Does EMI Uden still exist?

Does EMI Uden still exist?

Recently, within the past 2 or 3 months, I bought

1) Roxy Music entire remastered catalogue (except Country Life. already have that)
2) Deep Purple - Fireball & Machine Head remasters
3) Coldplay - Parachutes

None of them are EMI Uden discs. They are either
1) www.takt.eu
2) www.imsgroup.it
3) Optimal Media Prodcution


I already had Parachutes in the 2 CD+DVD Coldplay package, but I bought it again as an individual disc for the artwork.

The top picture is the individual disc from takt.eu and the bottom is EMI Uden disc from the 2CD+DVD package.
http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j228/landofarh/Uploads/IMG_0979small.jpg
You can see the text on the takt.eu disc is extremely blocky, compared to the finer EMI one.

I didn't buy Deep Purple In Rock but I see the latest versions don't have the autographs on the cover now.


Anyway, I did a little research and found out EMI closed its Uden plant in 2004.
http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cach...ress6.htm+emi+uden+factory&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk

I'm very sure I've bought discs after 2004 which were still Uden so I don't think the press release is that accurate.

So has Uden finally closed for good now?

 

Can't help, but I do remember that the original Uden Deep Purple In Rock had errors on it, even though it was supposed to be corrected.

A remixed and extended anniversary edition was first issued with a slaughtered version of "Living wreck" and a prematurely cut-off version of "Hard lovin' man". This was soon corrected though. In case of doubt, according to Simon Robinson (in DTB 48:7), one way to tell a corrected release from a faulty one is by reading the shiny side of the actual disc: the faulty one says "EMI Swindon" while the corrected one says "EMI Uden". We are told by fans that discs printed with "EMI UK" also are faulty. Happy hunting!

 

I hope that EMI Uden is closed. The quality of their CD's was mostly awfull, IMHO.

 

I think this may be the anser:

http://www.pinkfloydarchives.com/DNLCDPF.htm

1. 1983 - In 1983, CDs that were made in Japan for export were sold in the Netherlands. These Japanese CDs had black labels with silver text.
2. 2002 - In March, 2002, EMI announced that it was closing its CD manufacturing plant in Swindon, England and was switching its CD manufacturing for Europe to its Uden, Netherlands plant.
3. 2004 - In March 2004, MediaMotion, a member of the Dutch ECF Group, purchased EMI's Uden manufacturing facility and entered into a long term agreement to exclusively manufacture all of EMI's CDs for the European market.


Since 2005, if I am not mistaken, my EMI discs have mediamotion written on matrix. The first non "EMI UDEN" I bought was probably Gorillaz's "Demon Days"


Matrix numbers for some post-2004 EMI releases:

Gorillaz - Demon Days
www. MEDIAMOTION.COM 31116882 @ 2 010805-NL

Paul McCartney - Chaos and creation in the backyard
www. MEDIAMOTION.COM 3379592 @ 2 020210-NL

Sigur Ros- Takk
WWW. MEDIAMOTION.COM 3372522 @ 1 010107-NL

Kate Bush - Aerial: A sea of honey
WWW. MEDIAMOTION.COM 3439612 @ 3 030109-NL

 

In what way? Please explain.

 

Judging by the photo in my original post, at least Uden is better than takt.eu.

 

The Dutch leg of EMI still has its office in Uden, but CD production has stopped in 2004, judging by this article (in Dutch, unfortunately):

http://www.nu.nl/economie/300646/emi-stopt-cd-productie-in-uden.html

Marcel is correct - MediaMotion took over EMI's CD production. EMI doesn't produce any discs by themselves anymore, not even in the UK and US.

Being Dutch, I have lots of EMI Uden produced CD's. Seems to me they're more than OK. Never had a problem with any of these, AFAIK.

 

That seems a bit strange. I have Blur - Leisure and Radiohead - Pablo Honey that are EMI Swindon. They were bought probably in 2006-2007.

The latest EMI Uden disc I have bought is Roxy Music's Country Life bought brand new in 2009.

So I'm sure Uden and Swindon didn't close according to those dates specified.


Nowadays, it's not just MediaMotion, it's extreme outsourcing! takt and imsgroup as well.

