DIY CD/Tape pressing/printing

[Hemisaurus]

Completely what you don't need, but have you looked at http://kunaki.com I'm looking and they've changed their pricing structure it used to be 10 and under was cheap, now it's 5 and under, so it would only be useful if you wanted to sell CD's from a website, and not have to be bothered about distribution yourself. You setup a release, and they burn, print, assemble and ship on demand. All you do is upload the artwork and the tracks. They even do the barcode for you.

[Lumpy]

I've used these guys for Duping stuff before (I'm based in the UK).

Small Run Cds
http://www.mobineko.com/
Cassettes
http://www.tapeline.info/

I've done things all ways in the past from burning CDRs one at a time in a PC, to 10 at a time in a work duplicator, cutting covers ourselves. Through to Whole package outsourced. So have def served my time in the 100% DIY route.

Have to say if I was doing a small run myself again I'd go back to someone like Mobineko and let them do the whole thing, I start to so a bit insane when I get past the first hundred CDs doing it myself!

For what it's worth I think people are buying small runs of Tapes over small runs of CDs at the moment.. We recently did a small run cassette split and used bandcamp to distribute a download code with every cassette bought.

Oh It's nice to be back, I missed stoner rock forum, had a daughter pop along so have been distracted the past 9 months or so, Hi everyone again.

Chris

Someone else recommended Mobineko to me, so it's good to see confirmation here. They're based in the Philippines I think (?) I was told they do real CDs in short runs (not CDRs but a stamped CD with glass master) and are cheap. I would have used them recently but I needed some in a hurry, so I had CDRs made in my local area (discmakers.com). I think Mobineko includes shipping in their price (!)

The kids like cassette tapes, and they're the ones who seem to buy music and go to shows.

Congratulations on the baby!

[liquidsmoke]

Anyone remember that place online that would do 100 real CDs for $100?

[AgentofOblivion]

DIY is so incredibly inefficient and pisses in the face of hundreds of years of economic theory.  It also leads to pretty substandard results in most cases.  A sharpied CDR...who would take that seriously?  That's the type of thing I throw in the trashcan right after the guy desperately handed out for free or left on my car window when I was at a show.

That said, I do it too.  It's about pride and experience for me.  Also I'm not willing to spend a ton of money because I know I won't get it back.  So I think you should figure out what your personal goals are.  Are you just wanting a quick and easy way to get your music out of speakers?  Then do digital downloads/streaming and print your CDRs and hand them out for free; put a tip jar beside the stack.  If you are interested in making a cool package/product and want to get your hands dirty then take your time and find creative people to work with.  You won't be happy with the product if you half ass it. 

But if you're ultimately wanting to build buzz for your legitimate release I'm not sure why you'd give the few people that care about it a piss poor physical representation of the same music before the real one comes out.  You think they're going to buy it again for the real CD when they probably haven't listened to their original copy more than once, if at all?  I'm sure you're excited about your music and want it out as quickly as possible, but you're not going to make substantial money with a cheap release, it will undermine your real release, and it paints the picture that you're a "sharpie on a CDR" type of band.  Seems like a bad promotional plan to me.  I could think of worse positions for a band to be in than to have a group of people really wanting to buy a release from them and it's just not out yet.  Have them pre-order that shit at a substantial discount in exchange for their e-mail address--you struck gold and don't want to lose track of those people!

[Mr. Foxen]

There is a difference between doing it yourself and doing a really half-assed job of something yourself.

[liquidsmoke]

We are contemplating different options on this front. Having a physical product is good for shows, mail order, blogs, labels, etc but 'replication'(real CDs) seems to be about twice as expensive as CDRs('duplication') for a run of 100 which is quite a lot when you have no idea what kind of interest your ep or album will generate. Starting with Bandcamp 'pay what you want' and make as you need them sharpie CDRs in a sleeve with an art/album cover insert for friends and gigs for $2 or whatever seems sensible.

[Mr. Foxen]

CD is a dying format, Vinyl with download code and download is the way really. This is my guy for CD making though: http://www.hificopies.com/html/glass_cd.html

[liquidsmoke]

CD is a dying format, Vinyl with download code and download is the way really. This is my guy for CD making though: http://www.hificopies.com/html/glass_cd.html

That website is a mess, can't see all the info.

