gnangle wrote:what is the dont bother train?! what do you mean?People don't like music anymore. Nobody buys records. Nobody goes to shows. Might as well light a pile of money on fire instead.

offal wrote:J. Burns wrote:gnangle wrote:what is the dont bother train?! what do you mean?People don't like music anymore. Nobody buys records. Nobody goes to shows. Might as well light a pile of money on fire instead.For the question at hand, I have no idea. Right now, my experience suggests that J. Burns has the correct answer.That said, as variations of this question pop up again and again, I keep wondering if the next business model should be a partnership between a company like Bandcamp and a vendor with a print-on-demand approach. Bands upload tracks and artwork files to a central vendor, but without any actual inventory. When the sales goes through, the vendor produces and mails the hard copy format of choice. The per-unit price would be higher, but for those that still prefer a physical release, it might be a premium worth paying. I'm sure sooner or later someone would find a way to streamline it to make it workable.I think 15-20ish years ago MP3.com and CDBaby were doing almost exactly this. For our last thing we printed up 100 pro-duped CDRs ($200-ish) through AtomicDisc and 100 tapes ($270-ish) through Cassettro. We sold a few, and we didn't ruin our bass player's credit like we did on the previous LP. If anyone was a snob and asked why we didn't have vinyl, I'd ask them if I could borrow $3K. I was going to have "VINYL IS BOUGIE" imprinted on the cassette shells and CD face, but I chickened out.

Cassettes are so yesterday....

One of the Bismarcks was saying they'd had luck with the bizarre but I-kinda-get-it CD/download package.The most relevant way to release music is Spotify, not that that should be a satisfactory answer for anyone.

J. Burns wrote:gnangle wrote:what is the dont bother train?! what do you mean?People don't like music anymore. Nobody buys records. Nobody goes to shows. Might as well light a pile of money on fire instead.For the question at hand, I have no idea. Right now, my experience suggests that J. Burns has the correct answer.That said, as variations of this question pop up again and again, I keep wondering if the next business model should be a partnership between a company like Bandcamp and a vendor with a print-on-demand approach. Bands upload tracks and artwork files to a central vendor, but without any actual inventory. When the sales goes through, the vendor produces and mails the hard copy format of choice. The per-unit price would be higher, but for those that still prefer a physical release, it might be a premium worth paying. I'm sure sooner or later someone would find a way to streamline it to make it workable.

Bandcamp Downloads

Tote bag with a download codeHoodie with a download codeCan coozie with a download code

The band I'm in always does vinyl and digital download. We are not in a position to spring for more than one physical release (and for us that would be a bit excessive). It's nice to be able to direct folks toward another option if they don't do records and the downloads (through Bandcamp) cost almost nothing. I usually end up burning CDs of albums I download to listen to in the car anyway, so it's just a skip and a jump from a download to a disc if folks prefer it that way.

gnangle wrote:what is the dont bother train?! what do you mean?I'm glad you asked so I didn't have to! Don't bother to release music...? I was wondering if I had fallen for some kind of trick for answering your initial post. My experience with getting records pressed is that turnaround is actually pretty quick...Like 2-3 months from sending your master to the plant. Actually, I just looked back at the last project I did with Gotta Groove and it was 4 weeks from when they received my order to when the shipped the test pressings, the whole run shipped about a week after approval. Also, if you don't mind a little DIY in terms of printing your own jackets, inserts, whatever, you can get 300 quality records made for 1500-2000 dollars. I know that's a lot of money, but it's not outrageous. Add free Bandcamp downloads to that...and baby you got a stew goin'!

let the record state that cassette tapes are currently leading the poll. cassette tapes.