Hanau, February 19, 2020 – At the last meeting of the MEDIA-TECH Association which was held in November 2019 the members voted to dissolve the organization and cease operations before the end of 2020.
The MEDIA-TECH Association was founded in November 2001 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, to serve every facet of the optical and removable storage media manufacturing industry, spanning the range from all current formats of optical discs and magnetic media to future format Blu-ray Disc.
The founding companies included M2 (Sweden), ODME (Netherlands), Dr. Schenk (Germany), SINGULUS TECHNOLOGIES (Germany), Steag Hamatech (Germany) and Tapematic (Italy). The common goal was the preparation and organization of trade fairs and conferences for the media manufacturing industry in Europe and the USA and then went on to organize events successfully globally.
Member companies of the association ranged from content owners and licensees through designers and software developers, to raw material and equipment manufacturers. They were involved in the entertainment industry, the games market, data storage innovations, plastics technology, injection molding, quality assurance, printing, packing, wrapping and distribution, sales and marketing, and many other areas of expertise within the media manufacturing industry.
As an association, the MEDIA-TECH Association provided its members with a forum for information, discussion and exchange of ideas, as well as ways to develop business opportunities and strategic partnerships. The group also successfully negotiated various licensing programs, which in return saved its members millions of Euros in decreased licensing fees. The association made its successful debut with the MEDIA-TECH Expo 2002, the international trade fair for manufacturing technology in the field of optical disc in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Close to 200 exhibitors attracted several thousand visitors from all over the world. Another event of the association was the MEDIA-TECH Showcase & Conference, a technology conference with an accompanying exhibition. The showcase was rotated with the MEDIA-TECH Expo between the US and Europe annually. MEDIA-TECH has also represented companies from the vinyl record industry since 2018 and most recently co-organized a leading B2B conference for this segment in Berlin in 2019 together with Making Vinyl. Making Vinyl has brought together representatives from the world’s leading pressing plants, suppliers, record labels, packaging companies, distributors and retailers. Frank Hartwig, Managing Director of CDA, Suhl, Germany, and President of the MEDIA-TECH Association: “The continuously changing behavior of consumers with a worldwide increase in the spread of broadband access and thus also online services has a clearly impact on the further development of physical media. This affects all optical media: CD, DVD and also the Blu-ray Disc.” Frank Hartwig continues: “Our member companies have been reorienting themselves for years and focusing their activities on new markets. Only the vinyl record has been showing increasing sales. Some of our member companies have therefore been involved in a new association founded in 2019,
the “Vinyl Alliance“.” Under the name “Vinyl Alliance”, eleven companies from all areas of the record industry have come together to form a new industry association that is to represent their interests worldwide. The founding meeting of the “Vinyl Alliance” took place in Vienna, Austria and then announced for the first time at the Making Vinyl Conference 2019 in Hollywood. The founding members include GZ Media and MPO, two of the largest European press plants, as well as established hardware manufacturers such as Ortofon, Pro-Ject and Audio Technica, along with Rebeat Innovation. Sony Music and Universal Music Group are now also members. The aim of the industry association is to cover all stages of vinyl record production, i.e. mastering and manufacturing, hardware and software solutions and retail. Make Vinyl great(er) again The members of the “Vinyl Alliance” want to combine their resources to strengthen the position of vinyl records in a digital world. Bryan Ekus the co-founder of the Alliance and the founder of Making Vinyl stated, “The Association is welcoming new members and will offer global representation and valuable services to the industry as a whole, as well as its members by pooling resources in research, quality and marketing activities.”
Join the “Vinyl Alliance” and strengthen the industry through cooperation, exchange of ideas and awareness. Membership information is available on http://vinylalliance.org.
MEDIA-TECH e.V. press contact:
Bernhard Krause, MetaCom GmbH Im Ranzeneck 1, 63454 Hanau, Tel: +49 (0) 6181 9 82 80 20 Email: [email protected]
Vinyl Alliance e.V press contact:
Bryan Ekus Phone: +1 407 733 1901 Email: [email protected]