Dying format or not it's still nice to be able to give or sell people a CD at gigs and what not.

Vinyl is great when you have a fan base that will buy it.

Scratch my sharpie idea. There are CDR label kits you can buy for home printers, not that I have a working home printer. A stamp could also work I would think.

[Ayek]

We're doing download and tapes with free download for our ep. Bought 100 tapes and cases, matching the length of the ep, dubbing them as we need em. I got a decent tape deck and it sounds good to my ears. Gonna try engraving them and roll with that if it doesn't look too homemade. Just gotta get the covers printed.

[liquidsmoke]

We're doing download and tapes with free download for our ep. Bought 100 tapes and cases, matching the length of the ep, dubbing them as we need em. I got a decent tape deck and it sounds good to my ears. Gonna try engraving them and roll with that if it doesn't look too homemade. Just gotta get the covers printed.

I had a thought a bit earlier today about doing tapes. Even if only to excite a few locals, doing a hand numbered limited run of them could be worthwhile. Did you special order the tapes to be a certain length? My tape decks in the past were always part of cheap combo stereo systems which have all long since died but I've been meaning to procure a stand alone side by side unit.

[jibberish]

when my mom was running her eBusiness, one of the things she sold was old world Slovak music on CD's.  her folks were hilljacks from the tetra mountains heh.
so she kept open her hooks to the old country and got music to sell over here.

she burned copies on these special white faced cd's then printed them on an inkjet. photoreal. they look mint. then the CD art matches the case art if you want, and that looks pro as hell. I don't know the details, but those cd's looked pro and she sold a ton of them with very few returns. I can poke around in her office the next time I get a chance and see if I can see what the setup is.

[Ayek]

Got them from National Audio Company. Postage was as much as the cost for the tapes (sent to New Zealand). They do a bunch of different lengths in assorted colours. They can also do the copying, and printing, for a nominal fee, might be worth checking out. I didn't on account of international hassle.

[liquidsmoke]

when my mom was running her eBusiness, one of the things she sold was old world Slovak music on CD's.  her folks were hilljacks from the tetra mountains heh.
so she kept open her hooks to the old country and got music to sell over here.

she burned copies on these special white faced cd's then printed them on an inkjet. photoreal. they look mint. then the CD art matches the case art if you want, and that looks pro as hell. I don't know the details, but those cd's looked pro and she sold a ton of them with very few returns. I can poke around in her office the next time I get a chance and see if I can see what the setup is.

Was she printing directly on the CDs or to sticker labels which she would then adhere to the CDs?

One problem for me in particular is that my printer is basically at this point garbage. I saw a kit or two at a store a few months back with software and sticker labels for CDs and remember it being pretty pricey.

Might be worth it just to pay $75-100 for like 50 or so with on disc printing.

[jibberish]

hey chief, those CD's had white faces ready to print.   if I find one from her stock still left, i'll send it to you to look at.  I know she played with "lightscribe" too.. maybe that's the same thing or not..idk, I have to look.

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unrelated: why don't you bail Wisconsin and check out clevo. the weather and climate up there is brutal, sub-arctic if you ask me. buffalo is on the business end of lake erie.
SW side of clevo is actually mild. and we are south enough not to have those nasty ass biting flies in the short arctic summer.

they even passed a law downtown after some old indigent sax player/busker got hassled too much and they said he is part of the flavor of the city and people can play music and put out a jar..SO open season on flipping open a guitar case heh.  next year ima be a tailgate band somehow. drunk people throw money if you make them laugh. or something that includes my little generator.

it's a real place with civilization even.  that being said. I need to talk to my nephew who just spent his first summer in Washington working as a chef for the park service somewhere around st Helens and see how he likes the "new" laws and shooting across the Oregon border to buy stuff heh.
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back to our regularly scheduled topic.

has anyone tried horsing around with painting a CD? latex acrylic or other solvent-less types of paint wont hurt cd plastic. actually a layer of paint makes the cd tougher, like painting the back of a mirror.

i see all these awesome colors of spray paint these days. day-glo's textures, metal effects..crazy.    my buddy, the body repair dude, horses around painting other stuff and he has done amazing things with masking tape and stencils and layers of spray paint

if you have some boilerplate stuff you want on the CD, get a rubber stamp made if you need text, or carve one yourself in a piece of that art stuff made for carving stamps if you want some logo or crude text. i dont know..i think if you went total homemade , it could be way awesome with some imagination.

