D.I.Y.!
A lot of people have asked me over the years to describe how to start a record label, so I figured I would devote this section of this website to D.I.Y, Doing It Yourself. It's a lot easier than you would think, but it takes a lot of hard work too. Sometimes finding the proper tools is not easy either, unless you or someone you know already works in the music industry. Most importantly, it is not always the correct decision for a band to get involved in manufacturing and distributing their own music. In many cases, they simply do not have a clearly or objective opinion about presentation. They also just do not have the time necessary to devote to both the band and the label side of things. Corey Rusk, The president and founder of Touch and Go Records summed up brilliantly in a 1999 Chicago Reader interview that often times it's best to choose either running a label or being in a band. Most of the time, he argues, one cannot do both. There are exceptions (such as Mac McCaughan and er, myself).Corey chose to run a label and stop playing in a band, and many others have chosen to abandon any kind of a real label for a life on the road. There is definitely no clear answer. You must find whatever is best for you personally.
In short, the reason why I'm writing this page is to help you discover whether starting a record label is something that's possible for you. It's important to first determine whether it's best for YOU to actually put the records yourself, or to have another, more experienced label do it instead. It really depends on how much risk you're willing to take, and how much work you're willing to do. But it's not simply a matter of throwing money at a presser and arriving at 1000 discs. Below is a detailed description of some of the things I do to get a record out, and some contact info for some businesses in the industry to get you started should you decide to start your own label after reading all of this. I have only a few years of experience, but I feel many of the lessons I've learned can be passed down to others as they were passed down to me.
The first tools you need are a healthy knowledge of what kind of music you'd like to produce, and a means of getting that music out there. Hungry music lovers such as yourself are waiting! Sounds pretty simple, right? On many days it is that simple for me. I'll see and/or hear a band I really like and want to put out. I'll run across a fan of my label at a show. A distributor calls me up and requests more records to sell. But unfortunately, those days are few and far between! On most days, it seems like I'm just another of the many small, meaningless labels overpopulating the entertainment media market with more and more music that our culture ultimately cannot digest quickly enough. Not to be depressing about it, but there is a TON of music out there and SO MUCH MORE on the way. It's overwhelming at times. That's why in this highly competitive business, a sense of humor AND a sense of diligence are both needed. Otherwise, you simply will not survive. Anyway, you need to decide whose music you want to put out and how to get the wheels rolling! A lot of research and thought has gone into my more recent releases, but often times when I was starting out it was all feel. If I heard something I liked, and thought the music was important for whatever reason, and felt it should be released, then I released it! It really was that simple of a decision. What many people don't realize is the other things that accompany that decision.
The four major things that I recommend you do with any release are:
1) Sign a Contract.
2) Find a vendor and produce the disc.
3) Distribute the Album.
4) Promote the album.
1) Not all labels work this way, but I always advise people to always hammer things out in a contract. Contracts are funny things. I did a lot of research about them when initially drawing them up for my label. But basically, anything that's written decently and in English that two parties agree to is legally a contract in the United States. Now I will not disclose any specifics of Spade Kitty contracts here, because that is strictly between my artists and the label. But mostly, the contracts are a designation over who has control over certain rights like manufacturing, distributing and publishing rights, and who will pay for what, and how revenues will be split. It's all very common sense. I will say that in my research that many independent labels agree to basically split the money with their artists fairly evenly, whereas majors often take a substantial amount more. If you're trying to write a contract and having difficulty doing so, email me.
2) Next, you need to decide how you want to manufacture your music. These days, compact discs have become the preferred media. There are two major choices at your disposal regarding cds. Pressing compact discs is still cheap and quite cost-effective considering all the perks, but cd burning is becoming more and more popular. Whenever someone asks me which of the two is better, I always recommend pressing rather than burning. With pressing you have to do no work other than sending off master artwork and sound files, whereas with burning it's extremely labor-intensive. In addition, if you can sell at least 200 copies of a pressed record, you'll break even or even make a little money and get nicer packaging and perks including shrink-wrapping, full-color, four-panel artwork, and free shipping at most pressers. Plus the damn thing just looks better and people take you more seriously when it looks more professional. Also, many burned cds may not play on all stereos and are not generally high quality discs compared to those manufactured by a presser. The cost of pressing a CD can be anywhere from $1.30-$2.50 per disc, and that price will vary (and so will the work) depending on which source you use. However, you must press no less than 1000 discs at most pressing companies, which means you need a fairly large investment to start ($1300-$2500 dollars). Hence, you are undertaking a serious risk in pressing by investing a substantial sum of money upfront and that's something that's important to realize. Unless you already have distribution connections, you may have a hard time in the short term recovering your costs. My experience is limited, and often times you will find yourself jumping from vendor to vendor, but the most reliable and fairly priced compact disc manufacturer I've found is CD forge in Oregon. Their website is www.cdforge.com. Give Fred Schaaf a call there and tell him you got a general price range from me and have him give you a quote based on exactly what you want.
