed to distract from the real work of record production.
What’s worse, they've built an economic trap. These cartels encourage dependency on international shipping lanes, delay-laden import processes, and material markups that hurt small U.S. lathe cutters and record artisans. By controlling color, paper, and pellets, they lure American producers into a model of production that’s fundamentally extractive—disconnected from community, disconnected from the artist, and disconnected from the radical DIY ethos that gave rise to the dub plate, the test press, the acetate.
The Pure Michigan Dub Coalition sees through this. We reject the paper and plastic cartel. We cut records in our garages. We print zines on home copiers. We master tracks in basements and blast bass into forest canopies. Our records aren’t wrapped in shrink wrap—they’re hand-cut with diamond styli. They’re stamped with our identity, not outsourced logos.
The cartel wants us to believe we need them. That without imported sleeves or pink vinyl pellets, our records have no value. But our value comes from what we create—not what we consume. The real record culture was always in the hands of the makers, the dub crews, the soundsystems, and the bedroom producers pushing their craft forward with whatever tools they had.
Historically, America made it all: the cutting lathes, the lacquers, the styli, the pressing plants. And we can again. But only if we break free from the illusion of necessity imposed by the cartel. Only if we stop fetishizing factory shrink-wrapped pressings and start honoring the raw energy of a lathe-cut dubplate handed to a selector just hours before the dance.
The PMDC stands as a guerrilla response to the corporate capture of vinyl. We are not a business. We are not a brand. We are a coalition. And we invite every cutter, dub artist, and sound warrior to reclaim the craft and resist the commercial script. Print your own jackets. Build your own tables. Trade knowledge. Make zines. Ditch the dependency.
Because vinyl doesn’t need color variants to be sacred. It needs spirit, courage, and community. We’ve seen through the paper and plastic lie. And we’re not buying it.