Vinyl duplication vs. CD

[Gentleman Jim]

So... are we crazy? Or are we really 'on to something?'

That depends on whether or not you're going to actually promote the damn thing. Are you planning to just bring a suitcase full of them to each show and expect to sell 25 or 30? Because that's probably not going to happen, even at $5 apiece, half of the price you're suggesting. Selling cd's at shows takes real effort, and that's something that most band members I've seen aren't willing to do because they see it as cheesy hucksterism. It's easier to sit behind a table drinking a beer and talking to a friend who's sitting next to them while failing to make any eye contact with potential customers who pass by.

What you should be budgeting for, and what most self-released artists don't consider, is a freelance publicist and some advertising/marketing. The marketing budget of any business is a prime indicator of its success and failure. And make no mistake, as you shell out $3,000+ and hope to recover at least that much, you're in essence starting a small business.

[qued]

Last year we released an album and did both CD and vinyl for it.

If your hoping to sell vinyl online keep in mind the shipping (proper boxes and postage) costs a lot, almost $10 per record. Say you press 300 records (minimum order for many plants), it will cost about $2800, so you need to be collecting $20 per shipped record to just break even. Not trying to discourage you from pressing records, I'm really glad we did, just relaying my experience with it.

Maybe it's changing now, but I have heard radio is not too interested in e-mail about downloads, they would just be flooded with too many to get through. It seems like sending a CD to every station is the minimum price of admission for getting any airplay.

Lastly, we sold about the same amount of vinyl and CD's online, sold more downloads than anyting else though. Same at venues and stores, half CD's half vinyl.

[kslight]

Having downloads available instead of other formats is not so much gutless as it is a response to the state of the music industry in general as well as the economy. If you can pool together the money to make 1000 CDs that you will struggle to sell just to say you did and to make you feel like you believe in your music...go for it, I'm not dismissing your drive. However I don't feel like a monetary commitment implies that the music is not gutless or whatever, at this stage you do what you can afford and try to get people exposed to it...that is the intent. There is this illusion of grandeur built in to the marketing of Diskmakers and similar companies that imply how you can get 1000 and recoup your expenses so fast...like having a 1000 CDs pressed and getting a bar code will get you into best buy and people will be lined up to buy it.. The biggest value in pressing CDs at this stage is if you choose to be your own publicist and send them out at your expense to publications and college radio...and for the handful that will buy them...recouping expenses would be great but not something to count on. But really the idea of small bands selling CDs at shows today is about dead...in the 90s you might have had a good shot at selling some because people couldn't go online and find every song and album ever released on torrent sites...but today your sale is exponentially harder and working against you. If you're going to sell a product and you're having trouble getting your music heard, then something is not working about your current strategy. You should think about applying additional money towards a publicist or artist management company, or if you're not wanting to go that level yet, maybe you need to book some more shows regionally, or think about how you are currently promoting your shows? An artist management company won't do all the work for you, but they do a lot as far as breaking down walls that unsigned bands don't have access to (ie: press releases on major news sites, most radio stations don't take mp3s over email and then getting them to play it...) and making connections, possibly booking you more meaningful gigs in supporting positions, etc... You can book some shows but it gets old playing to the bartender and the sound guy, or the same group of people, maybe branch out, and be there handing out flyers at other shows to try to rally people there...spamming Facebook,etc only does so much.

[Chris_Meck]

I think you need to have all three.

You need some CD's for what you need them for. You need downloadable stuff for ipod people, and I think having vinyl says something, too.

You can get like 300 discs on a spindle for like $500 or less. Make up some custom packaging. That's way better than a plastic case. You can get records done with download cards for the rest. Don't sweat the big run, just get some of what you need across the board. Order more when you need 'em.

Just my .02

Chris

[Judas Jetski]

Having downloads available instead of other formats is not so much gutless as it is a response to the state of the music industry in general as well as the economy.

Yeah, sorry about that. What I should have said is something more like "on a certain level, downloads seem gutless to fans and potential fans." I know they aren't gutless, and I know none of you guys who are out there selling downloads are gutless.

We're living and operating in a part of the country where people aren't easily swayed. At all. Even a little. Which is part of what we love about ... here, and part of why we want to make music for ... here. But it sure don't make things easy.

We've been playing some of these songs for a long time, and putting out small runs of short EPs on CD-R. We've had some success this way, but the effort involved in making these short runs exceeds the benefit. One succinct collection of all the "old standbys" would make things easier for everyone, would draw a line in the sand (so to speak), and hopefully prime the pump for the next release (of newer tunes).

