11 Reasons Why A CD is An Indie Artist’s Best Friend
The news surrounding the music industry might make you wonder if anyone is buying CDs any more. Major-label CD sales are down – downloads are up. As an independent artist, do you really need to make CDs?
There are many factors to consider, and what is true for major-label artists does not often translate to independents. As a matter of fact, amidst the declining major-label CD sales, Disc Makers has seen continued growth in new CD jobs ordered. It speaks to the fact that one revenue model does not fit all markets, and the ingredients for success for a major-label artist vs. an independent are simply not the same.
I know… of course Disc Makers is going to tell you to keep making CDs. Yes, we are a CD manufacturing company, and that gives us a particular stake in the subject. It also gives us a front-line view of what the demands of the market and our client base are. Here are a few things to consider.
1. CDs are an integral part of the indie revenue stream.
Getting paid good money by a club or promoter to play a show isn’t always an easy prospect. And even if you do get a decent fee to play, your merch table and CD sales HAVE to be exploited to buffer your income (if not to double or triple it). So if you’re on the road, even for a weekend jaunt, you need to have something tangible to sell to help increase your take at every gig.
Download cards can and should be sold, but your new fan can’t stick a download card in their CD player to give it a listen on the ride home. Having other things to sell – merch, posters, and stickers – is necessary, too, but your CD is the main course on that meal ticket.
Remember:
- Up to 75% (or more) of music revenues come from CD sales. You don’t want to cut off that much revenue potential.
- You make more money selling CDs at gigs or on CD Baby than selling downloads on somewhere like iTunes. A CD costs you between $.90 and $1.50 to manufacture. Sold at $15, that’s over $13 per unit.
2. CDs legitimize you.
What major music artist doesn’t have a CD? Physical product, e.g. CDs, demonstrate that you as an artist are committed to your career. Giving a music business professional a professionally produced CD is the fastest way to get them to listen to you and take you seriously. Giving a potential fan a CD (or selling one, of course), is the fastest way to converting them to your tribe. Don’t make people work to hear your music!
3. No connectivity required.
A CD is ready to go. Take them home, pop ‘em in your car’s CD player, a computer, a boom box at a party… CD players are everywhere. There’s no web connectivity necessary, no searching around a website – just plug and play. Plus, you can add bonus material, videos, and enhancements to make your CD an all-inclusive multimedia experience. And the fact is, some customers just don’t do downloads. You’ll lose a sale if you don’t have a CD for them. Even your grandmother knows how to use a CD.
4. Permanence (no crashing computers and lost data).
Your music is virtually permanent on a CD. Hard drives crash and MP3 players die, it’s a sad fact of life. But if you have a disc with the content on it, your message or album is not lost. And of course, if you own a CD, you can easily rip MP3s for storage or use with your favorite media player and still have the disc as a backup and for use with your stereo, car, etc.
5. A CD tells a story.
The artwork in your CD package helps further illustrate your album’s artistic statement. A great looking CD and your specific choice of packaging say something about you and can help you further connect with your listening audience. Plus, listeners experience the track sequence, pacing, and breadth of your work exactly as you intended. Singles certainly have their place and can spark interest in your act, but albums are the only way for you to create a thematic and sonic statement of where you as an artist are at the time the disc is recorded and released.
Not to mention the fact that after spending months (or years) composing, refining, rehearsing, recording, mixing, and mastering, there’s a real sense of accomplishment in having something to physically embody the sweat, money, and tears that went into the work you’ve created. Digital files are a great way to deliver tunes, but nothing beats having a CD to represent the completion of your artistic efforts.
6. A CD gives you something to promote.
Any independent artist who tours knows that the majority of CDs they sell are sold from the stage. Think of it as a fan-building and fan-nurturing tool. It’s one of those moments where a fan, or soon-to-be-a-fan, craves immediate gratification and a remembrance of the event. CDs are the best format for live sales. It’s an instant data transfer – you just hand over the disc. And even more than this being an “impulse” buy, it’s truly a matter of you creating a demand and being there to supply the goods immediately.
As a matter of fact, you should consider the act of pitching your merch and CDs from the stage or your merch table as an invitation for your audience and fans to have a direct and personal interaction with you. There is an art to the pitch, and those who take the time to create an interesting approach sell more CDs and gather more mailing list names for future promotions. If your invitation to meet you at the merchandise table includes a drawing for a free CD, then your CD sales could go up 25%-50% and you’ll collect nearly 100% of your audience’s contact information. That’s easy, low cost marketing that will pay off for years to come. Want to really personalize the experience? You can sign a CD. Try that with a download.
