Any small indie bands out there that sell their own cds? I have a question or two

[Link]

So I'm thinking there is a possible gap in the market for low run (Less than 100) disc printing for indie bands. I've been looking at the costs involved in a bedroom sized operation, however I do not know what bands normally sell their discs for.

So, I'm wondering, any little indie bands that sell their own CDs at gigs and stuff - How much do you charge for a CD? Would you charge differently for a home burned, hand-written on disc in a slimline case, versus a more professional looking printed disc in a normal jewel case with printed inserts?

Also, do you normally sell singles or albums, or both?

 

[knut]

bedroom distribution has and still continues to be a very strong market, and one of the last bastions of honest, good DIY craftsmanships supplying the dedicated followers with good, physical releases. the upswing to it is cutting out the money hungry labels looking to line their own pocket instead of the bands, who are the creators, recorders, masterers, tourers and players of what really counts. for bedroom distribution done well, and still doing well today, then look no further than hydra head records.

personally, as a follower of the DIY scene, i'm a sucker for hand crafted. nothing beats a screen printed slip case, or a record that has been assembled in a van somewhere on tour. it has a personal quality to it, something that really brings it back to reality as opposed to being put together in a factory somewhere. with hand-assembly or hand made artwork, it's much cheaper to reproduce, therefore at merch tables for ****ing corking UK acts like tall ships, the computers, tubelord, &u&i or whoever else and you can pick up a EP for a couple of pennies, the LP for about a fiver and a shirt for much the same, maybe a little more. a vinyl might push for 8 to 10 quid, but it's all dependent of what you get for your money - nine tracks, lavish, hand-printed artwork and a gatefold opening? sold. even better still, if it's limited to a pressing of 50 copies, that's even better. hell yes i want 1/50 scribbled at the bottom of my vinyl, hell ****ing yes i do.

of course, that's all down to who and what the band are. what are we talking here - got any names? i like to think i've got my ear to the ground on what's going on in the UK right now as seriously, we're putting out some ****ing cracking bands these days. related, i'd recommend looking into or getting in touch with big scary monsters, eyesofsound, holy roar, richter collective, brew records, blood & biscuits and hassle. all of them are really, really good labels doing good things for honest bands with honest prices.

outside of all that, i hope you all the best for it! if you're ever looking for a illustrator/designer to get some things done - artwork, design, graphic construction - i'm open for work! this is something i really care about. but still, hope this helps.

 

[Link]

Thanks for the reply.

To answer your specific question - I don't have any names (well other than knowing the name of the band I mention below) but in terms of the indie lables you mention, anyone signed to one of them would already be beyond needing the level of service I would be offering. When I say a bedroom operation, I mean litterly, a computer a printer or 2 that can print CDs and a small stack of blank CDs. Proboly not producing much more than 25 CDs an hour. Obviously I would look to expand if it worksed and grew, but thats the starting point. This would be aimed at bands still at the pub gigs stage who sell very small numbers of CDs.

There are 2 things that have given me this idea.
I have a friend, who knows a guy in a band, and we went to watch them a littel while ago. Its a fairly small scale, play a couple of pubs a week, type band. They sell CDs of the home burned, hand written variety. I didn't see how much they were going for, but they only looked like they sold a handful.

This is what gave me the idea - A method for bands who don't sell enough CDs to warrant paying the set up costs of mass production (1000+ cds) but also don't have the ability to produce semi-pro discs themselves, to sell higher quality CDs.

I do love music, and I think we are moving away from the current business model of music as the money. You can download music, and the current industry has started sueing thier customers as a result, which tells me the industry will die before it adapts. I belive the winners of this will be the ones who accept that this is going to happen, realise they can't change it and look to profit from it - Make CDs avaliave, sell t-shirts, tickets etc. When music becomes the advertising, the scarce goods (merc) become the value, and a high quality CD increases that value.

As I say, I'm still at the "is this even feasible" stage, so please do feel free to pick holes in the idea. However I would say that to start with at least, I'm not aiming to make more than beer money with this, and I do realise that it won't be a huge money maker.

 

[Stylo]

Holla, holla! Unsigned bands, yes.

My band have done this before and continue to do so. Generally we sell the CDs for a couple of quid. Anything between £1 and £5 depending on what the content of the CD is, how much work went into it and how much material it has on it.

Anything above that price is for bands that either already have a massive following of drooling fans willing to throw money at them or bands that are just being pretentious dicks and won't sell any of their CDs / Merchandise.

You have to take into account things like jobs, though. I'm a University student and the rest of my band either study, have jobs or both. This means that if there's anytime that we make a bit of a loss (which believe me is bound to happen at some point being a small time, self-promoting band) then we're always happy to chuck a little of our hard earned cash into the operation if needs be. There's very rarely a perfect formula for always making a profit if we're talking proper small-scale.

Generally we will use any money earned from paid gigs to sink into stuff like CD making and burning and recording studio time. We've recently started our own project though of grouping local bands together into something called the 'Real Music Project'. Basically we all stand united and bring in bigger crowds by putting on our own gigs and it allows us to make a little bit of cash on the side from ticket sales (after paying the bands for playing of course) and we also put that into stuff like CD burning.

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Long and short of it - If we're talking your basic band that don't often get paid for gigging and are short on cash, nothing more than a few bob should be fine for selling a CD for. But depending on how big the fanbase is and how dedicated the fans are depends on what price the band can get away with. They might be able to up it to a £5 - £7 but it'd be pushing it for a small-time band.

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P.S. Being as this is an opportunity to shamelessly plug my band, if anyone's interested in hearing a few of our tracks or finding out a bit about us:

This is RockMelon

 

[Link]

Thanks for the input guys.

From the research I've been doing I think I could produce CDs for roughly £2.50 per disc, which would be a printed disc in a jewel case with photo quality inserts front and back. From what you have been saying, I think that means it would only really work for albums.

One of the options I was considering was setting up a webshop, where bands would upload their album/single, and it would appear on the shop for users to buy at a price set by the band - then when users purchase the disc, the band would get the difference between my charge and what price they set. Postage would be about £1 per disc for second class post, putting the base cost of a disc up to about £3.50 delivered. The advantage is that it wouldn't cost the band anything to set up, and rather than selling discs at the gig, they would hand out the address to their album on the shop. Whilst it would mean that they would only make say £1.50 on a £5 sale, that sale wouldn't require them to do anything beyond upload their album, everything else would be done for them.

I would also provide the option to order in bulk at £2.50 a disc plus whatever the postage is for that many discs (Much less than £1 a disc though) which the band could then sell at their gigs.

Stylo (Or any other band people) - which option do you think you would take - No upfront fees, but lower profit margin, or bulk buy CDs cheaper and sell them yourself? Or both maybe?

 

[Stylo]

I don't see why you shouldn't offer both options. From the beginning you'd be able to get a reflection of which option is most popular and what works best for different bands which would help you market and target it more.

If one of the options flops and you get little or no interest in it then you could always can it if you choose later on in your venture but I couldn't see why offering both would be a problem, at least to start with anyway.

Some bands out there really don't want to put effort and hard work in (which obviously I don't agree with and shouldn't really be the way to go) and they'd probably jump at the chance to just be able to upload their song somewhere and practically have the work done for them whilst making a profit, however small it may be. £1.50 per sale is not bad for a small-time band and if they make a decent amount of sales they'll be cutting down payments for travelling and recording sessions in no time at all.