STEP THREE: THE FANCINESS THAT IS CD REPRODUCTIONS (CDRs)

Ok.

Well.

Ignorance is bliss.

And knowledge is chapping my ass today.

Translation: now that I’ve seriously started to crunch some numbers there is no way in hell I’m going to be able to make as many CDs as I wanted for my budget. Fuckaduck.

On the plus side, I’ve found that most people at the CD Reproduction companies are extremely kind and patient with idiot savants such as myself and not once did I feel even remotely retarded.  

Panicky, yes.

Retarded….no.

So that’s nice.

I have spent a lot of time on the phone today with some absolutely lovely people at CDBABY, DISCMAKERS,  PLAY-IT DIRECT and HARRY FOX specifically discussing CD Replications (henceforth known as “CDRs”). 

Let me take a moment and clarify who these companies are for you:

1)    PLAY-IT DIRECT: www.play-itdirect.com. If you call (800) 815-3444, ask for Tony Tyler. She was incredibly helpful and their rates are fantastic. Plus, when my brain kinda exploded on the phone with all the mathematical options of how much per color per cd per 2 page per 4 page per digipac per just someone please shoot me in the fucking face right now, Tony asked what my overall budget was for CDRs and then generously promised to get back to me with some ‘special packages’ later today. This company is designed for the ‘home grown’ musician, is based in NYC and is an ‘insider secret’ that I found out about through my buddy Eric who works at Comedy Central. Not only will they do CDRs for the best rate in town- for an additional $69 they automatically register you with CDBABY www.cdbaby.com,  Bizmo (www.thebizmo.com),  Gracenote (www.gracenote.com), and give you a bar code for selling purposes. See details here: http://www.play-itdirect.com/directxtras/index.html. So if I can afford 100 CDRs or more I will most likely go with them. They’re also MAC based which I can only imagine will make my life a hell of a  lot easier when it comes to sending them the pdf files of my art. So, Play-It Direct suckahs! The secret is officially out. They are my first choice at the moment.

2)    CDBABY: www.cdbaby.com This is an online company that not only offers to sell your CDs for you (both digitally and via hard copy CDs), they also offer CDR and packaging services at www.duplication.cdbaby.com.  If I don’t get an order through Play-It Direct, I will definitely be signing up with CDBABY for the online selling part, which costs $55 to register and a percentage of each track/CD they sell for you. However, I would only use CDBABY for CDRs if I chose to go with a really low number (like 25-50 CDs total). Other companies offer better rates for CDRs in bigger quantities, but if I need to go under 100 CDRs for budget, I’ll go to CDBABY. Regardless, this company is a must for the online selling experience.

3)    DISCMAKERS: www.discmakers.com. This is another great all purpose CDR, packaging, all-in-one site with reasonable prices and a fantastic reputation located in NJ. Discmakers was recommended to me by almost everyone and they all cited ‘quality’ as their main reason for going with Discmakers. They are a little out of my budget at the moment,* but it’s a great site to look at and use based on their reputation if you have a little more cash than I do.

     *They DO have a “low price promise”: (http://www.discmakers.com/products/guarantee.asp) which says they’ll match any price/quote you get from anyplace else. So, I could easily throw the Play-It Direct quote at them but honestly, I really like Tony and what the Play-It Direct people stand for, so I’m pretty sure I'm giving them my money. And they’re also based in NYC so if there’s any problem I won’t have to deal with any sort of shipping/long distance bullshit.

4)    HARRY FOX: www.harryfox.com. For more info on Harry Fox’s website regarding mechanical licenses please refer to my previous blog entitled “Mechanical Licenses and a Man Named Harry”to catch up. I do want to share with you all some new things I learned over the phone today though regarding the digital vs CD mechanical license issue.

1)    If you are going to sell physical CDs and digital downloads- these are TWO SEPARATE licenses (each at 9.1 cents usually).  So if you only have money to pay for 500 licenses total, you’re going to have to lower the number of your actual CDRs to accommodate the digital ones. Ergo, if I can only afford for 500 per song (per license), I would have to consider making only 300 physical CDs and leaving 200 digital downloads. Or 100 to 400, 150 to 350 and vice versa, etc, etc, etc.