The cd manufacturer will confuse the hell out of you with tons of strange questions. These questions will seem less confusing if you are a graphic designer. The questions will be "can you please lay out the cd in CMYK and not RGB?" and "Do you want a white flood on the cd face?" Bottom line: you need to hire a graphic designer to lay out your cd or you will botch it somehow, unless you are a graphic designer. Hire someone freelance. Do not hire a friend who has just used photoshop a couple of times. Usually hiring one is only a couple of hundred dollars and it will save you a ton of hassle. Essentially, you want the graphic designer to design the cd booklet, tray card, and cd face designs. All vendors have templates for all of these designs, and will require you to use them. Make sure you use them or the vendor will scold you and worse, reject your design.
Every cd I've pressed has had four panel artwork. Four panel artwork is generally defined as a booklet that opens and has no inside pages. The PANELS are the number of distinct faces you see within the cd booklet. In addition to the cd booklet, there is the traycard, which is the perforated piece of artwork that graces the back and sides of a jewel case cd tray. Most pressers will
You'll also want to make sure this person is extremely detail oriented and not disorganized, because a tenth of an millimeter difference in layout will FUCK your pressing. This happened on Fables in Slang. We were given a slightly off spot chart and it changed the colors slightly and the artwork bled over the sides of the traycard because the sizing was a little off. Fortunately, we were able to fix most of the problems. It this was all partially the GD's fault but also partially the vendor's fault. I recommend staying away from that vendor (Europadisc in NYC). For Rockwell, I used Regina Wiethop ([email protected]). She is a professional graphic designer and I used her freelance. She only spent a weekend doing this, it was a couple of hundred dollars and everything was beautiful. I highly recommend her in this capacity if you're looking for something.
The quote of the pressing and printing will vary, and the factors that affect it are whether or not you want black and white inside panels or full color, how many colors you want on the cd face, whether or not you want shrink wrapping, bar coding etc. I have found that black and white on the inside panels will save you a ton of money. You want the barcode, because you will need it when you go through cdnow or amazon.com because they require it. Have the vendor either assign you a random barcode. You may also want to use a barcode in your artwork, although I think the barcoding over the top of the cd is better. I also recommend instructing the vendor to place the
3) Now you need to distribute music. I have used essentially four major American vendors for Spade Kitty, and I'm always looking for more, but it's tough to find them for indie stuff. Most of them work on consignment, which means that you send them 25 cds and an invoice and hopefully they'll sell them and give you the money in 60 days. If they don't sell them, they'll give you the discs back, but that's always depressing. All of my vendors are listed on the Spade Kitty Site's Distribution Page.
4) Now the most thankless yet important job of all. Promotion. The most important thing is to write a press release and describe your music. Write it as soon as you know the track listing and the cd is being pressed. In each of my contracts, I set aside about 150 copies of any release for promotional purposes. 50 of them go to magazines, fanzines, etc., and 75 of them go to radio. 25 copies are just in case I need extras. I send out the disc to the magazines with the press release BEFORE the record's street date. That's the VERY first thing I do. The second thing I do is mail the listen copy to distributors. Hopefully, I can get three good quotes from them ASAP and transform the Press Release to a Radio Press Release by using a couple of reviews as quotes and just indicating which songs are NFA (Not For Airplay, a term in radio used to describe what cannot be played on the air because it has the six major swears in it). To find out which magazines to send to, I just went to a good record store and copied addresses from magazines which had cool bands reviewed in them. Often, I would even specifically address certain reviewers. Building up a reputation is important with these people. If you consistantly put out records and send them to the same people the reviews get more and more label-referential.
Once you have a couple of key quotes, and even if you don't, mail out your radio copies. CMJ used to publish radio playlists in a big handbook which cost about 100 bucks but which is FRIGGIN' awesome resource. Nowadays, you can just join their website's radio resource page for 15 bucks a month. I haven't checked it out myself, but I would imagine all the same stuff is there.
This should get you started. If you have any questions, email me.
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