 

I seem to remember reading an article a few years ago which mentioned that the actual EMI Uden pressing plant closed down. I guess MediaMotion discs come from another pressing plant, looking at the matrix numbers posted earlier obviously still in the Netherlands.

 

A lot of the discs were mastered lousy, but I've never had any trouble with the actual discs. All of them play perfectly.

 

Sometimes you'll find the Swindon glass plate on the Uden pressing.

 

Are you saying bad "production mastering" was done at the plant? Or the plant used a lot of bad "pre-mastering" (the digital files made by a mastering engineer) for its production?

 

Well, the quality control of the discs themselves was what I was referring to. Many EMI remasters suck, but that's a different story. EMI Uden never did any mastering, they just pressed the discs.

I just did another search and came up with a Dutch article that stated that MediaMotion went bankrupt at the end of 2008. It was a disaster for the region - a few hundred people lost their job.
The main reason for bankruptcy appeared to be that EMI didn't order enough discs anymore. I also read that the French division of the MediaMotion pressing plant closed at around the same time. It appears to me that EMI sold all of their pressing plants in Europe.

I'm haven't found out yet where EU EMI discs are manufactured at the moment, but it certainly won't be in Uden, Holland, anymore.

 

This takt.eu facility has its origin in Polish Takt 'label' which started in the early 90's. They were then basically pirates who were making cheap cassettes with mostly re-ordered track listings and uneven sound quality and poor graphics, but those cassettes were widely sold at many 'official' stores in my country (and prices weren't that low). Later in the 90's the Polish authorities somehow re-organised this facility and made it very powerful and legal manufacturer with normal quality control.

 

I think you missed the 2 links in my first post.

 

Yes, EMI UDEN was closed and sold in 2004. Now manufacture of EMI UDEN is a part of MediaMotion. EMI UDEN was established in 1989. The first 6 moths was offline test pressing. First CDs from EMI UDEN came out arround 1990. EMI UDEN was established to support EMI SWINDON cd plant, wich is close also from 2002. Most of EMI UDEN pressings was distributed and sold it in continental Europe (Holland/Germany/Belgium).

Now takt.eu is the official pressing plant where EMI release his albums for Europe.

BTW: TAKT is a Polish pressings plant situated in Bolesław and was established in 1991.

Hope this helps

 

That's interesting. But it seems their CD label printing is still not as good as EMI Uden judging by the Coldplay CD.


I feel disappointed that all EMI discs bought brand new nowadays will be subpar to the EMI Uden discs.

Not just the CD but the jewel cases as well. For the Deep Purple Machine Head remaster I bought, they didn't use the usual 2CD flip-out-to-right jewel case, where the bottom and top of the front cover has a long rectangular cut-out to fit the middle flipping section. (I hope you know what I mean!)

They used something like a regular jewel case modified to fit in 2 CDs instead. It feels much less firm then the original jewel case.

 

I was referring to the pre-mastering. A lot of the CDs pressed there were bright or compressed remasters of classic EMI music. Of course that's not EMI Uden's fault, they're just pressing whatever bad files EMI is giving them. The actual discs are fine quality for sure, never had a single problem with them.

 

Thats true! TAKT have very uncertain past. They released pirated copys at the begening (around 1990), but there was a very hard time to Polish Economy and Music Industry (end of Communist rule in Poland 1989/1990) Now TAKT is the bigest CD manufacture in Poland. They press a lot of discs evry month (around 16 million CDs)

http://www.takt.com.pl/

Cheers

 

My most recent EMI purchases were Beatles stereo remastered discs; they are pressed by optimal, a Germany based pressing plant

http://www.press-here.de/Home.357.0.html?&L==" onfocus="blurLink(this);

 

The discs quality of EMI UDEN plant was not that bad! I've never seen bad copy of EMI UDEN pressings.

 

The most funny part of this story is that they didn't change their logo. I still have a couple of those early 90's bootlegs as well as later official cassettes and discs, when you compare them it's hard to believe that they could have anything in common, but the logo tells the truth.

 

Thanks for that clarification.

I've had a few Udens with a sticky edge on the disc, which feels like the lacquer has not set properly. The discs played fine though. Has anyone else experienced this?

 

But they are not sticky like Nimbus discs?