[liquidsmoke]

hey chief, those CD's had white faces ready to print.   if I find one from her stock still left, i'll send it to you to look at.  I know she played with "lightscribe" too.. maybe that's the same thing or not..idk, I have to look.

So she had a special printer to put the CDs into then, no? No need to send a CD, I'm just wondering how the process works.

--------------------------------
unrelated: why don't you bail Wisconsin and check out clevo. the weather and climate up there is brutal, sub-arctic if you ask me. buffalo is on the business end of lake erie.
SW side of clevo is actually mild. and we are south enough not to have those nasty ass biting flies in the short arctic summer.

they even passed a law downtown after some old indigent sax player/busker got hassled too much and they said he is part of the flavor of the city and people can play music and put out a jar..SO open season on flipping open a guitar case heh.  next year ima be a tailgate band somehow. drunk people throw money if you make them laugh. or something that includes my little generator.

it's a real place with civilization even.  that being said. I need to talk to my nephew who just spent his first summer in Washington working as a chef for the park service somewhere around st Helens and see how he likes the "new" laws and shooting across the Oregon border to buy stuff heh.
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I can't imagine Cleveland being that much milder than southern WI. I'm mostly interested in the west coast. I think I'm going to stay here another year while I work on a plan, don't want to move to Portland or wherever only to be "lucky" to get hired at a Costco or something and then work my ass off and be miserable again like I was working in warehouses for printer parts companies here.

back to our regularly scheduled topic.

has anyone tried horsing around with painting a CD? latex acrylic or other solvent-less types of paint wont hurt cd plastic. actually a layer of paint makes the cd tougher, like painting the back of a mirror.

i see all these awesome colors of spray paint these days. day-glo's textures, metal effects..crazy.    my buddy, the body repair dude, horses around painting other stuff and he has done amazing things with masking tape and stencils and layers of spray paint

if you have some boilerplate stuff you want on the CD, get a rubber stamp made if you need text, or carve one yourself in a piece of that art stuff made for carving stamps if you want some logo or crude text. i dont know..i think if you went total homemade , it could be way awesome with some imagination.

Pallbearer's demo had some spray painted art on it, still smelled when I got my copy through the mail from them. I don't want to put that much work into it.

I do like the rubber stamp idea assuming they are cheap.

[jibberish]

no problem, just slinging mud at the walls. more ideas=more ideas to choose from. all but one are fail, heh.

[liquidsmoke]

I'm still very curious about those printable discs, specifically if one needs a special printer which they are inserted into.

[jibberish]

I'm still very curious about those printable discs, specifically if one needs a special printer which they are inserted into.

I  have to look at what she has. I can just take a picture of a printed one actually. so, ya, hang on a bit here until I can look through her stuff for the answers because I really only saw the results and only picked up on bits of the rundown on what she was doing. she was doing so much different stuff there was no way to be up to speed on all of it. I usually only had to help out with crap like networking a new printer or other computer related tech crap that was confusing to her and she had better stuff to do than learn that.

I cant even guess.

[liquidsmoke]

I read a bunch tonight about printing CD label stickers and on disc printing. There are special printers that can print directly on certain types of CDRs which sounds like what she was doing. Not cheap. Even the label stickers for regular printers are pricey. I also read about a printer type thing that can do screen printed looking text on CDs. I'm not going to buy any sort of printer though, they break down, clog up, and can be a messy money pit plus stickers on CDs that spin? CD players aren't built to handle that. I like the custom rubber stamp idea or small batch all out duplication service with on disc art/text and cases or sleeves but that's like $3+ per disc for 50. Still would have to get art inserts printed in the rubber stamp scenario.