'Course that also means our longer-term fans might not want to buy this new CD, 'cause they've already heard a lot of it.

[Judas Jetski]

It seems like we're kind of banging our head against the lid of our local box, here, and need more regional exposure. I think we're probably at the point where relentless years of touring might pay off, but that's not possible right now. And besides, touring would mean hitting all the places where there's a lot of infrastructure already, and the places where we want to play don't have a lot of infrastructure.

We really might need someone to promote us, as much as we need the full-length record.

[Nick Sevilla]

It seems like we're kind of banging our head against the lid of our local box, here, and need more regional exposure. I think we're probably at the point where relentless years of touring might pay off, but that's not possible right now. And besides, touring would mean hitting all the places where there's a lot of infrastructure already, and the places where we want to play don't have a lot of infrastructure.

We really might need someone to promote us, as much as we need the full-length record.

Hi JudasJetski,

You never responded my questions, so I will ass-u-me that those would be negative answers. Please correct me if I am incorrect there.

You need to stop stopping yourselves from achieving your goals.

In case you missed this :

You need to stop stopping yourselves from achieving your goals.

What is stopping you from taking it to the people? What people do you want to reach, and where are they?

What is infrastructure? The term is so vague in your post, it really needs some clearer definition, and also have that tied into why it is an obstacle.

At the risk of being sued by Nike, : "Just Do It"

Logical

[Judas Jetski]

Oh! Sorry, I thought I had answered those questions earlier. Now that I look back, I see that I did not do so (at least not in a direct fashion).

1.- Do you have a distribution deal?

2.- Do you know of any fans which will in fact purchase Vinyl records?

1. No. And I'm not sure we want one. I'm also not sure we don't.

2. Perhaps, but not many. CDs, on the other hand, I know we can move.

3. What's stopping us from taking our music to the people who want to hear it is a complicated mix of personal, financial, economic and cultural factors.

4. By infrastructure, I mean good live music venues, well-connected distributors, and possibly good live music promotion.

5. Nike, I don't think you need to worry about. Sanrio? I'd worry. They're some evil mothers. But Nike, not so much.

[Nick Sevilla]

Hi Judas,

If you send me 1 CD, I will get it to my friend, who is a Music Director for a company who distributes a weekly radio music service worldwide.

They service the entire world outside the US, and when I last worked there, had almost 5000 radio companies as clients.

Hopefully this can help get your music heard somewhere.

Maybe you'll be the next big thing in Kuala Lumpur.

Logical

[mikoo69]

Hi this is Mike, guitarist from Grandfather (we were mentioned in this thread)

To discuss our business model, we printed 1000 CDs with 10 different album covers all hand-stamped, to save on screen-printing and packaging costs. We did not expect to sell many CDs, but wanted to have them for various promotions. For instance, non-commercial radio-stations still want a professional CD. Certain promoters, bookers, bloggers, writers, still value owning a physical version of your record and it's not practical to send a vinyl album to all of them. Some people still value CDs and use CD players in their cars, etc.

We initially planned on burning 200 CD-Rs ourselves because we knew it was unrealistic to sell 1000. We are a new band, this is our first record, etc. However, once we compared the cost of burning 200 CD-Rs (including the time it would take to do it), it actually made more sense to get 1000 professionally printed.

Good thing we did this, because we have already gone through over 400 CDs. Not many have sold individually, but as package deals, and as promotions, we have gotten a lot of use out of them.

The cheapest method we found:
Nationwide Disc = 1000 CD replication with CD Face artwork
Nationwide Disc = 1000 matte eco-sleeves
Bags Unlimited = 1000 polysleeves (to protect the art an seal the jackets - reusable, unlike shrink wrap)
Village Impressions = custom clear rubber stamps for artwork

Pictures:
http://grandfathermusic.com/site/?p=3031
http://grandfathermusic.com/site/?p=3023
http://grandfathermusic.com/site/?p=3014

Mike
Guitarist, Grandfather
www.grandfathermusic.com

[Judas Jetski]

Mike, that's awesome. Thanks for the info. Totally appreciate you unpacking that whole scenario for us.

