Moon- I buy mostly old copies, so whether to clean isn't a question for me. As to new records, and I buy some, my experience varies- some copies, often the ones that aren't from the fancy reissue houses, are pretty dirty right out of the sleeve. Visible sleeve lint, the occasional fingerprint or smear from handling, etc. The reason I clean new vinyl is that in playing for the first time, I don't want to grind that stuff into the grooves. Then there's the stuff you can't see.... Perhaps it is out of an excess of caution in those cases, but my cleaning processes aren't harming the record, and are adjusted to meet the apparent issues of a given record. I'm not dogmatic about any of this- do what you think is appropriate- i have records I cleaned and resleeved back in the '80s that I've pulled out and played for the first time in decades and they were fine.
As to mold release, I think the issue is overblown.
The first proper cleaning machine I saw was a Monks, at Opus One in Pittsburgh in the early '70s. RCMs really didn't become common until VPI and Nitty Gritty (at least in the States, dunno about elsewhere) started marketing machines that were more reasonably priced. And there was very little choice for fluids- that market seemed to really explode after the Death of Vinyl (tm), I got my first RCM (a VPI) in the early '80s. But my attention to methods and results really didn't snap into focus until far more recently, when I started to seriously collect good pressings (used for the most part) and cull through the thousands and thousands of records that I had accumulated with a vengeance starting in the mid-'80s. Once I started to explore this more seriously, I realized that a casual run through a machine did not necessarily = a clean record. This became more apparent with old records from the late '60s and early '70s that I bought in the last several years. Whether it was bad past cleaning (which left water, cleaning fluid or other contaminants bonded to the surface), cigarette smoke or cooking fumes, or just handling from 40 plus years, some of these records really needed more than a fast once over in an RCM. That's when I started to look at this more closely, to try and figure out what methods worked most effectively. Answer: it depends. :)
As to mold release, I think the issue is overblown.
The first proper cleaning machine I saw was a Monks, at Opus One in Pittsburgh in the early '70s. RCMs really didn't become common until VPI and Nitty Gritty (at least in the States, dunno about elsewhere) started marketing machines that were more reasonably priced. And there was very little choice for fluids- that market seemed to really explode after the Death of Vinyl (tm), I got my first RCM (a VPI) in the early '80s. But my attention to methods and results really didn't snap into focus until far more recently, when I started to seriously collect good pressings (used for the most part) and cull through the thousands and thousands of records that I had accumulated with a vengeance starting in the mid-'80s. Once I started to explore this more seriously, I realized that a casual run through a machine did not necessarily = a clean record. This became more apparent with old records from the late '60s and early '70s that I bought in the last several years. Whether it was bad past cleaning (which left water, cleaning fluid or other contaminants bonded to the surface), cigarette smoke or cooking fumes, or just handling from 40 plus years, some of these records really needed more than a fast once over in an RCM. That's when I started to look at this more closely, to try and figure out what methods worked most effectively. Answer: it depends. :)