7. Shopping your music? CDs are the way to go.
CDs remain the preferred format if you’re shopping your music for film, TV, multimedia, gaming, or licensing opportunities. An overwhelming number of music editors and journalists prefer a physical CD and press kit when being pitched an emerging – or even an established – artist. Radio stations utilize CDs in their selection of music for airplay. If you choose not to press CDs, your chances for success and exposure on the radio are virtually non-existent.
8. Strength in numbers.
While many artists now feel no need to court major labels to achieve success, if you do want a label’s attention, CD sales are the most important metric they’ll consider. The same is true for managers and booking agents. If you prove you can move product, you’ve got a good chance at impressing those folks.
9. CDs sound better than MP3s.
CDs sound better than an MP3 download, because they’re not compressed like an MP3 file.
10. It makes a swell gift, too.
Want to reward members of your fan club and street team? There’s no better way than giving them a limited-edition CD with music recorded and packaged especially for them.
11. What’s true for majors isn’t true for indies.
The majors are selling fewer CDs, it’s true. But you are not a major-label artist. To sell downloads in significant quantities, you need people actively seeking your music to buy. This requires a large and established fan base, and/or a popular hit single, and/or a tremendous amount of money spent on promotion, and/or a significant buzz on the web. As an indie artist, you may not have any of these things yet, you’re still building your name and awareness about yourself and your music. Chances are you’re giving away songs through digital distribution to promote yourself.
As an indie, you rely on hand-to-hand music sales, personal contact at gigs, something tangible you can hand to someone as soon as you’ve sparked an interest in your act. Nothing does that like a CD.
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> The majors are selling fewer CDs, it’s true.
To clarify: CD sales are down throughout the industry, not just for majors.
It is always a good idea to have both USBs and CDs when you are an independent artist. Some people like to have a CD case with a cool cover it’s also better for your image too. It helps you to market yourself and target your music to a specific audience. Think of it as packaging your music.
I regularly see little-known independently touring artists generate CD sales revenue which can be 50%+ of the amount they make on the performance fee. An important factor is that CD revenue often belongs soley to the band leader (writer, composer) and does not get shared with the supporting musicians. This means that, for the band leader, the CD revenue can be several multiples of his/her individual share of the performance fee.
Ray
Maybe Talk To Your “Leader” About Spliting The Revenue @ The Gig @ Least. Plus Get Some To Sell Yourself “Even If You Didn’t Play On It”. You’ll Be Surprised
to clarify: I’m a promotor and booking agent; not a musician complaining about bandleaders. Often the bandleader, especially in the case of singer/songwriters, is the sole owner of the material and has put up all the money to produce the CD and is then touring with hired musicians. My point to those owners of the property is that they can significantly increase their individual nightly revenue by double or triple if they have CDs to sell at performances. This obviously isn’t true for bands in which all members have an equal share of the property.
People still want the tactile experience of a physical CD for many reasons as stated in this article and in some genres it is a must. I am fairly established as a Children’s songwriter and sell a lot CDs at shows, and a fair amount on the web and in stores. The parents want to buy CDs for their kids, have them signed, take pictures, etc. In my case, my fan base has two choices: Buy a physical CD or buy an iPod for a 5yr. old!
More and more of my income is coming from digital downloads but even then, a CD is burned. Also, regardless of what genre of music you play/record, how cool is it to open the first box and hold the end product in your hands!?! Pretty cool!
While I agree with most of the above (though for my money, cds are an inferior experience to vinyl — the visual/tactile aspects, that is), it’s misleading to cite profit margins of $13 on a $15 cd. You have to count studio, mastering, artwork, promotion, etc. in that calculation, and then you are lucky if you are making $1 profit on $15 retail price. And you only realize any profit at all after you’ve sold enough to cover the upfront and continuing expenses. Cd’s are generally a money-losing endeavour for all but a few projects, so make them for all the other reasons, but not to generate revenue.
I agree with the article. Our latest studio recording was a 4 track EP which we released digitally only. We have download cards to sell at gigs, but we still consistently sell more of our older CDs, even though the digital EP is newer, better, and less expensive.
I also agree with Jeff P’s comment above. We still haven’t paid off the CD we made over 5 years ago, even though we’ve sold 1,000 copies. It will take close to 2,000 copies sold to break even on that one.
In the classical music world, compact discs are still an absolute must. The typical classical listener is likelier to be an audiophile, and in fact within the SACD and DVD-Audio markets, classical music is significantly overrepresented in relation to its share of the general CD market. So #9 up above is quite important in this arena. Also, my experience is that many classical listeners are leery of downloading and prefer the familiarity of a CD.
