CD duplication - cost effective small run distribution

  • Thread starter Thread starter Pinky
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And Greg, is that the trusty Supraphonic? Mine sounded great all over our CD. It's nice not to have to EQ something all to hell to make it sound good.
 
I was looking to see if I can find any of my CD's in Google images, and sure enough, a few of them are there. Here's one. But the thing I just noticed is, who the fuck is the guy in the top corner with his arms crossed? That is not me, and I never uploaded a pic of myself with my CD. What the fuck is last FM and why did they put a random dude on my page? That's fucked up.

Rub Her Sole

EDIT: I clicked on his picture and he does Palestinian rap! :eek:
 
RAMI said:
I was looking to see if I can find any of my CD's in Google images, and sure enough, a few of them are there. Here's one. But the thing I just noticed is, who the fuck is the guy in the top corner with his arms crossed? That is not me, and I never uploaded a pic of myself with my CD. What the fuck is last FM and why did they put a random dude on my page? That's fucked up.

Rub Her Sole

EDIT: I clicked on his picture and he does Palestinian rap! :eek:
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Yeah, my stuff gets lumped in with another band of the same name on Amazon.
 
Lots of good info here, but I'm surprised no one pointed out the sun/heat issues with CD-Rs. Kunaki BURNS their CDs, just like you would at home; they are duplicated, NOT replicated. The main difference is a replicated CD (like one you would purchase at a record store) produces sound when the laser inside a CD player hits the surface of the disc and reads the bumps & pits; yes, there are *literally* microscopic peaks & valleys on the play surface of a replicated CD. Duplicated CDs (AKA burned CD-Rs) mimic these peaks & valleys when the burning/write laser etches or burns the peaks & valleys into a thin layer of chemical dye; said dye is why the play/burn side of a CD-R is often blue or green.

The problem here is that the dye is light & heat sensitive and can be altered or entirely destroyed by overexposure to direct sunlight or heat. So if you have no problem selling someone a product that *might* go bad if they leave it on the dashboard of their car on a hot summer day, then by all means, use a duplication company.

There are TONS of options for replicating CDs these days; CDBaby is my go-to company for numerous reasons. If you are not familiar with them, I *highly* recommend checking out their website; you'll be blown away by the sheer number of services they offer at very affordable prices.

Another thing to consider is where most replication/duplication houses make most of their profits: assembly, as in physically taking the finished CD; stuffing it into the packaging; and shrink-wrapping it. If yer a DIY-type of person and like me, have more time than money, I recommend jumping on Google and searching for the best price on a spindle of replicated CDs. "Spindle" means they will just send you the replicated CDs (with completed artwork) stacked on top of each other, in the same exact fashion as how blank CD-Rs are sometimes sold without cases. Then you can find a good print company (m13graphics.com is a Chicagoland printer I use frequently; their prices are awesome; customer service is great; and they ship anywhere) to print a cardboard sleeve, which you will have shipped to you unassembled. Then you can get out the glue gun; fold the cardboard prints (they should be scored for easy folding); glue them shut with the glue gun; and slip yer CD inside it. The only real drawback here is shrink-wrap: uline.com has a HUGE selection of pre-sized shrink-wrap sleeves made specifically for CDs, DVDs, vinyl, etc. That's the easy part. The drawback is in time: once you slip the cardboard sleeve containing yer CD into the shrink-wrap sleeve, you have to heat it in order for it to shrink and fit snugly around yer packaging; most people use hair dryers for this, but it is very time-consuming.

There are numerous benefits to releasing a CD this way; I find the main benefit to be flexibility: you can add materials to yer CD any time you want. For example, let's say you've got everything in front of you, ready to assemble, and you've got a show the next night. We will assume you sell 20 CDs a night on average. So you assemble 40 CDs to bring to sell at the show. A week later, you've got another show, but you've entered one of yer songs into an online competition and want to let people know to vote for you. So when you assemble the second batch of CDs, you slip in a little 4" x 4" flier you've designed & printed into the packaging before shrink-wrapping it; the flier tells the purchaser about the online contest and how to vote for you. See what I'm getting at?

I hope at least *some* of what I've written will help you or spark some ideas. Good luck!
 
Not bad ideas, but the issue with replication is that its not cost effective at all unless you order 1000 or more. Your order of 300 will be only $200 less than the 1000 order, there's no point. And lets face it.....no one here is going to sell 1000 CD's. I went the replication route for all the reasons you describe, and I still have 950 CD's in boxes at my parents house from an album I released in 2009.

If I could GUARANTEE that I could sell 1/4 of that (250 CDs) then yes I'll replicate, but if you can't guarantee that, then just go the burned route if you're going physical.
 
Seafroggys said:
Not bad ideas, but the issue with replication is that its not cost effective at all unless you order 1000 or more. Your order of 300 will be only $200 less than the 1000 order, there's no point. And lets face it.....no one here is going to sell 1000 CD's. I went the replication route for all the reasons you describe, and I still have 950 CD's in boxes at my parents house from an album I released in 2009.

If I could GUARANTEE that I could sell 1/4 of that (250 CDs) then yes I'll replicate, but if you can't guarantee that, then just go the burned route if you're going physical.
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You need to master the art of standing over people and making them buy a CD.... damnit! :) I've sold probably as many as I will now, apart from the odd straggler, and I'm ~ $500 up on my cost of manufacture (there were two of us). It helps working in a large company and having a large IT department who need me to sign their documentation off... :laughings: god knows if anyone ever listened to it!

