Round like a record, baby

As visionary business ideas go, it’s hardly in the same league as Facebook or the iPhone, but the need for one is so obvious that you can’t help wondering: why the hell didn’t anyone think of it before?

There hasn’t been a record-pressing plant in New Zealand since the dawning of the era of the compact disc in the late 1980s, when EMI — rumour has it — dumped their machine in the sea to rust away like an old shipwreck.

And despite the incredible revival of the vinyl record industry, until now enterprising musicians and record labels have had to send off their audio files