We've decided to go with Spinergy. They're right here in town, not five minutes away by car. When we realized how close they were... and after talking to a couple other local musicians... we decided it was really a no-brainer. They can give us most of what Diskmakers can, duplication itself is competitively priced, and we don't have to pay for shipping. We're getting 500 done instead of the full 1000, but we're saving almost half the cost by keeping it local. Which means we'll be saving almost enough money to get the next CD duplicated. So now, instead of having 800 identical CDs sitting in boxes in the closet, we can have 800 CDs of two different varieties sitting in the closet.

We're messing around with Bandcamp as well. There really is a LOT of potential there. I didn't get it before, because I didn't have a Facebook before. But now I've got me a Facebook, and I'm seeing how it, and MySpace, and Wordpress could probably be all hooked together to make a pretty legitimate on-line presence. It's kind of exciting.

[chris harris]

It's an unfortunate reality that if you're not touring, you'll have a VERY DIFFICULT TIME selling records, CDs, or downloads. That's just a fact. I assume that those of you who feel like your music is great and you just need some exposure or a little luck, are probably having a somewhat difficult time getting blogs or magazines to pay attention to your band, as well. That's no coincidence. They don't really care much about bands unless they're touring.

Another harsh reality is that despite all of the "sky is falling" nonsense you'll hear from some old timers about the state of music these days, the truth is that there are shitloads of great bands out there making killer records. The biggest difference between them and the bands that you know and love, is that NEARLY EVERY SINGLE ONE the bands that you know and love toured their asses off promoting their record. Many of them would consider the whole "touring isn't practical for us right now" thing to be a bit of a gutless move. Everyone who's ever been on a tour in a van has made sacrifices to do so. It's fucking hard. But, it is the single biggest difference between great bands that get tons of attention and great bands that don't.

Oh, and listen to Gentleman Jim. He's right on. In addition to touring, hiring a quality publicist will make a HUGE difference. If you tour as much as possible and have a good publicist making sure that blogs and magazines are paying attention to you, then you have the best chance of getting the most people to take a chance on your band. If you do all of these things, and have a good record, you shouldn't have much trouble making your money back.

[chris harris]

We're messing around with Bandcamp as well. There really is a LOT of potential there. I didn't get it before, because I didn't have a Facebook before. But now I've got me a Facebook, and I'm seeing how it, and MySpace, and Wordpress could probably be all hooked together to make a pretty legitimate on-line presence. It's kind of exciting.

Bandcamp is amazing. Though, I opted not to give them a cut of physical releases for our band, or any bands on my label. All they provide is a click through. They're not keeping inventory or running to the post office. I am. So, we sell our physical releases online via Paypal buttons. There's a small Paypal transaction fee. But, you pay that with Bandcamp also.

I'm also a little disappointed in the way that they have implemented their fees. It's a nightmare for label accounting.

So, we're mostly using them now for streaming (which is also no longer free) because of their great player, and for download codes (also not free) which are cheap and seriously convenient.

I still love Bandcamp. I'm just learning how it can work best for me and the records that I release.

[bellulah]

I like whoever posted the idea earlier to just get a spindle and do some special packaging.

For example, Oasis CD can do a spindle of 300 replicated CD's for $420. Then go to Bags Unlimited (or someplace similar) and get some blank cardboard/chipboard cases. It's like $10 for 25 of them. Start with that small quantity and do whatever you want! If you need an insert getting a few dozen printed at Kinko's on nice quality paper or cardstock is just as cheap. You can even buy do-it-yourself shrinkwrap at craft stores.

If you need to get this thing online, hit up CD Baby. You won't have a barcode, but they'll find a way to get your CD on their site, and consequently on iTunes and all the other big guns.

If you are thinking of vinyl, my recommendation there is to get a small run of 7" singles done. Most companies will do quantities as low as 100-300, and for a plain old 7" that'll probably be between $500-$600. I don't know if that's in the budget or not, but if you can move some of those that's a cheaper way to judge your audience's vinyl interest that $2500 to get a full LP pressed.

Just an opinion! I'm launching a new music project this year and that's probably the way I'll go. I'm flying solo too, so I have to think of cost b/c I don't have bandmates to help out.

At any rate, good luck to you! Keep us posted!

[mikoo69]

Vinyl Pressings Plants usually offer one-strike pressings for 100 copies of a 12" or 7" vinyl that is affordable. Around $500-$600 for 100 vinyl.

In terms of funding this money, consider starting a fundraiser on Kickstarter.com for the pressing costs. That way, you can pay for everything up front and not have to "make back" your money.

We raised $1,400 which covered the entire cost of our limited 300 vinyl pressing.

Mike
Guitarist, Grandfather
www.grandfathermusic.com