A collection of articles from the Disc Makers blog that relate to CD manufacturing and design, including CD album planning and more.
It’s not always easy to know what you should be releasing as a musician. Should you go all out and create a 14 track album right away? Should you release a single as soon as you’ve recorded your first track? Here is a plan I’ve seen work well for many independent artists. Read more.
Vinyl record sales are 26% from last year, and this vinyl record revival can be a sales driver for independent artists. According to Dan Faughnder of Sledding With Tigers, “Once we announced that our first vinyl record was in the pipeline, we received enough pre-orders to break even on the pressing cost before we got them from the plant.” Read more.
The process of transforming your musical ideas into a finished product you can share and sell begins with your audio recording sessions and continues through to the delivery of your packaged CDs or vinyl records. The choices you make at each step affect the quality of your final product, so familiarizing yourself with this process at the earliest stages will help you produce the best possible results. Read more.
Even though CDs and vinyl records both make use of similarly-proportioned circles and rectangles in their design templates, each format presents unique opportunities to create graphics that your fans will love. Here are some tips from experienced designers and album manufacturing product managers to help you craft an album design worthy of the music enclosed therein. Read more.
Music photography is just another way to help you communicate with the world. When your music photos support your lyrics, music, website, tweets, emails, or releases to complete who you are and help convey your message as an artist AND your artist brand, then they are doing their job! Follow these few guidelines to get your next photo shoot to be a true snapshot of you. Read more.
You’ve heard the term “ISRC” thrown around, but what is it, and why do you need it? An ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) is a 12-digit alphanumeric code that serves as a unique and permanent identifier for any sound recording or music video. So where a UPC is tied to the “carrier” of the track – e.g. the CD or LP – an ISRC identifies individual tracks. Read More.
Here at Disc Makers, we’re all excited to see vinyl records come back onto the scene. As we’ve said before, it’s one of the more improbable stories in the music industry from the last decade, and while we sure do love CDs, there’s something almost magical about the return of vinyl. Do you feel the same way? Share your stories with us. Read More.
The holiday season, especially the golden month between Thanksgiving and Christmas, is the most lucrative time of the year for retail sales. As an independent musician, it can be a time for you to move a ton of product – professionally manufactured CDs, merch, and more. There are many ways to take advantage of this time of the year, and our new guide answers questions about how to prepare your order and make your new release something special for the holidays.
Read more and download your FREE PDF.
Music streaming, MP3s, and digital downloads are in the race for most popular music delivery format, but the physical CD holds first place, especially in terms of revenue, music promotion, and branding for the independent musician. Even with all the benefits of online distribution, independent music artists are ordering more CDs than ever, and there are plenty of reasons why. Read more.
Before scheduling your album release, plan for the steps that lie between songwriting and CD manufacturing. This DIY album release checklist will help. Read more.
Your headshot is the first impression many new fans and the press will get of you. If the headshot just totally sucks or doesn’t successfully convey your brand, you lose out on so many opportunities right from the beginning. And when you’re trying to make your way in this industry, you simply can’t afford to miss even one opportunity. Having your photo taken can be stressful – I know how that goes – but if you follow some of these simple tips (as well as be flat-out determined that you won’t rest until it’s right), you’re bound to end up happy with the end result. Read more.
Today we announced that in October we broke two of our all-time disc replication records, proving that — as much as ever — physical media is a crucial part of any musician’s product offerings and the CD is not yet dead. In October 2012, Disc Makers replicated 4,380,296 CDs, an increase of over 600,000 units from October, 2011. This figure outpaces Disc Makers’ prior all-time monthly CD & DVD replication record of 4,013,000 CDs, which had held since 2008. Read more.