Is a CD release viable anymore?

[Twigman]

We released our last album on CD and vinyl as well as digitally on all the platforms. (2018)

 

The CD has sold out a couple of times (only 1000 per print run, I believe)  - I'm not sure if we'll print any more as we're releasing a new album soon.

 

The vinyl still has probably 200 copies left from an initial pressing of 500 - they're slow moving.

- I gave 10 copies to Black Circle Records in Leighton Buzzard in an effort to move them. 2 years later he rang me asking to come and get them as they were taking up rack space and he couldn't sell them.

 

I think the next album will definitely be available on CD. I'm not sure if we'll bother with vinyl, which I feel is a shame.

 

 

 

By way of contrast, on Spotify, we currently have 128,914 monthly listeners!! and our top streamed track has 8,742,077 plays

 

 

Edited yesterday at 12:28 by Twigman

[BigRedX]

On 04/05/2025 at 17:47, Wombat said:

I appreciate this has been ‘dead’ for 4 years but what is the current opinion? CDs or no CDs…?

We’re just about to release our second album and we do get asked for them at gigs. But whether that would turn into sales if we actually had them, whether we would remember to bring them (as others have commented 😂) or whether we’d ever get out money back is a constant conundrum!

Thoughts pls?

 

It's actually closer to 6 years since the previous post, and having read through what I posted back then, things IMO have changed very little.

 

1. Unless you already have a large and fanatical following or a video that has gone viral on YouTube, you or your band needs to be actively gigging in order to sell any physical product containing your music. My previous bands that were doing really well with sales of CDs and vinyl sell almost nothing now that we are no longer performing live. Each song gets a few hundred streams a year and occasionally I'll get some PRS songwriter royalties from radio play but that's it. As an example, I don't think I've sold any physical copies of anything by The Terrortones since 2022 and before that it was only a few sales each year before that since the band stopped gigging.

 

2. What you can sell at gigs will depend very much on the genre of your music and the age of your audience. You need to look at what the bands you are playing with are selling in order to make an informed choice as to what format(s) will be best for you. In my band's genre - post-punk/goth, CDs still sell decent quantities, vinyl doesn't appear to do as well. 

 

3. On the other hand IME you do need to have some physical product available to sell at gigs even if it's just a CD single. From experience as punter, if I enjoy a band's gig I'm likely to buy at least one of their CDs (which is my preferred format) at the end of the evening. If they don't have any music for sale in a physical format then at best they might get a couple of Apple Music or Spotify streams when I add their tracks to one of my playlists, and that's assuming I still like what I am hearing sometime in the next few days when I get around to it. Also as a band you need to stick around until the end of evening and be prepared to sign copies in order to maximise your sales. From experience a lot of sales don't happen until all the bands have played when the audience will decide what they are going to spend their money on. 

 

Some more hard facts:

 

Since it was released 6 months ago, my band have sold almost 50 copies of our CD single, all at gigs. That's compared with 10 Bandcamp download purchases and almost 7000 Spotify streams. However we need to sell 75 CD singles to break even on the manufacturing cost. For on-line the single has just made back it's aggregator fees, and overall for all our releases we are just about in profit, but that's only because the less popular on-line only releases are being propped up by CD sales and streaming income for the tracks that are getting 40+ streams a day. Even then, that's only because the recording and packaging artwork are all done by ourselves. If we were having to include studio time, mastering and sleeve design in the costs we might never reach break even.

 

We are currently working on an album for release later in the year when we have enough completed tracks to justify it. Whilst IMO it is possible to get away with small runs on CDR for single, an album needs to be properly manufactured in order get the longevity required (CDRs get less reliable as time goes on and you'll be lucky if they are still playable 10 years after you bought them). As a baseline the manufacturing costs for an album on CD in a Digipack with no booklet will be in the region of £700 for 300 copies which is generally the minimum run for replication with glass mastering. You can save about £100 for the same quantity in a Jewel case with a 4-page booklet. That's a unit cost of £2.00 to £2.50 which means each copy should make at least 100% profit. 

