Keeping albums in print
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Topic: Keeping albums in print
Posted By: Progbeatz
Subject: Keeping albums in print
Date Posted: April 15 2010 at 16:42
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This may seem like an ignorant question, but on this topic I am quite ignorant...
How hard is it to keep albums in print? My major complaint with record labels is that they let albums go out of print very quickly...is it really that expensive to keep a couple extra around and when you find out that you are running low on one to just reprint like 20 more? Do the artists sign a contract stating that they don't want their albums kept in print after a year or so? I can't imagine thats true...
I assume its a money/resources thing...but if they have the tapes or digitial files or whatever they use nowadays, how hard/expensive is it to just create some more when needed? Kinda like a special order kinda thing...
------------- Prog in the projeKcts... |
Replies:
Posted By: Henry Plainview
Date Posted: April 15 2010 at 19:10
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You can't print only 20 albums. Professional manufacturers only do like 500. Yes, you can do special orders: it's called burning a CDR, and most people (including myself) don't want to buy those because they degrade. Now, in a certain market, they can do that: Derek Bailey's Incus printed a bunch of albums on CDRs, and there's innumerable noise albums self-released on CDRs, but your average Anglagard fan isn't going to want that. You can look up the costs for pressing CDs online for yourself. $2 each isn't a lot of money for an album that's not going to sell out for another couple years, but then you have to eat that loss until it does sell while paying your staff and the rent. ------------- if you own a sodastream i hate you |
Posted By: toroddfuglesteg
Date Posted: April 16 2010 at 05:41
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As an ex record label owner myself, I will explain. The manufacturing of CDs are prohibitive expensive. The market is less than certain with all this piracy around. All my titles are either available from piracy websites (without my approval) and/or re-released by other labels. The prohibitive level of costs and manpower to repress these albums does not make it worthwhile. I also have friends sitting with huge stocks of CDs they cannot sell. 1000 CDs requires a lot of storage facilities. The manufacturing itself is very expensive, even in Bulgaria or Asia. You need the mastering, the glass master, the art-work and the boxes. Add postage, packing and not at least; promotion. At the top of that, royalties and mechanical royalties. Then some want promotional copies, storage facilities and some office space and equipment. In my view; you will only break even if you press 1500 x. If the product is inferior and if the band refuse to tour and promote the album; you are in deep sh*t. Well, several of my friends are up to their ears in in unsold CDs. The music market these days............ there is hardly any market left. The record shops will not take your album. Same with Amazon. Ebay rips you off with their fees for both Paypal and the website itself. CD Baby......... not known to many. You can only sell through networks and to maintain the network and to be polite towards everyone who ask you about everything from fox-hunts in Siberia to the American presidency in addition to questions about the album, require an obscene amount of man-hours. In short; there is many good reasons why the albums goes out of print. It can be summoned into one word though: Sanity. When it comes to books and art-works; most of them becomes open-source and free after 40 years. I personally think this will also happens with records. But I am now 10-30 years ahead of myself.
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Posted By: harmonium.ro
Date Posted: April 16 2010 at 06:15
This is probably how it looks when working in a very tight niche. I've had a completely different experience in Romania in the short period I've worked for an agency. We were making short-term management contracts, meaning that we arranged a few concerts for the artist (which were the main source of revenue), did the PR, the advertising, the stage production and everything an agency does for a series of events. In the contracts with the artist we used to also include the production of 5000 or 10000 CDs as our obligation because "it looked good" and the production costs for such numbers are very cheap (about 1 euro per CD in Romania) and 5000 or 10000 euros don't really count when you're making several tens of thousand euros profit after such a job for one artist. Of course the artists weren't stupid and knew the CDs weren't going to sell because in Eastern Europe most people download instead of buying, so they all rejected the CD production and preferred taking the money instead As I said this is a different kind of experience, one that was based on mainstream artists and concerts, not the same experience a niche record label would provide. The production of CDs was cheap, and it was definitely a minor cost in a bigger business, but when your whole business is that of selling CDs, then I suppose everything looks different. |
toroddfuglesteg wrote: