What about releasing your album on your own?

[drunkard]

Hallo ,I wanted to know your thoughts on this subject.Do you think its better to release the album on your own,or sign with a mid label ,to a mid contract?I mean ,I ve seen many guys releasing their album on mp3 and on amazon ,ebay ,cdbaby etc and I thought fuck why should I bother getting on a label with a mid contract ,when I can release it on my own and have 100%profit of it?What sites you suggest selling your music?And what are the pros and cons of it??

Thankks

 

[Torniojaws]

I've released four albums (3 on CD), and it's not an easy task! Especially if you want to sell CDs outside the EU too. You'll run into the bank incompatibility issue (mainly, they take a ridiculous service fee), so you need to arrange something else such as PayPal, although I can't recommend it, due to their... unorthodox methods with the funds. And it's also a lot of work to pack all those CDs and take them to the post office.

Oh and as for using sites to sell your stuff: Amazon, for example, takes 55 % of the original price as a service fee. So if you initially sell a CD for 10 EUR, Amazon still takes 5,5 EUR even if you later on sell the CD for 7 EUR. What I used to use (TheGround, but they stopped CD distribution) took 30 % of the sale price. It's too bad they quit, but I guess it was non-profitable for them.

Right now, I can't sell outside the EU because the bank service fee costs would negate any profit from selling things. Hopefully something else will come along.

But inside the EU (and the rest of Europe), it's fairly simple:

1) User sends you an order, be it by email, order form on a website, or whatever
2) You give the user your SWIFT/IBAN number
3) When the money is in your account, you send the merchandise via your local post office

No extra costs for anyone and it works

 

[egan.]

The big pro of the self release is of course 100% profit share vs. 10-15% of sales with a label.

The benefits of a label are:
recording advance
network of magazines/press to get reviews and interviews
the label will advertise
network of agents and labels to help get you tours and and shows
I think it's fair to say that label releases are generally taken more seriously

Obviously if you can pull off a self release you will do better financially. The trick is you have to put up the money and build the hype alone which is no small feat. It also depends on your goals. I know local bands that have profited off of their self release, but never "go anywhere." In the modern age it's certainly easier to gain an international audience but you probably aren't going to tour internationally without label support or at least not w/o hemorrhaging personal money.

 

[egan.]

And it's also a lot of work to pack all those CDs and take them to the post office.

 

[Torniojaws]

Yep

 

[rvs0002]

As others have said, the biggest drawback is PR. You can do it on your own, but be prepared to work at it. I've released 5 cd's on my own, and for each one, I put in about 4 hours a night (every night) doing PR work with anyone and everyone. You have to line up your own interviews, do your own press releases, come up with clever ways to find and market to new fans, pay for your own advertising in magazines and online, find and make deals with distributors, etc. It really is a big job that takes a lot of hours.

If you put in the work and have a good product, though, you will be successful. I built up a nice fanbase, and they support everything I do, much of that because I have regular contact with all of them, not just when I'm trying to sell to them. I also scored a nice European distro deal (that pays upfront) because I worked hard at it.

Lastly, I highly recommend CDBaby. You can have a link on your site that directs foriegn buyers to your cd on their site. They ship to anywhere in the world and just take a cut of 4 bucks. That's a pretty killer deal. They also get you on all the other places like Itunes, and they do digital downloads. It's a pretty well run program. I enjoyed working with the owner Derek when he was there, and still keep up with him from time to time. The new owner seems to want to keep it running just as well.

So to sum it up, it is nice to take a big chunk of profits for yourself, but you will soon find out that there is a ton of work to do if you want to be successful, and not everyone is interested or good at being a promoter, marketer, and has the knowledge and skill to do professional PR work. If those things don't appeal to you and you just want to play your music, it's probably better to make less money but let someone else handle the business side of things.

Good luck either way!

 

[nwright]

^ I second the CD Baby idea.

My band has released 2 CD's on our own, and I'd say we've been successful...In that we've been able to sell a lot and make a profit. I (we) don't have a lot of time to do the PR thing, so we're still small time, but simply putting our CD's up for sale directly off our Myspace page has been great. CdBaby has been nice, too, but not nearly as much as just selling ourselves. We've never really advertised that we have CD's for sale through CDBaby, so I guess I can't complain with how many we've sold through there (a good bit). What CD Baby has done is got our CD out a bit more internationally. Our first CD, an EP, was picked up by some CD "store" in Japan and they would buy the stock that CDBaby had and resell on their site. I ended up finding the site once and they had a whole section about our band complete with reviews. Each time we sold out at CD Baby, I'd send more and this japanese store would buy them up. I ended up selling that last 100 to them and now that CD is out of print. Kinda sucks!

