DIY bands/artists: where exactly are we, here in 202X, with independently pressing short runs of physical media? ("pressing" being multi-format here.)

Earlier this year I'd heard that vinyl pressing plants were surprisingly on top of orders, even ahead of schedule in some cases. But as of this month I'm hearing that pressing plants are again backed up as badly as ever. Not sure if anyone pressing short economy runs is still able to do that with vinyl? Would love to hear updates all the same.

Cassettes, divisive or whatever but I like them. And they were still cheap and quick and reliably popular when I last had some made three years ago. But that's eons ago in some ways. My move for a few years has been cassette-plus-download, and that's my instinctive move here as well, but I'm willing to be talked out of it.

CDs: I have a bias against CD-Rs—which most short runs of compact discs will be, as far as I'm aware—based on their durability/longevity. But I'm realizing how long it's been since I've ordered CD-Rs, and in fact I've never ordered true glass-master CDs before (why not put that money toward vinyl). Are CDs the way to go for physical copies, increasingly? Have CD-Rs gotten better in any way, in terms of lifespan? Can FMs The Bismarck elaborate on the CD-plus-download I've heard such good things about?

Digital: Bandcamp is a given. Do you put your stuff up on streaming services? Even the ones you hate?

Online digital distribution is wonderful but it can't be a replacement for physical media. And it's frustrating that this time period is so dumb, putting the beauty of digital access aside, that if I want to make a modest little physical offering I suddenly have to forecast all this bullshit of "well are the people buying my records more Old Millennials? or Young But Spiritually Old Millennials" when picking formats. I do not like thinking about selling things! If I did I would go run an office-park salad place called Healthygreens like an asshole. I just want to give a few people, here and there, copies of my music that have some artwork and text, and that most importantly will still work in 25-50 years. I feel like that should still be possible and even economical, even without a label.

I have a friend who is kind of like a project manager for music physical media projects (a lot of coordinating, trying to expedite, etc...) He just told me last week that dates are now out into next summer for vinyl, although I'm not sure if that's just for the major label stuff.

As far as where to go, try Solid Merch, they have a relatively affordable package for 1-200 records, and I think they'd be upfront about the turnaround time anyway,

Vinyl: Precision in Burlington is who I've been using since 2015.
Always in 300-500 12" LP runs. With regular black wax, download card, colour sleeve, colour label and colour insert it would come in under $4k CDN.
The end cost always varied for us, but always in our favour.
For example, we order 300, but the pressing runs up to 415 LPs. We have to pay for the extra LPs, but at a fraction of the cost.
This ends up bringing down our cost per record to the same, or less than 500 would have cost us.
It's spendy, but the quality has been good and they are easy to work with.

Cassette + download: For many years I've been using Duplication.ca for tape stuff. Plenty of ways you can go about depending how DIY you want to get.
You can have them do the full product; tape master, dubbing, pad print, glossy J card.
You can also have them just do the tape dub and you package packaging it. Even the other way around, with them supplying you blank tapes and your printed packaging with you doing the dub.
My old favourite was to hit the clearance section and buy up all the short tapes - get a box of random coloured 8 minute cassettes with blank O cards and screen print them yourself.
Any of these tape schemes paired with bandcamp codes has worked well for me.

Bandcamp, I think, is the only via digital platform. I have never regretted anything more than putting music on streaming services.
One band I played with and recorded, paid for 3 LPs in a row, 80% funded by bandcamp sales.
After people kept asking about Shitify for two years, we agreed we didn't like the model but would acquiesce because "would could be missing part of our audience".
Our Bandcamp revenue dried up immediately. I mean, IMMEDIATELY.
Resist the urge, my dude, resist!

