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WHY WE STOP PRINTING CDS

Truth be told, this is a more complicated topic than I had expected. The more I looked at and studied it, the deeper it got. But that's a good thing, as I've experienced the whole thing - so you can just sit back and benefit from my experience. In this post, I will do my best to share with you all the things that I've learnt to hopefully help you to decide whether or not printing CDs is a good idea for you.

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"Children of Heavy Metal" CD

The Real Reason Why We Stopped Printing CDs

Just to get it out of the way, here's why you won't be able to get a CD copy of our upcoming album : When we printed CDs during our last album release, we were definitely overly optimistic as to how easy and quickly it would be to sell off our inventory. As it turned out, we were wrong. VERY wrong. We printed a total of 100 copies, and was thinking that we could sell them all relatively quick. But that was NOT how things went...

 

Selling the CDs was a slow process. Part of it was my fault for not thoroughly examining the many variables that were involved with the 'sell-ability' of CDs. To put it straight, we failed to sell all 100 CDs as quickly as we had originally intended to. We merely sold just close to half of that amount (counting up till now as I'm writing this post). It involved a lot of work as well as money on our part. Things like paying the artwork designer to design the CD covers and artworks, finding a good CD manufacturer and paying for the CD production before we even sell a single CD, and of course, promoting and distributing the CDs.

 

Frankly, it was not a very pleasant experience for everyone involved. We barely got back the original investment that we had put in while spending lots of time trying to figure out what actually went wrong. Although, it is not to say that there was nothing good that came out of the whole thing. We did get the attention of some foreign promoters and magazine presses, as well as new fans from other parts of the world, just because we were selling and promoting our CDs. Those were obviously good things.

 

So after a deep contemplation of the whole situation, I have decided that continuing to print CDs for our next album was just not worth it. Simply because the return on investment is not sufficient to the work and money that we need to put into printing and promoting the CDs. And also, there are many better, easier, and more sustainable alternatives to printing CDs, one of which I will lay out for you down below.

The Economics of Printing CDs

This is an area where most bands (including myself) usually don't weigh and consider carefully before making our decisions. It is a very important part to understand and map out in advance because if you don't, you won't get back your initial investment and end up with a bunch of CDs sitting in your closet shelf collecting dust...

 

The cost of a CD depends on multiple factors, which you should consider in advance :

  • The number of CDs you are printing

  • How you negotiate the deal with the manufacturer

  • Where your CDs are printed

  • The quality level of the final product

  • The cost of distributing and promoting/advertising

 

After you have looked at all of these factors and have calculated all the costs, you'll come to a close, but not 100% accurate number. This number is important to know as it determines roughly how much each CD will cost you to print (all the costs add up together) and that will be your total production cost. From that number, you can decide on how much you're going to price your CDs for. This is where I  have miscalculated during our previous CD release. Even if you're only going to print a small number of CDs, you must weigh in the potential risk for not selling all of them, or do so very slowly.

 

Here is where I recommend that you maximize your profit margin. To factor in the potential for not selling well and errors along the process. If each of your CDs cost $3 to produce, price them at $9, or even $12. This helps to ensure that you'll quickly get back your initial investment and are able to protect your band from possible financial disasters.

 

Now, I'm in no way saying that you should just simply bump up your CDs price as high as possible. It's a foolish move if you do not understand what you're actually doing. If you're going to price your products at a high price, MAKE SURE that the value you're delivering to your audience is worth WAY MORE than what they pay you.

 

The reason why I've said that you should price your CDs as high as possible is because of this : You need that extra money to promote and advertise your CDs as well as your band. Your competitors can't compete with your band if you managed to outspend them. Your profit margin is simply your CD price minus your total production cost. That 'profit' is your "back-up plan" in case something goes wrong in the process and you need to allocate some extra money to fix whatever problems that have occurred.

 

While all of this stuff sounds good in theory, reality is often much different from theory because so many things can go wrong. All of the things that I've laid out for you above would only work if you can ACTUALLY sell your CDs. If you can't sell your CDs, then they are all useless. This is where I will address another problem that I've run into before. Ask yourself these tough questions : Who is going to buy your CDs ? Does your audience already own CDs and are they still buying new CDs ? And why should they buy your CDs when they can spend that money elsewhere (such as buying other bands' CDs) ?