Finally, as a composer who spends a lot of time promoting and marketing his own music, I’d have to agree strongly with #2, #6, and #7 above, at least in terms of what I do. This is particularly true when trying to interest conductors – I’ve been told more than once to send them a CD. They can listen in their cars, which is frequently the only time they have to devote to the unknown and the obscure (and trust me, I qualify on both counts).
My advice to classical and classical crossover composers and performers is to work with compact discs, USB flash drives, AND downloads simultaneously. It can’t hurt. But in any event, in the classical world it is definitely way too early to call it a night in terms of the CD.
DG
I couldnt agree with this more. Its also important to realize that you’re not sharing profits with you CD sales. You’re not giving a % to Amazon, iTunes…etc. Grassrootsy has written an article with similar points.
Why Do I Need a CD When Everyone Listens to mp3s?
Fact: a CD manufacturer like “Disc Makers” will always say that CD’s are he way to go. Until they start making only pendrives or streaming ad they’ll start saying that CDs are dead…
Being that said. Yes, the physical experience of getting something tangible from a gig has found no replacement yet, so I guess Cds are useless (people will put them probably only one time and for ripping them into mp3′s) but because of a physiological attachment of our brains we still prefer that old things Cds are because we can touch them, open, read something, etc.
website not completed yet, but it is listed.
my cd…Up There Up There. It is played on my program Up There Up There w/Rosemary on WTMR, 800 AM
2:15-2:45PM, the third Thursday of every month. WTMR stands for Where the Master Reigns. next program, October 21 (I used to be on every week for two years, but ran out of funds). The CD was done by DiscMakers; they did a fantastic job. Mine was a short run of only 100 copies, but now have to order more.
I went with a high school kid today that threw down $18.50 on a CD that I offered to download for free. There are still people out there that want to be a part of something they believe in. Now how did he know he wanted to buy this CD? …probably because he had a free download of a single. My friend knew one song on the CD and was willing to pay to support. That’s what I plan on doing… I have free downloads on my website, songs on itunes, but in a month I will release my full album for sale after I have created some buzz.
Thanks for the article! I agree, CDs are here to stay for the indie artist.
A superb practical article about the role of the CD in music
A very realistic evaluation of the CD in the commercial world of music
CDs are still in for me, it’s my number one source of income, and seeing that my market, urban, alot of kids haven’t crossed over to digital yet, then there’s the profit margin
CDs are a staple in the toolbox for any Indie artist. Even though digital is becoming a popular means of sending, sharing, and promoting music, there is still a high demand and viable use for CDs.
I must recommend though, do not skimp on the quality of your CD. Presenting a nicely done CD with Good artwork, great liner notes and top quality sound can make the difference between getting the Promoter, Program Manager, Venue owners, attention or being simply trashed.
I think your all right .
I agree. This article was right on. We (Red This Ever) are a constantly touring band. Although we do well with performance pay, our merch table always brings in the big bucks. Our CD’s sell like hot cakes, as do our EPs. We are also lucky enough to have an array of different T-Shirts that we make on the road. We never charge for stickers or buttons, as we feel as those are great promotional tools for us.
We pulled up to a club gig about 5 months ago and a bike in the parking lot had ‘Party Girl Blues” from our CD ‘On a Run’ cranked up…There is just no feeling like it,it put a smile on everybody’s face! Last fall we pushed our CD as a great Christmas present and really had sales bump up…Get a bar code too..It makes your CD more pro looking.I just wish we had recorded it 5 years ago..
I have to disagree with those that say that CDs are not profitable. I raised my prices from 15 to 20 dollars a year ago and people didn’t bat an eyelash. 90% of my income is from my CD sales and it has been that way for about 7 years. I think that people will always want a physical product that you can sign and that has good artwork that becomes a part of the experience. I sell very few CDs off my website, but I can sell over 100 in one day at a good festival with a good crowd. The trick is impulse buying and making people part of the experience. So get out there and sell CDs and get back in the black! Even with sales tax, royalties, and manufacturing costs I’m still making a good profit . What other product can you pay 90 cents to make and then sell it for $20? I just hope CD selling keeps going.
Being an avid music listener, I prefer a physical package with my purchase. The artwork, liner notes, photos & YES the credits are a part of the experience for me. Still to this day, I will stop in at a local music store and buy a CD way before I would download an mp3. Aside from that, I think mp3′s sound like garbage.
To me, CD’s are still very important for the industry.
-Tim Smith
The Soundscape Recording Studio
Royal Oak, MI
Personally I favor CD’s I want to listen to music in my car I end up burning my downloaded MP3′s to a CD to listen to in the car!