CD's on Demand

I thought everyone knew this - but apparently not, so this is just a short heads-up!

I was amazed yesterday when two artists separately told me that they didn't have CD's for sale at their shows as they couldn't afford a full production run of 500 or so.

I was amazed that they didn't know about small scale replication.

Of course, you can burn CD's at home and do pretty good quality artwork but often the on-body print lets that method down.

For some years I have been sending people to Kunaki - a service where you upload all the parts of your CD to a site and they make them individually on demand. The quality is great and you get a full colour on-body print. These are replicated CD's not made from a glass master but for small runs they are perfect. You can then link this online CD to your band website so that you hold no stock and each time a CD is needed Kunaki makes it and ships it.

Of course, you can then also order, say, 10 or 20 at a time yourself to sell at gigs.

You can also use these to stock a CD Baby store etc.

Amazon offers a similar service with Create Space. I don't think it's as good as Kunaki.

There are more too - just search for 'CD on Demand'.

That's all. Hopefully this has switched on a lightbulb for those that didn't know!

Google Music DIY Artist Hub

Gamechanger?

People who write about the music industry love that word. They use it all the time and apply it to every new disruptive idea.

But, this time they could be right.

The big news for most folks about today's launch of Google Music is all about the service for music consumers - the unlimited cloud storage, the download store, the social sharing.

And it's a big deal - can they catch iTunes? - we'll see.

But the part that is potentially truly disruptive and amazing for the average DIY musician is the 'Artist Hub'.

This allows every DIY musician to have a direct relationship with Google, to upload and sell songs through Google on an Artist Page.

Build your artist page, set your own prices and sell your material. Google Music users can play their music purchases instantly on any device.

This is THE BIG DEAL.

People are already complaining that Google are just copying Bandcamp or CD Baby - and they are to a degree. But having the biggest (the behemoth) company of online services and seacrh offering to host your music store and hub could be a massive win for the DIY musician.

You cannot deal direct with iTunes as a DIY artist, but you now can with Google.

You can also tie your Google Music hub to your YouTube channel - the de facto place for music search. That is very smart integration.

A $25 set up fee and a 30% cut to Google is comparable to Tunecore, but is of course an additional expense for artists as they will still need to use a digital distributor to reach other services such as iTunes.

Only available in the US for artists but with a global roll out close behind, this is big news.

The Google Music Artist page is here.

And this Digital Music News article is worth reading.

 

 

How to increase sales at your shows

This latest quick video advice from Phil at Nimbit has two great tips for selling more CD's at your shows.

Unfortunately, the very clever Square card reader isn't yet available in the UK but every savvy performing artist in the US ought to be using this.