On the other hand, I've had numerous people say "I don't DO CDs... I'll buy it on iTunes"... and this is my total digital revenue as at today for the project: Getting rich slowly.webp

So people say they'll buy things online but don't get around to it or were just trying to get rid of you... whereas if I'm standing there with a CD and can change any note they care to proffer, and it's payday... :D

Digital? 3 album downloads and a scattering of plays from various online radio stations... meh.
 
Seafroggys is definitely right about the price break between a 300-disc order and a 1000-disc order, but I just priced out "bulk" CD replication at discmakers.com, and even though the 1000-disc order is a much more economical purchase in the long run (at least where profit margins are concerned), the 300-disc order is still extremely cost-effective: after shipping, 300 full-length replicated CDs with full-color on-disc printing is only $318.30 (tax not included), which comes to $1.06 per disc. Add in the costs of DIY packaging (there are many options which affect the price of DIY packaging, so I'm going to estimate on the high end) and at most it will be $2.50 per disc, not counting the cost of the OP's time required to assemble it all. Even if you sold the discs for only $5, that's a 100% profit. So if you sold half of what you ordered, you'd break even.

If you went with the 1000-disc order, then the price of replication, full-color on-disc printing, and shipping (which is unsurprisingly where the majority of the price increase is, as 1000 CDs weigh a lot more than 300) is $448.30, which is only $.45 per disc (once again, tax not included). The cost of DIY packaging will come down (per disc, not total) as well, so I'd estimate (once again, on the high end) that the total per-disc cost would be $1.50. If you kept the sale price the same, then yer looking at a 143% profit. In this case, you'd only have to sell 1/3 of your total order to break even.

[NOTE: CDBaby is just a clearinghouse for Discmakers, meaning that CDBaby just sends all of their replication/duplication business to Discmakers. So the prices are the same.]

Another great option that I didn't see anyone mention is to have a company like Discmakers print your full-color art onto blank CD-Rs; then you can burn them yerself and package them as you need them. However, there are a few drawbacks to this method: 1) there is still the issue of sun and/or heat damaging the disc's data; b) unless you have a very high-quality CD-R burning drive (and sometimes even if you do), there will undoubtedly be times when your drive fails to burn the disc properly, and now a nicely-printed disc for which you've already paid is ruined and therefore cannot be sold; and 3) you *could* use some cheapo, consumer-level software to handle the burning process, but a pro-level program is pretty much a necessity, as it will provide you the right options to burn a disc with the proper technical standards such that the disc is guaranteed to play back on any system (as far as I know, the Red Book standard is still the most widely-accepted specification).

Hope that clarifies things a bit.
 
Funnily enough, I've sold two albums through Australia iTunes. I don't know how, but it happened. So your tracking sheet looks like mine. :D
 
That's where White's Tree Frog hails from, which is one of my favorite frogs. So you're probably onto something there :D
 
Johnny Don't - your points about replicated CDs and DIY packaging are all valid, but still assume selling 150 discs to break even (with a lot of work to do it!) As the rest have indicated, there just isn't that much sales potential for most of us here.
 
I have zero interest in having inventory laying around and/or collecting dust. My music isn't good enough to catch wind as the next great thing, I just do it for the little fan base I've accumulated and friends/family. Most of them will end up with free downloads from Bandcamp anyway, CDs are just an offering for collaborators as payment for their time/efforts and the rare few who still want that format. IMO compact discs are dead, we just haven't accepted it yet.
 
I think the opposite is true. People have accepted CD's are dead, but they still have value.

Not so much that CD's themselves still have value, but people want a physical object. Unfortunately the best we have is a 35 year old medium, no thanks to the death of SACD and DVD-A's. If you want to say something is dead, THOSE formats are dead. Flash drives aren't economically viable yet as a distribution method, plus you don't get cool album art plus you can't just plug them into your car and play unless you have a nice stereo. So CD is here to stay as the prime physical format until something better comes along that has mass market penetration.
 
Seafroggys said:
I think the opposite is true. People have accepted CD's are dead, but they still have value.

Not so much that CD's themselves still have value, but people want a physical object. Unfortunately the best we have is a 35 year old medium, no thanks to the death of SACD and DVD-A's. If you want to say something is dead, THOSE formats are dead. Flash drives aren't economically viable yet as a distribution method, plus you don't get cool album art plus you can't just plug them into your car and play unless you have a nice stereo. So CD is here to stay as the prime physical format until something better comes along that has mass market penetration.
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Plus, the first album released on a flash drive will have a dildo image on it. You just know it.
 
Pinky said:
IMO compact discs are dead, we just haven't accepted it yet.
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I think you missed the "We" in my post. I'm referring to artists, not consumers. Consumers are stupid, and they suck us into staying stupid. Several music trend setters have already gone full digital with their recordings, and it's only a matter of time until everyone does. People can/will burn their own discs for their car, for 1/10th the cost of buying one.

[this is not a value judgment on the format, which I still find very useful for archiving]
 
Pinky said:
I think you missed the "We" in my post. I'm referring to artists, not consumers. Consumers are stupid, and they suck us into staying stupid. Several music trend setters have already gone full digital with their recordings, and it's only a matter of time until everyone does. People can/will burn their own discs for their car, for 1/10th the cost of buying one.

[this is not a value judgment on the format, which I still find very useful for archiving]
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My point remains do. Whether or not "we" have accepted it as being dead, doesn't mean its still useful. I think its stupid not to emphasize digital releases, but you gotta have something physical, especially if you gig or are trying to promote.
 
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