2)    There is also a $15 ‘processing fee’ per song that I was told about on the phone but did not catch when perusing the website.  I’m sure it’s there, I just missed it myself, so heads up ya’ll. I will now have to add $15 onto the cost of every track I do from Harry Fox and then multiply it by two if i want both CD and digital rights, in addition to the 9.1 cents per how many CDs/downloads I’m going predict selling (the number of which gets smaller with each passing moment).

3)    “How do you know how many digital downloads you’re going to sell so you order the right amount on the license?” you ask? Yeah, I did too. You don’t. Which sucks. The fella at Harry Fox suggested that you should start out UNDER estimating as opposed to over estimating because then you won’t have wasted money paying for “songs sold” that…well, didn’t.  Better economically to have to order more later, than to have overpaid at the beginning and lost your money.

4)    The bugaboo about under estimating obviously- is then you have to buy a whole NEW digital and/or CD license from Harry Fox for more sales, which again incurs the $15 ‘processing fee’ for every track. So, you’re kinda damned if you do…and don’t, in a way. Ugh, balls. I say BALLS!

Damn you, budget.

Damn you.

Ok.

After crunching the numbers I realize if I want to remain under my budget of $1000 these are some of my cost saving options:

1)    I could forgo making any CDRs at all and just sell digitally. Just make 1 CD on my own, complete with art and case and send it to CDBABY who would charge me $55.00 to join, get a barcode and sell purely digital downloads. Then they would take between %9-%25 of each download depending on where it was downloaded from (either CDBABY, or one of their sister companies like ITUNES, etc). I would have to buy only one mechanical license for digital downloads (plus $15 processing fee per track) and then slightly under estimate how many downloads I think I’ll sell.

2)    I could pad my track list with stuff that is either public domain or not through Harry Fox lessening the money incurred by that damned $15 processing fee per track per digital per CD bullshit. (Basically, if I do 10 Harry Fox tracks that’s $300 in processing fees alone for both digital and CDs. Not to mention the cost of the actual licenses. And that’s a lot on a $1000 budget).

3)    I could also try to speak personally with the composers that I know whose tracks are on the Harry Fox site and see if I can’t just send them the money and the mechanical license directly, bypassing Harry Fox altogether. That way the composers still get the standard rate for their work and I don’t have to pay the processing fee. I will check into the 'legality' of this move before i attempt it.

4)    I could order a really small number of CDs through CDBABY (25, maybe),  buy licenses for that low number (and a separate digital one for a higher number)- see how it goes and then hope if I have to do another set of licenses, I’ll have made the money already in sales to pay for it? Maybe? This is very much a Test Balloon way to go, I think.

5)    Instead of making 500-1000 CDRs of my CD, I could just make 100-300 CDRs through PLAY-IT DIRECT and see how/if it sells at all. If it sells well, then I can do a more complete order through Play-It Direct and really go to town. If it doesn’t sell well, I’ll not have wasted a bunch of money on a slew of CDs that will only serve to sit in my closet and torture me as evidence of my monumental failure as a recording artist. The perk to this choice though, is that not only does it lower my CDR expenses, it also lowers the mechanical license cost as well. If a mechanical license costs 9.1 cents, it’s a big difference between paying out $9.10 for 100 CDRs and $91.00 for 1000 CDRs. This would all help my budget immensely.

6)    I could go completely old-school. I could not go through a CDR company at all and burn the as many damned CDs as i want all by myself on my computer. I could also take my art to  KINKOS and get it reproduced as needed. I tend to think tho…that the cost of all the raw materials of that avenue (blank CDs, disc cases, labels, inserts, copies and plastic wrap) would cost pretty much the same as just getting it done through PLAY-IT DIRECT.

7)    I could suck it up and raise my budget to $2000. Go through PLAY-IT DIRECT and just get 1000 CDRs made with the works, and pay for 1000 worth on my mechanical licenses.