 

Things are less viable for small bands when you look at vinyl. 300 copies of your album on vinyl is going to be at the very best at least twice the price of the same number of CDs, and if you want either a gatefold sleeve or printed inner sleeve then you are looking at closer to three times the cost, which bumps up the sale price for a similar profit margin. Even if the profit margin is acceptable, and you think your audience will pay more for vinyl, £2k to stump up in advance may well be beyond what a lot of bands can afford. And again that's assuming that there are no recording/mastering/graphic design costs or that the you are simply going to write them off. On top of that vinyl takes 3-4 times as long to produce as CDs and there are various compromises that need to be made in terms of audio production, album running time and track order, to get the optimum audio quality for the medium.

[BigRedX]

On 04/05/2025 at 23:28, JoeEvans said:

It's hard to shift them but on the other hand, the sale of one CD generates about the same profit as having 1,377,339 people listen to the album on Spotify.

 

Thos figure are only for artists who have signed away most of their streaming royalties to their record label. Based on my streaming figures, for independent artists who are getting 90-100% of their streaming income, a sale of a single physical copy of a 10-track album on CD at £10 is the same as about 350 people streaming all the tracks.

[Dad3353]

Is there any mileage in customising a USB stick (format credit card, or key fob, for instance...)..? For a run of 100, I've seen prices of around £2.50 per unit, with colour logo, degressive with quantities, naturally. Pop the album, in MP4, FLAC, or Wav format, whatever on it; job done..? The graphics files could be on there, too, with photos, video clip, bio etc. Is that not already a 'thing' as merchandising..?

 

[BigRedX]

8 hours ago, Dad3353 said:

Is there any mileage in customising a USB stick (format credit card, or key fob, for instance...)..? For a run of 100, I've seen prices of around £2.50 per unit, with colour logo, degressive with quantities, naturally. Pop the album, in MP4, FLAC, or Wav format, whatever on it; job done..? The graphics files could be on there, too, with photos, video clip, bio etc. Is that not already a 'thing' as merchandising..?

 

 

Have you watched "Mr Robot"?

[Dad3353]

? ? ? 

[BigRedX]

1 hour ago, Dad3353 said:

? ? ? 

 

Only the most naive of users would put a USB stick from an essentially unknown source into their computer. It's positively begging for your device to be hacked at turned into part of a bot net.

[neepheid]

7 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

Only the most naive of users would put a USB stick from an essentially unknown source into their computer. It's positively begging for your device to be hacked at turned into part of a bot net.

 

That'll be most of them then, unfortunately...

[Dad3353]

52 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

Only the most naive of users would put a USB stick from an essentially unknown source into their computer. It's positively begging for your device to be hacked at turned into part of a bot net.

 

What a strange world some of us live in.  S'OK to download stuff from t'web, though, right..? 

[prowla]

9 minutes ago, Dad3353 said:

 

What a strange world some of us live in.  S'OK to download stuff from t'web, though, right..? 

Big difference:

• A USB stick can have embedded executables which run automatically when it's inserted.
• An mp3 or flac download is a data file.

[Dad3353]

Well, I suppose if bands are going to start putting virus files onto USB memory that they're selling to their fans, they deserve to lose those fans. Never mind; t'was just an idea that I had, naïve fool that I am. 

[neepheid]

1 minute ago, Dad3353 said:

Well, I suppose if bands are going to start putting virus files onto USB memory that they're selling to their fans, they deserve to lose those fans. Never mind; t'was just an idea that I had, naïve fool that I am. 

 

Ah, don't take it like that.  I get paid in my professional life to be paranoid when it comes to these kind of things...

[prowla]

6 minutes ago, Dad3353 said:

Well, I suppose if bands are going to start putting virus files onto USB memory that they're selling to their fans, they deserve to lose those fans. Never mind; t'was just an idea that I had, naïve fool that I am. 

Well, they may not do so deliberately or even knowingly.

[Dad3353]

3 minutes ago, neepheid said:

Ah, don't take it like that.  I get paid in my professional life to be paranoid when it comes to these kind of things...

 

CD's can never infect PC's, though..? Hmm... It seems a bit excessive. I spent a very long time in the IT world, and am well aware of the potential risks, but also of their probability. I would trust a USB bought from a group's concert just as much as their CD, bought at the same venue. Apparently I'm doing it all wrong, though. 

