POPULAR TUNES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27040, 26 March 1949, Page 6

POPULAR TUNES

RECORDS TO BE PRESSED IN NEW ZEALAND EXPEDITING DELIVERY Collectors of gramophone records who have had some difficulty in purchasing copies of especially popular recoi’dings are likely to find that the difficulty has been overcome in the future. Retailers of records in the city have received advice from the distributing company that two of the most modern record presses in the southern hemisphere have been set up at the company’s factory at Kilbirme. and that it is intended to press recordings of popular tunes from the imported matrices in New Zealand in future. Until now, all recordings have had to be imported, the majority of them coming from the distributing company’s pressing plant at Homebush, m Australia. Despite repeated applications, it had not been found possjule to increase the quota allocated to New Zealand under the terms of the import regulations. For other than the socalled “popular recordings,” the quota had been fairly adequate, but orders for curi-ent “hit” numbers always far exceeded the number of recordings that could be supplied. Local retailers have been advised that, with the new equipment in operation, the company now hopes to be able to give dealers the actual number of any locally-pressed recording required and to deliver such recordings eai’lier than they could be obtained from overseas under the old system. No indication has been given as yet as to the possibility of the company making records by New Zealand entertainers for normal commercial release.