While I’m waiting for my ‘special package’ specific quotes from PLAY-IT DIRECT I’ll use the CDBABY website to figure out the ballpark of some budgeting. (Btw my goal is to have way less than 10 Harry Fox tracks out of the 12- but just in case, better to budget on the high end).

CDBABY QUOTES:

Budget A for 

25 CDRs (2 panel package) through CDBABY                      

$  91.00

10 mechanical licenses  (9.1 cents) at 25 CDRs                      

$  22.75

10 mechanical licenses (9.1 cents) at 100 dig downloads     

$  91.00

10 charges of $15 for processing fee at Harry Fox (CD)      

$150.00

10 charges of $15 for processing fee at Harry Fox (dig)    

 $150.00

economy shipping

$11.00

TOTAL  = $515.75

 

Budget B 

for 100 CDRs (2 panel package) through CDBABY                    

$194.00

10 mechanical licenses  (9.1 cents) at 100 CDRs                 

$  91.00

10 mechanical licenses (9.1 cents) at 100 dig downloads     

$  91.00

10 charges of $15 for processing fee at Harry Fox (CD)       

$150.00

10 charges of $15 for processing fee at Harry Fox (dig)       

$150.00

economy shipping

$20.00           

 TOTAL = $ 696.00

 

Budget C 

for 150 CDRs (2 panel package) through CDBABY                    

$291.00

10 mechanical licenses  (9.1 cents) at 150 CDRs                    

$136.50

10 mechanical licenses  (9.1 cents) at 150  dig downloads    

$136.50

10 charges of $15 for processing fee at Harry Fox                 

$150.00

10 charges of $15 for processing fee at Harry Fox (dig)       

$150.00

economy shipping

$26.00  

TOTAL = $ 890.00

Now if I wanna get fancier with my packaging I could go for a 4-panel insert booklet, let’s see what that looks like:

Budget D 

for 25 CDRs (4 panel package) through CDBABY                    

$  96.00

10 mechanical licenses  (9.1 cents) at 25 CDRs                    

$  22.75

10 mechanical licenses (9.1 cents) at 100 dig downloads   

$  91.00

10 charges of $15 for processing fee at Harry Fox              

$150.00

10 charges of $15 for processing fee at Harry Fox (dig)     

$150.00

economy shipping

$11.00    

TOTAL = $520.75

 Budget E 

for 100 CDRs (4 panel package) through CDBABY                

$224.00

10 mechanical licenses  (9.1 cents) at 100 CDRs                    

$  91.00

10 mechanical licenses (9.1 cents) at 100 dig downloads     

$  91.00

10 charges of $15 for processing fee at Harry Fox (CD)      

$150.00

10 charges of $15 for processing fee at Harry Fox (dig)       

$150.00

economy shipping

$20.00    

 TOTAL = $ 726.00

Budget F 

for 150 CDRs (4 panel package) through CDBABY                   

$336.00

10 mechanical licenses  (9.1 cents) at 150 CDRs                    

$136.50

10 mechanical licenses  (9.1 cents) at 150  dig downloads   

$136.50

10 charges of $15 for processing fee at Harry Fox                 

$150.00

10 charges of $15 for processing fee at Harry Fox (dig)       

$150.00

economy shipping

$26.00    

 TOTAL = $ 935.00

**********

Whee!

Wasn't that fun?

I apologize for the dryness of this post- but sadly, this is the tasteless it’s like I’m chewing on cardboard part of the process. Not my favorite either, but necessary to make the musical part go a lot smoother. Personally, I'd rather have bamboo shoots shoved up my fingernails but... I always knew this part of it wasn't going to be fun or easy. But I'm glad that I tackled it first. It frees up my brain for the more important and fun stuff....the MUSIC! (and a collective sigh was heard around the blogging community).

Regardless, this is a lot of fancy factoids for my artistically inclined brain to handle, so I am just going to have a big think on all this and hopefully the Play-It Direct folks will have something fun to show me later today. 

In the meantime…

Rock it out, my darlings.

xo,

DL