[Mr. Foxen]

Just remembered, check out this in the Mobineko showcase: http://blog.mobineko.com/2011/07/01/caricatures-fire-in-the-womb-acp001/

[fallen]

I did that printable CD thing at work for a while. The blank discs with a white printable surface cost a lot more until I bought 400 at once which made them pretty cheap. The printer was a custom one that also burned the discs and it cost nearly a grand and ate ink cartridges which of course were unique and expensive. This made full colour high res printing a waste of time. The ink would run out too fast to make it consistent across multiple discs.

The idea was to save money by paying a dime for blanks and do the printing in house rather than paying a dollar per disc to farm it out but in the long run it didn't pay off. We might have broken even on the deal.

For DIY I'd get those white discs because they look way better than regular blank cdrs and then I'd get a big rubber stamp made and ink stamp the discs. Then get black paper sleeves and stamp those with gold or silver. Should be able to keep the production costs down to under a dollar.

[liquidsmoke]

^ thanks for sharing that. I'm not surprised at all about the DIY print them yourself costs. Ink jet printers are almost worthless. Color laser jet is the way to go but they cost a lot more.

For the stamp idea I'm thinking of the opposite colors- black discs with a white ink stamp if the right white ink could be found.

[JemDooM]

I think the more you put into something, the more value it holds, so whatever format you choose, try to go all out on the packaging as much as you can, try to have a few panels with more artwork/lyrics/band photo, make a point of it being a limited run, hand numbered etc, try to do something a bit different that makes it unique. People love it when its something special, even if its just a rough demo make it special because as afore mentioned people don't tend to be interested in what looks like quickly thrown together demo cd's (if you were gonna do that you'd be better saving your time and money and just doing a digital download because it'd pretty much be of equal value anyway) there's something about cd's, they need really good packaging these days, maybe because people buy blanks and make their own burns, or the fact that a cd in a thin sleeve is just small and flat and easily lost among stuff + there's nowhere good to put them (tapes can be lined up, put on a shelf, you can see the spines), or something to do with it being a dieing format I dunno but cd's seem to need all the help they can get these days. I don't know about the US but tapes are doing really well in the UK right now, our demo tape sold out really quickly and I have a couple of friends who run tape labels and their tapes sell out really quickly, people seem to get really excited over them, I think they're awesome too, cheap for bands to make and cheap for people to buy, I also love how they sound...

[jibberish]

^ this. I even hate those thinline CD cases. I WANNA SEE SPINES N MORE SPINES. I love cd's tapes, albums, IDC! as long as it has a spine and I can arrange them.
even burns bother me.   I have waiting for the sun on a burn and it bothers me to no end  because I want the real CD. also, then I have the complete doors.

ok, I saw a generic looking Epson printer that has a CD printing accessory thing. I think we are talking a $100 printer here. those white CD's are nothing special. I saw several brands.
I know my mom priced her CD's to pay for the costs and that was the materials, the colored case to match the CD art theme and the CD and print cost. they look pretty nice.

to the above person who got raked for a grand. that sucks.

I just saw the biggest box of blank cassette tapes. holy shit. hundreds of TDK D-60's  hehehe SCORE!

lightscribe is a special CD that can be laserprinted, but only in one color. there was some of that stuff too.

[jibberish]

ok I just burned, and went to the place of ideas(sorry my autistic side takes over now and then)

WHAT IF.......heh

you put your CD on a spindle. let's say a drill mounted in a vise with something chucked to hold a CD like a turntable holds an album.
this particular drill has a locking trigger so it can be set to some ideal speed, hands off. you plug drill into a switchable power strip.

I saw an artist who exploded balloons full of paint onto canvas or w/e. what if you spun crazy colors, like that sick dayglo stuff from spencer's gifts or idk, some coagulated mess of who knows...

THEN black stamped the text over these 1-of-a-kind crazy spun colored disks and definitely hand number each CD in the dead ring.

..slinging more mud..ideas are free and so is doing all your fucking up on paper.

If you were a god, you would take your flat black painted blanks and spray silver paint onto garden spider orb webs and put the CD through those. it would take diligence, dedication and forethought, but goddamn, you would fucking win the prize for ultimate cd of ever.

btw, I would never use any kind of stickers.  time and handling is not kind to stickers, and next to a superglue explosion inside your CD player, the last thing you want is a piece of crap with nasty stickum all stuck in there.