DIY or die!
...or see signature below:

jason_from_volo wrote: Tue May 18, 2021 8:05 am Definitely keeping an eye on this thread as I plan (hope!) to be doing this later this year. I'm not even sure if we even need a couple hundred copies, though. What is generally a minimum run that a pressing plant will do? (not talking about dubplates)

< edit > I posted before I saw Solid Merch mentioned. Thanks for the suggestion < / edit >

I think no matter where you go, less than 300 LPs will be cost prohibitive, but I don't know your budget, or what volume of LPs you really need.
Imagine that whatever 100 LPs costs, you could probably get 4x as many copies for only double the price.
Inventory can be a liability too, I suppose, but there really isn't much if any economy in pressing less than 500, assuming you don't want to price them over $20.

EDIT: thought I was responding to OP. All the same...

In my experience the current crush at LP pressing plants is as bad as --or worse than -- it's been since "the vinyl boom" started revving up about 10-12 years ago.

The big labels are having a hard time finding pressing capacity for large runs --- so if you're a small label/individual looking to press a few hundred records once every now and then, you are gonna wait.

Keep in mind: For a pressing plant, a gig that entails pressing 10,000 records requires the same customer service as your order of 300 records. Test pressings, BOMS, scheduling, invoices, shipping splits, it's the same amount of customer service work except that those big jobs have more zeros on the spreadsheet (and invoice.) It's less hassle for them to take a smaller number of larger jobs than vice versa.

Sometimes there are aggregators who may have some capacity reserved somewhere, they may be able to come to your rescue and get you closer to the front of the line.

Teacher's Pet wrote: Tue May 18, 2021 8:43 am The big labels are having a hard time finding pressing capacity for large runs --- so if you're a small label/individual looking to press a few hundred records once every now and then, you are gonna wait.

The worst part about this, its they're clogging up the queue with BULLSHIT RSD releases.

Why are they reissuing absolute trash that any 30 year old can find in their parents basement?
Who exactly asked for the Shrek soundtrack?

Is the vinyl pressing issues also being impacted by the Apollo lacquer plant fire from just before the pandemic? Or an issue with raw materials getting delayed coming from overseas? Or plants not at 100% staffing due to local COVID regulations?

I'll be curious to see how much of this is cleared out once supply chains and business capacity are back to normal.

We never do CDs because we have never sold a single one that I know of. I barely know anyone that ever pulls out a CD anymore.

I'm not wild about Cassettes because it was the MP3 of the 80's, and I don't see the point. All the players are old and beat up. Other than some sort of nostalgia for DIY labels, which they are probably the best use, they get a big meh from me.

Streaming. If you are not putting all your music on at least Apple Music and Spotify, I don't know what to say. I personally almost never listen to Spotify and Apple Music is unusable horseshit software, but It makes your music easy to find for people and its how it's done these days. Has to be done. Bandcamp is a must, and where I always direct people to my music if it ever comes up. I would love to see Bandcamp implement some sort of playlist creation/sharing system.

Vinyl... well, we are still sitting on about 160-180 of the 300 7" we pressed so I doubt we will ever press anything again. We were going to Press the last Bone and Bell record but since it came out at the cusp of Covid and weren't going to be playing any shows we decided to hold off. Given the streaming and download numbers that was a good idea because we probably would have sold about 25 of them. I will say stay away from those short run plants that just make lathe cut records. Every one that I have heard sounds like total garbage. (edited to clarify Lathe Cut)

Honestly, I think we are done with physical media as much as I love it. We just don't play enough to support sales, and I think most sales of records comes from shows. At least if my streaming numbers are low I can blame it on a typo in the URL. Makes me feel a little better.

brownreasontolive wrote: Tue May 18, 2021 7:54 am One band I played with and recorded, paid for 3 LPs in a row, 80% funded by bandcamp sales.
After people kept asking about Shitify for two years, we agreed we didn't like the model but would acquiesce because "would could be missing part of our audience".
Our Bandcamp revenue dried up immediately. I mean, IMMEDIATELY.

This bit stood out, I'm curious if this is common.

Short runs of traditional pressings are fine, but very expensive per unit. THe thing to avoid are the plants that do what is called Lathe Cut. They are useless. Sound terrible.