Putting Out a Record – 2003

it's not really that expensive to get "real" cds pressed, depending on how many your want

i lost my shirt on the last 7" i ever put out

W/ 4 songs, I say press up some 3-inch CD-Rs, & make the artwork sweet. Piehead Records has a series doing a nice job w/ this.

Ooh 3-inch cds, how much do they cost?

i'll probably never do a 7". cd's are inexpensive, but i like vinyl. you might want to look into www.gzcd.cz, whcih allows for really inexpensive low-run vinyl pressings (though it's in the czech republic and shipping/customs will probably get you).
for cd manufacturing, i couldn't recommend bellwether manufacturing enough.

3-inch CD EPs are great, I think, conceptually, except stores just aren't built to accommodate them: they either wind up in a counter case or lost in the shuffle. (It just seems so right, though, to limit the size of the disc to the amount of stuff on it; instead of seeming like a full disc that just doesn't deliver on enough music, it seems like a tight little package unto itself, like a pamphlet instead of a paperback with 200 blank pages.)

I would say: CD, with interesting art that doesn't trade on some grotty/ziney aesthetic. A lot of people self-release CDs and slip in hand-drawn photocopied art, like this makes the package appealingly low-fi, but, umm . . . if it's a four-song CD by an artist the buyer's not that familiar with, it's nice to reassure them that you're not messing around by putting together some nice-looking art, even if it's just nice clean well-thought-out black-and-white art.

I happen to love 7"'s but they just don't make sense since fewer and fewer folks have turntables, even the music heads (ie: Matos). I may do one more 7" on my little label but after that I'm done forever w/ vinyl, sadly. I did a cd-r release once, nice packaging, nice looking cd art and it did pretty well and sounds just as good as a CD. Many people still don't take CD-rs seriously, though. Real CDs are cheap enough where you can actually make back your money, and your mom and uncle and that-girl-from-college-who-likes-Hootie-but-also-likes-you can buy it taking some pressure off. Try to do as few as possible, so you can sell what you press. Someone once told me this and I didn't listen and now I have 500 7"'s taking up space in my apt. ps the mechanics guide is great.

don't do a 7" - unless you know for a fact you're going to sell them all (and if you don't, believe me you won't). 3" CD/CDRs are cute and cool and still novel enough for people to get excited about in the way that a regular CD/CDR just doesn't do for them anymore..

3" cd's are great for pushing on people personally because they can put them in their pocket.

i like the way they still seem to freak people out a bit - my band gave away some at gigs a while back and a fair proportion of people didn't understand what they were supposed to do with it (from stage: "it's a CD. play it like a normal sized CD")

Do not do vinyl. Just don't do it. I know it looks, sounds, feels better, but no one will buy it.

We put out a single on CD that we paid for and pressed ourselves, no distribution, no press, and we sold 500 copies - basically, the entire run.

We put out a single on 7" vinyl with proper distribution, press, NME reviews, the whole nine yards, and we sold just over 100 copies.

Trust me on this one. Don't do vinyl unless you really really want several hundred of them sitting under your bed for the rest of your life, cause that is where they will end up.

I like vinyl but from what you described go with the 3" cd.
If you were putting out a hardcore/punk 7" on a label with great (and I mean fucking emaculate distro) and were willing to tour and put adverts in MRR et. all, then you might move some but I have seen really talented bands who couldn't move 1,000 to save their lives (until they had an underground "hit" off their full length cd, so you are talking 2 and a half years and three US tours to sell out the vinyl!).
I don't know what you sound like but perhaps you could look around and find a compilation cd to get on, you aren't talking big volumn but figure if the disc has 12 bands and every band sells 20 to their friends, that is 220 people who would never have heard your song.
It won't make you rich but it is rather fun and the comp I was on raised money for school kids in Haiti, how can you go wrong with that?

But wouldn't the mini CDs be a problem in many, maybe most cd players? Anything that doesn't use a tray, like a car stereo, for example, would just eat them.

The mini CDs are cool, but at least from the prices I have seen they are about the same as getting a regular CD pressed. I'll keep looking to see if there is somewhere else with better pricing.

Considering four of our songs will probably be only around 12-14 minutes, it just doesn't seem worth pressing a bunch of CDs, as on the manufacturing end, it doesn't cost much different whether it is 14 minutes or 71 minutes. Mastering is a different story.

We will probably go with just getting a hundred CD-Rs made and try and come up with something novel on the package.

The nice thing about a single is that it seems somewhat more legit or it used to seem that way.

The nice thing about cd-r releases is you can give them away (to other bands you play with, to nice people, etc) and not feel bad about losing money.