dire breach
Hello, my name is Pushing Bones (with my music under the same name). I have recently been intrigued about trying to sell my music through other mediums than digital .mp3 downloads, and maybe even merchandise (shirts, posters, etc)
What should I expect? What should I do if I want to do this independently? Should I join a record label that could help me achieve this? Let me know what I should do in this situation.
ripe canyon
Hello, my name is Pushing Bones (with my music under the same name). I have rece...
You don't just join a record label. Actual labels that help financially and invest in an artist don't take unsolicited requests. The best thing you can do in this situation is invest in yourself. Find designers, print shops etc. and pay for their services, then recoop the costs through sales. Thing is, you need people who are going to buy them so if you don't have a solid fan base, you may be throwing your money away. Don't put the cart before the horse unless you're ready and willing to lose a lot of money with the high risk.
tiny mural
try sites like spring. they produce and print the shirts, posters, mugs etc only when people order them. saves you sinking your money into inventory
ripe canyon
The only thing to watch out for is that some of those merch sites that print things will have in their terms that anything you upload to sell, they get rights to use as well.
dire breach
The only thing to watch out for is that some of those merch sites that print thi...
I see, I'll keep and eye out for it.
Thanks @ripe canyon and @tiny mural for your help, I'll try and see what I can do to get my music on cassettes, CD's, and Vinyls!
ripe canyon
Thanks <@278557738118938625> and <@617002642371248129> for your help, I'll try a...
There are some distributors but CDBaby just stopped CD production which was the easiest route. Maybe Disc Masters still exists.
dire breach
There are some distributors but CDBaby just stopped CD production which was the ...
Are there other companies that still produce CDs, or similar ones that produce cassettes and vinyls?
ripe canyon
Are there other companies that still produce CDs, or similar ones that produce c...
There are but they can be expensive of not buying in high quantities and they don't distribute for you. Vinyl you won't want to invest in until you're at a point you know it will sell because it's really really expensive
dire breach
Are cassettes cheaper than CD's?
ripe canyon
Not sure. I've not gotten any of those done in a very long time for any of my side projects because they are essentially a novelty shelf item no one actually uses. I know there have been some tape releases recently of my larger projects but those are handled by someone else so I'm not aware of the costs and our costs would be different from what you pay. You might be better off going the homegrown route though and getting a cheap deck and Maxwell tapes to make your own copies if you want to go that route.
candid hatch
Are there other companies that still produce CDs, or similar ones that produce c...
For my band's album last year, we used Disc Makers and it worked out quite well. We just got 100 copies but managed to sell or give out all of them! Except the 5 I kept for myself. It was like $200 total for the 100 copies, not a bad deal.
They offer lots of different types but we did the cardboard CD sleeve to avoid the environmental impact of all those plastic CD cases. And I designed the album art myself using a photo, it's not amazing but it's decent and it saved money on getting an artist to create something
ripe canyon
For my band's album last year, we used Disc Makers and it worked out quite well....
Not a bad price for 200, actually. Did they include shipping costs on that?
candid hatch
Not a bad price for 200, actually. Did they include shipping costs on that?
I was misremembering, the $200 was pre-shipping. $250 total with tax and shipping. And we saved a decent bit by checking the "delayed" option which pushes out production time but makes it cheaper. It was like an extra $60 for expedited production
ripe canyon
Still not bad considering the price of doing it yourself and the time that would be needed to burn them all
candid hatch
Yeah! In total I probably made a few hundred off of it, off of the remaining 1/2-1/3 that was my share and splitting the rest with the rest of the band. Nothing crazy, just a modest amount, but it was a lot of fun. And I guess for a brief moment we were professional musicians!
ripe canyon
That's not too bad then and props for not adding to the plastic crap floating in the ocean. I hate CD cases and love that so many people have been opting lately for things like paper based book folders rather than gem cases
candid hatch
I saw your comments in the main thread the other night about not dumping your money into a money pit that will have no return on investment. I'm happy we seemed to have accomplished that because that's definitely good advice. Our Spotify has basically gone nowhere but it's pretty cool to have 95 people roaming the earth with a physical CD of ours.
Oh absolutely! As my favorite band wrote in one of their songs, fuck all of that plastic
Cardboard sleeves are super light and easy to transport too
ripe canyon
And they take up far less space. I have crate upon crate upon crate of CD cases in storage
candid hatch
And they take up far less space. I have crate upon crate upon crate of CD cases ...
Yikes, although I do like getting vinyl from my favorite artists which isn't exactly environmentally friendly either. I hate to admit that streaming is probably the most sustainable way of consuming music :/
tiny mural
Yikes, although I do like getting vinyl from my favorite artists which isn't exa...
probably not by much. all the mining for components for the servers, the electricity they use, the heat they emit...