Since 2007, vinyl record sales have seen a massive resurgence worldwide -- and riding that wave is a Czech Republic-based company called GZ Media.
The factory, originally called Gramofonove Zavody (Gramophone Record) Lodenice, pressed its first vinyl record in 1951 and was the main producer of vinyl records for the Eastern Bloc. Even as vinyl faded from popularity toward the end of the 1980s, when CDs became the dominant format, GZ Media saved all of its record-pressing machines.
Yet while CD sales declined 14.5% last year, vinyl sales grew 32% from 4.5 million units sold in 2012 to 6 million sold in 2013, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Today, GZ Media is the world's biggest vinyl record producer; it has pressed more than 10.5 million records in 2013 alone. With production increasing 40% per year, its factory in Lodenice, just outside of Prague, is still expanding. GZ handles the pressings for some some pop and rock acts you may have heard of, like The Beatles, Abba, David Bowie and The Rolling Stones.