*that* came into my mind too - supposedly its due to a change in the petrol manufacturing process right, the by-product currently used to produce vinyl will no longer be made ..
My bad if someone already addressed this, but that was bogus I think. The part of petrol used to manufacture vinyl isn't really a factor and you can extract it (ethylene?) from ripening fruit if it comes down to that.
If you cut down all the other costs (mastering, layout, no-cover, promotion...) to a minumum you can already make a little money with 1.000 12"s. That's what I do. I don't know if pressing records in Europe is cheaper though and I don't mail out more than 20 records for promotion. I also don't care too much abourt what this or that kind of buyer would buy or not. My bottom line is: would I buy it? And since I never buy CDs it's out of question for me to not press vinyl.
COSIGN
i dont mess with cds at all so it's hard for me to even put myself in the mindset of a consumer looking to buy those.
for me it all comes down to distro...
get the cdr of the material to the distro.. get them to do presales.
see how it goes, ask them how they think it's gonna do.
usually by the time the wax comes back from the factory the distro has already presold enough that the pressing is paid.
press a reasonable number. anything over 1000 and your gonna need to get multiple distros and that means multiple chances to not get paid.
if you make wax you're definatly going to run into increased shipping costs.. but what i usually do is send out cdrs promos ahead of the wax arriving.. then when i get the white labels i send those out to the cats who got the cdrs and charted them / or specifically asked for wax.
*that* came into my mind too - supposedly its due to a change in the petrol manufacturing process right, the by-product currently used to produce vinyl will no longer be made ..
My bad if someone already addressed this, but that was bogus I think. The part of petrol used to manufacture vinyl isn't really a factor and you can extract it (ethylene?) from ripening fruit if it comes down to that.
yeah did everybody forget that that article was a JOKE .... ???????
The last 12" release on my label when all was said and done cost me pretty close to $3.20!That is after mastering costs,test press,Color Negatives for sleeve,full color label,Full color sleeve etc.Most Distributors won't give you more than $3.75.THAT'S ROUGH!Designing sleeves,for me,is still what keep's me putting out vinyll.I Love the end result,and in my own mind,I feel like I made some sort of contribution.I gave up on thinking of my label as a business a long time ago,it is more of a creative outlet with some perks.I think these days,if your putting out vinyll,and your just breaking even,your label is a success....Definitely keep the faith Phil,and keep pressing the wax!
Hey, Olski our new 12" should be out now around your way..it's distributed thru Groove Attack. I believe pressing vinyl in Europe is a lot cheaper. It can cost almost a dollar to press just the vinyl alone. Not to mention that the ridicluous cost to make labels and the jacket. In addition, the 'other' costs that people don't mention like the mastering costs, the plating costs, the lacquering costs, and a whole host of other costs truly must be taken into account. At the end of the day, pressing vinyl doesn't make sense. You cannot charge as much as CDs so your profit margin is fucked! By the way, whoever mentioned something about using 'other' alternatives to petro must own a record pressing plant because most record plants are using petro and that's it. Believe me when I tell you that the rising cost of gas could potentially break the back of vinyl. This one of the reason why Universal closed their own record pressing plant. I understand the reasons why people love vinyl..believe me I do, but nobody should be looking to invest their own hard earned money just to lose it and sometimes owe. The bottom line is that this is 2005, and if you're not in this to make money then you should really rethink your mindset. Just my humble opinion on the subject. Amir
Word up... thanks for your insight on this, Amir. For me personally, this particular project I'm about to put into motion is more about promoting and getting the group out there than it is about making money right now. I just want to get the boys some exposure and try to get a buzz going so then when we drop the full album later this year (definitely on cd) hopefully some people will be waiting on it and willing to pay for it. My biggest worry about doing this on cd is that it'll get lost in the shuffle among a sea of thousands of other cds and cd-r's out there. Maybe I'll just do an initial run of 1,000 of both vinyl and cd and see where it goes from there. Decisions, decisions...
Comments
My bad if someone already addressed this, but that was bogus I think. The part of petrol used to manufacture vinyl isn't really a factor and you can extract it (ethylene?) from ripening fruit if it comes down to that.
COSIGN
i dont mess with cds at all so it's hard for me to even put myself in the mindset of a consumer looking to buy those.
for me it all comes down to distro...
get the cdr of the material to the distro.. get them to do presales.
see how it goes, ask them how they think it's gonna do.
usually by the time the wax comes back from the factory the distro has already presold enough that the pressing is paid.
press a reasonable number. anything over 1000 and your gonna need to get multiple distros and that means multiple chances to not get paid.
if you make wax you're definatly going to run into increased shipping costs.. but what i usually do is send out cdrs promos ahead of the wax arriving.. then when i get the white labels i send those out to the cats who got the cdrs and charted them / or specifically asked for wax.
yeah did everybody forget that that article was a JOKE .... ???????
Chris
if you got that route definatly you will not make a dime on your release.
one colour label / plain sleeve = only game in town
Amir