Introduction
To figure out how to do this you will need pricing catalogues from a few CD and/or vinyl manufacturers. These are easily obtained by phoning each of your chosen companies and simply asking for them - you'll find them advertising in the backs of the trade papers and other music weeklies, the White Book, MW Directory, etc. They usually mail them out pretty much straight away. The reason for getting several is to compare prices and services offered by each company - they can vary quite a bit. There are links to 2 such companies in the blue box on the right.
For this sample I will use only 1 (un-named) company to demonstrate the procedure - leaving it up to you to do your own comparitive research!
I will use a real (but slightly simplified) example of a release from my own label to help illustrate the theory.
First Things First
My first decision will be which format(s) to do the release on. The relative merits of CD and vinyl are discussed in some detail in the section of the Manufacturing page. This will depend on a combination of personal preference, some basic marketing, and budget.
Personal preference
I like records. I do buy CDs but prefer the sound and look of vinyl. The covers are great compared to most CDs, and with the right equipment sound reproduction is superior to CD. Contrary to popular belief I also find storage easier for records than for CDs. This, of course, is only my opinion - each to their own!
Marketing
From experience both as a buyer and a releaser of my genre of music I have found that the market for my product prefers vinyl. Some distributers have told me that they don't like dealing with CD at all if they can help it. My first release was on CD and I found this out much to my chagrin..... So this time vinyl it shall be.
The point here is to be sure of the format according to your market. Most genres are almost guaranteed to favour CD, for all the obvious reasons - most music buyers have CD players now, not records decks. And even people who do have record decks usually have a CD player too.
Budget
Although I have repeatedly stated that CD is cheaper than vinyl, my previous experience tells me to ignore this advantage and go with a 7 inch single. Despite the difference in price there are still some options to keep costs as low as possible. Without looking at the catalogue I can guess that black and white is going to be cheaper than colour for both the cover and the label.
Let's say for now that I can afford £1000 - I need to see what that will get me. I imagine either 500 or 1000 records with black and white covers and labels.
The Next Step
OK, I've decided I want to do a 7 inch single with a black and white cover. I have to find out how many I can get for my £1000, and I have to design (or have designed) 2 labels and 2 sides of the cover. For costing purposes the design doesn't matter for now - its gonna be black and white so that's all I need to know for the time being.
Before that though I have to get the preparation done for the pressings
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These two tables show the front end of the manufacturing process in relation to my job. A fuller description of this is provided in the manufacturing section. The 2 jobs which are referred to in the above tables are absolutely necessary to the finished product no matter how many copies I have pressed. Assuming I go for conventional lacquer cutting, simple arithmatic shows that I have to spend £260 before any copies are actually made.
How many?
Now I've got to figure out how many to have pressed. This will depend on a combination of cost and my prediction of potential sales. Again, I could get stuck with a kitchen full of records if I make the wrong decision here - it would help here if I had a distribution deal. For details of this see the distribution page. I will also find the cover plays a role in this decision, ie its printing costs.
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Notice how quickly the price comes down after 499! We need to work out what we can afford. It looks like 500 will be 500 x 48p plus the £260 from earlier.
So let's do some basic maths to see where we are:
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| Metawork@£65 per side |
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OK. So far so good....500 records for £500. But before we go celebrating with the rest of the money there's the covers/labels and the VAT to sort out. Coming soon.......ha ha ha!