If the music program is sibilant overall, the audio can be cut at a lower amplitude, which can help with the distortion caused by the high frequency information. The result, though, is a vinyl record that’s at a lower level, and the surface noise will be more prominent – not to mention, it’s not going to be comparable to other vinyl albums. Read 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.
Testing and feedback should be part of the process of getting your music products into releasable form. Testing material on your most likely fans, and making necessary improvements and decisions before committing your time and money to the recording, manufacturing, distributing, and promoting it. Without market research, you could easily spend hundreds (or thousands) of your hard-earned dollars recording music that’s unmarketable to music supervisors, labels, radio stations, and even your own target fans! Read more.
Most bands do a traditional media campaign (newspapers, magazines, radio), as well as a new media campaign (podcasts, music blogs, MP3s). Music publicity is not just compiling lists and following steps mechanically, it should be fun and is a chance to channel the same creativity you put into your music to build a buzz. Read more.
When deciding how to prepare and submit your audio master for CD manufacturing, there are several format options to choose from. A complete body of work on a CD-R, individual audio files such as WAV or AIFF (with any variety of bit-depths and sample rates), and DDP 2.0 file sets are the most popular formats. An analog reel to reel master or DAT (digital audio tape) also provides high quality, though used less frequently with the advent of newer digital options. Read more.
If you’re sitting down to tackle making an album, there’s a lot to think about; from clearing the rights for your cover songs to converting the cover art to the right format. When you get your manufactured CDs in hand, there are still a lot of things you need to do – namely, releasing the album for sale to the public. While your music is at the heart of what you do, your identity, image, brand, website, web presence, merchandise, and publicity is what you use to connect with your fans. Randy Chertkow and Jason Feehan have revised our popular Planning Your Album From Beginning To End guide. Here’s an excerpt from the revised guide. Read more.
Before we can mass produce copies of your disc, there are a few legal issues to clear first. You are required to sign a release form declaring that all the music on your album is original and “owned” by you. If all your music is original, you’ll check that box and move on. However, if you record any cover songs or incorporate any copyrighted samples or loops, you have to provide proof that you received the proper permissions. 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 market for vinyl has grown 35 percent per year for the last five years, Still, vinyl records represent a niche market in the music manufacturing world, and because of its dramatic strong growth, production capacity has lagged behind. Enter (or should we say re-enter) Disc Makers, the pioneers of vinyl record production for indie artists. Disc Makers again offers high-quality 12- and 7-inch vinyl records. Read More.
There’s a unique pleasure in seeing a vinyl record getting pressed. The glob of vinyl between the stampers, the press closing and squishing the vinyl out the sides, pulling out a beautiful shiny disc. Legendary artists like DJ Jazzy Jeff, Celia Cruz, Big Black, Salt-N-Pepa, and Wu Tang Clan came off our Hamilton presses. 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.
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