The biggest boon with a label, as others have said, it having "people" do the leg work to get the CD out to press and assorted media, etc., and the advance to help cover the costs on the front end to get things done.

 

[smy1]

I say: release 1 or 2 really good CDs on a mid- to top-level Indie and then go solo. That way you have already established your name and reaped all the benefits egan was talking about. You also started to see behind the business-curtain, which is something most bands utterly fail at (and get murdered once they go solo) ...

If you don't have a label, you are essentially just another one of the 48593406759678565945674869 myspace bands and people/press/bookers won't give a shit about you for years.

 

[HeadCrusher]

Nobody seems to worry about the get-a-label-thing on here. Piece of cake or what?

 

[drunkard]

Well thanks for the info.The fact is,this label says that you pay and produce 1000 cds from theor cd producing company.From these cds,they take at least 200 for promo use.The other 800 ,we choose how much we will take to sell on road,and how much we will let them sell via their webstore.The think is that they demand to have the rights for the cd for 2 years and that we always split the profits 50/50.For example if they sell an album via their webstore,we split the 4 euros of the market price of our cd in half.Also if I sell an album to a friend I should send them 2 euros, and keep the rest.2 euros is an example they demand half the price of the cd,not the retail price.But they do have a touring agency and they do have good ways to promote also our videoclip.What do you think?Fair trade?

 

[drunkard]

And how about selling your album as mp3?Any thoughts on that?

 

[rvs0002]

Well thanks for the info.The fact is,this label says that you pay and produce 1000 cds from theor cd producing company.From these cds,they take at least 200 for promo use.The other 800 ,we choose how much we will take to sell on road,and how much we will let them sell via their webstore.The think is that they demand to have the rights for the cd for 2 years and that we always split the profits 50/50.For example if they sell an album via their webstore,we split the 4 euros of the market price of our cd in half.Also if I sell an album to a friend I should send them 2 euros, and keep the rest.2 euros is an example they demand half the price of the cd,not the retail price.But they do have a touring agency and they do have good ways to promote also our videoclip.What do you think?Fair trade?

How many bands do they have and how long have they had them? Call up some of these bands and see if the "label" has actually helped them in any way. Have they sold a lot of cd's and merch, gotten some nice bills with good bands, or are they playing the same small places for little pay that they could grab on their own? Places that just want your money show their colors very fast. They have a small stable of broke bands at any given time, and none last for very long. Do some detective work before signing anything. More crooks than not out there.

 

[ahjteam]

And how about selling your album as mp3?Any thoughts on that?

would you buy mp3s?

 

[Torniojaws]

would you buy mp3s?

I've had mp3 albums (along with CDs) for sale for 1,5 years now and so far I've sold 9 (nine!) albums as mp3 at the price of one full mp3 album for 1,99 EUR.

 

[ze kink]

Trent gives some nice advice here:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBxhxVIiwaA&fmt=22[/ame]

 

[ahjteam]

I've had mp3 albums (along with CDs) for sale for 1,5 years now and so far I've sold 9 (nine!) albums as mp3 at the price of one full mp3 album for 1,99 EUR.

(9*1,99)/18/30 = 0,0331666€ per day

 

[DanLights]

drunkard, the deal you have does not sound bad, but yes you should check first if the label actually does a good job.

My band signed with an Independent label that has some extreme metal bands and our first Ep was released through them. We only payed for the recording of the 5 songs, those guys print us 200 copies of which 30% of those albums are ours to sell however and wherever we want and that profit is ours, and they sell the other 70% in their ways (the label's on a different city that we are, so distribution of the Ep is well split across the country) and that 70% is theirs. Plus they gave to us like 30 hats with the logo of the band (caps, whatever you call them in english) and a bunch of stickers totally at our disposal that we sell or give away and all the profit is ours. And in the contract they also promised us a show with all expenses payed (transportation, food, hotel) in their city and just recently that show was a reality and it turned out to be the best, biggest and greatest audience response we have had in our short 2 year career as a band. And we went out of the country to Colombia once, this was better. So I would say the label has worked pretty well for us, being a new band and all.