[BigRedX]

It's not so much viruses but as has been said executables that are likely to be the problem. A less than scrupulous band might include something that would make your computer stream their Spotify catalogue 24/7 in the background. 

 

Having said that most short run CDs are on CDR these days. Even if you have them duplicated by a commercial outfit do they actually check what they are producing? Most of the services will ask for a DDP file which could have pretty much anything on it.

 

And even big labels aren't immune from including undesirable files on their manufactured CDs. Anyone remember the Sony Records root-kit that was supposed be for copy protection in the early 2000s?

[Dad3353]

Just now, prowla said:

Well, they may not do so deliberately or even knowingly.

 

One wonders, then, who put the files on the USB in the first place. I was suggesting that the group did that, using virgin USB media. Would they inadvertently corrupt their own merchandise..? Hmm... 

[prowla]

1 minute ago, Dad3353 said:

 

One wonders, then, who put the files on the USB in the first place. I was suggesting that the group did that, using virgin USB media. Would they inadvertently corrupt their own merchandise..? Hmm... 

 

What if the machine they were using had something on it, unbeknownst to them?

You would only need one error at some point in the chain by one provider to bring the whole method into question.

Hmmm, indeed!

[Dad3353]

What if... what if... OK, stick to tee-shirts and hoodies, then. 

[Wombat]

Buy wearing a T-shirt or hoodie with a really useless band on could make you look like a dork! 😂.

 

But more seriously, great comments peeps. Keep ‘em coming!

[BigRedX]

As a band you make a lot more money from a T-shirt sale then you would from music on physical media. Sad but true.

 

In October last year my band did a run of 100 T-shirts in two designs. We have already made enough money from sales to cover the production costs. We won't break even on any of our CDs until nearly all of them are sold.

[prowla]

1 hour ago, Dad3353 said:

What if... what if... OK, stick to tee-shirts and hoodies, then. 

Got to cover the what ifs or you’re being negligent. 🤫🤔🫡🤐🤨🫢🤪😇😉

[rushbo]

Just to muddy the waters a bit, I think you also need to consider demographics before you take the plunge on manufacturing physical media.

My old Rhythm and Blues band sold a decent amount of CDs at gigs and by mail order- and by decent amount, I mean 300-ish of each CD we made. One of the reasons for that was that our audience of 40-65+ year-olds were still hardwired to buying actual things, rather than streaming or downloading. The band had a BandCamp page with competetively priced downloads in MP3 and WAV formats, but digital sales were minimal.

My advice would be to look at your audience. If it's full of bright young things, then streaming, downloads and maybe some boutique vinyl could be the ways forward. Of all the stuff we sold however, it was T Shirts that generated the most revenue and a well designed, sensibly priced shirt or beanie will always be popular.

[BigRedX]

13 minutes ago, rushbo said:

My advice would be to look at your audience.

 

Unfortunately you can't just look at your audience. You have to know them and that doesn't happen without actually trying to sell them stuff first.

 

Plenty of "younger" audience member are interested in buying vinyl. Also as I said previously it doesn't matter how big a proportion of your audience are small and skinny, the people who buy band T-shirts tend to be size L and bigger. At our last gig we sold all the size L T-shirts we bought with us and nearly all of the size XL.

[Lozz196]

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

 

Unfortunately you can't just look at your audience. You have to know them and that doesn't happen without actually trying to sell them stuff first.

 

Plenty of "younger" audience member are interested in buying vinyl. Also as I said previously it doesn't matter how big a proportion of your audience are small and skinny, the people who buy band T-shirts tend to be size L and bigger. At our last gig we sold all the size L T-shirts we bought with us and nearly all of the size XL.

Def, in my last band we found that vinyl sold great in Wales and Europe, CDs not so much, whereas in England CDs sold much better than vinyl. And yes, L & XL shirts are the "sellers".

[Twigman]

53 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

 And yes, L & XL shirts are the "sellers".

L & XL are definitely the sellers in UK, USA, NL and Germany but in Spain and Italy we sell mostly M - I think they are generally smaller in the Med.

Edited 6 hours ago by Twigman