Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
If you’ve got a CD release coming up, the turn time of your order is critical. Maybe you have a release event planned or a tour that’s starting next week, or you might just want to start selling products ASAP to recoup your investment in recording, manufacturing, and promotion.
Well, let me give you one piece of advice that could save your entire launch: Don’t believe every fast turn time that you see quoted online for CD manufacturing. Here’s what most artists don’t realize: when Disc Makers quotes you a turn time, that means it’s from the day we get your order until the day that we ship, so a four-day turn time actually takes just four business days. A six-day turn time takes six days.
Table of Contents:
• How we stack up against the competition
• When we say four days, we mean it
• Our “secret shopper” experiment
• The Disc Makers difference
• Ready to release your album on CD?
How we stack up against the competition
When a competitor says they’ll make you CDs in a five-day turn time, what they actually mean is five days after you approve your proof. So, what’s the difference? Don’t we also send a graphics proof at Disc Makers? Of course we do, but there’s a huge difference between us and everyone else. We’ve developed a prepress technology so advanced that as soon as you upload your artwork, our system generates an instant proof in seconds. This same technology powers our vinyl pressing workflow — so LP orders move just as fast from upload to production.
In fact, for many of our most-common templates, we’ll even do a 3D rendering for you. Pretty cool, right? And just to be 100% sure that the assets you uploaded are going to print perfectly, one of our prepress specialists also does a quality check of your design files. Unless there’s a major issue, your order goes straight into production. No waiting around for an email to show up in your inbox. Our competitors also send out a proof, but they don’t send it right away; it usually takes two, three, or even four days just to get approved from them, and then if it gets buried in your email inbox, it can easily take another day for you to approve it.
So, that five-day turn that you were counting on when you bought somewhere else ends up being nine or 10 days in the real world, which can blow up your release date, your promo plans, your tour start, and your online order delivery.
When we say four days, we mean it
When an order is placed with priority production, Disc Makers will ship CDs four days after you place your order — period. We offer different turn times depending on how fast you need your CDs in your hand. This is not just marketing hype. Turn times are critically important and they are intentionally underestimated by many companies out there to get you to buy from them. In fact, we recently put this to a test with a “secret shopper” experiment of sorts.
Our “secret shopper” experiment
We placed the same order anonymously with Disc Makers and a competitor. The graphics intentionally had a missing font and a low-resolution image, which happens often when we receive files from artists. At Disc Makers, our prepress specialist caught it, replaced the font, and sent a quick email notifying the secret shopper that their image was low-resolution and asked whether they wanted to send a high-resolution version. The job still went into production as originally scheduled.
In contrast, the competitor took three days before they even told us that it would take two more days to fix the font issue. So, it took a full week just to get a proof, and they never mentioned the low-resolution image. Not great for the quality of the product. That’s the difference between Disc Makers and everyone else. It’s not just about speed. It’s about quality control.
The Disc Makers difference
Disc Makers is the only CD replicator in the U.S. who works directly with artists. We handle every step of production in-house. This includes high-quality duplication for small orders, replication, injection molding of the CDs for medium and larger orders, high-quality printing, and die-cutting. We even do the folding and gluing of your CD wallets, digipaks, and jackets, and we package them in shrink-wrap.
We don’t outsource anything (unlike our esteemed competitors), which makes our turn times for CDs the fastest on the planet. We can do it in as fast as just one day if you have a true emergency! So when your release date really matters, and let’s be honest, when doesn’t it? Trust the only company that truly delivers: your friends at Disc Makers.
Here’s an expert tip: Don’t schedule your release party before you have your CDs in hand, or at the very least, please leave yourself plenty of buffer time in your schedule for any unexpected delays. This isn’t because we’ll delay you, but because every once in a while, there’s an issue with your supplied master or with your graphics files that you, your designer, or your recording studio may need to fix. This takes time, and if you’ve already scheduled your release concert, that can create a big mess.
Ready to release your album on CD?
We can’t wait to work with you! Get a free quote or contact us when you’re ready to make CDs.
You can watch the original version of this blog as part of our Indie Music Minute series on the Disc Makers YouTube Channel.
Tony van Veen
Tony van Veen is the CEO of DIY Media Group, the parent company of Disc Makers and BookBaby. As a college student, he played in indie bands, created his own LPs, cassettes, and t-shirts, and sold them at shows. Today, he collects CDs, vinyl LPs, and concert t-shirts to support the artists he loves.
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