Your Audience Matters... A Lot...

Read this part carefully, this is a very important part of the whole CD equation. No matter how great your music or your CDs are, you won't be able to sell them if your audience doesn't have a need for them in the first place. This requires you to do your research thoroughly and really understand the crowd that you're selling to. Don't be lazy. Don't be vague about it. Really dig deep and find out who would actually buy your CDs.

 

This is also another area where I'm convinced that my decision to stop printing CDs for the next album is logically justified. Sadly, it's another domain where technology is heading against us. The cold-hard fact remains : Very few people today still own CDs, let alone buy new ones. New technology is replacing all the old technology at an alarming rate.

 

But look, I'm not ruling out the possibility that there still exists some groups of people who still crave the ownership of a continually-expanding CD collection. Sure, they are still out there. If that's your audience, great ! Do whatever you need to serve them well. My point is that the majority of people has evolved beyond the "CD age". So that's a situation worth considering. That's why you need to find out specifically if your audience still buys CDs. If they do, good - print CDs. If they don't, fine - don't print CDs.

 

Your audience ultimately determines what you should or shouldn't sell. Their 'wants' and 'needs' should be taken into serious consideration whenever you decide to offer them something new. This is also an area where most bands just fall flat on their face. They are only concerned with 'what they want to do' and 'who they are', while having little to no consideration for their audience. I don't feel pity for such bands when they suffer the consequences. That's what you get for being drunk with ego.

You Can Get The SAME Audio Quality From Digital Streaming

Yes, you read that right. The audio on your CD is produced and copied into it by a computer. It's the origin of the source. And I've done the experiment myself - listening to a CD on my computer vs listening to the extracted audio from that very same CD. The final verdict ? I can't find any noticeable difference between the two.

 

And sure, I get the whole thing about owning a physical format of music. But I honestly think you'd be better off spending your money on vinyl records instead of CDs. Their sound is analogue, which is something that digital computers CANNOT reproduce, and the whole experience is just so much more fun and incomparable by a huge stretch.

 

I have been a student in the field of audio engineering for over 4 years now and I can honestly say that both the music from your computer and your CD is of the exact same source. But with digital streaming, it's a convenient factor that the CD does not possess. You can just walk around with your phone while getting the exact same audio quality as you would get with a CD.

 

Again, that's why I said the technology is against us on this one. No one wants to walk around with a bulky CD player and a CD album holder (yes, that's a real thing for you Zoomers reading this). After the digital music revolution in the early 2000's, everyone has access to free music online and therefore, they don't feel the need to pay for the same thing on a CD. So in the area of quality and convenience, digital streaming is just clearly the better option compared to CD.

My Suggestion For A Better Alternative From CD

I can already hear the CD fanatics screaming and banging at my door, so I'll end with a simple suggestion that I think is fair and logical. First of all, I am NOT against CDs. I printed 100 of the damn thing myself and I still own a small collection of a few CDs, which I've kept for many years and will continue to do so. I am not against the CD format. What I'm pointing out is simply the reality of the modern marketplace and what I proposed to be the logical solutions and perspectives to best approach it.

 

If you still really want to print your CDs and sell them, go ahead. I'm not telling anyone to kick this option down the bucket. What I've given you are simply ways to deal with the changing landscape of music consumption habits and how to best protect yourself against unnecessary risks (as I've seen so many bands today have foolishly done).

 

If your CDs are selling well, Merry Christmas ! Keep doing what works for your own situation. But if it doesn't, then rethink and change your strategy. I don't think spending money mindlessly to satisfy some sort of a "rockstar fantasy" is the best use of it. Instead, I have contemplated very deeply on this problem and I've come up with what I think is a better alternative to CD, which I will use for our upcoming album. So here it is :

 

Hi-Fidelity Lossless Audio Files. This is an objectively better sounding format than a CD, because when you burn your audio files into a CD, it converts everything down to a standard rate of 44.1Khz/16-bit. But with a lossless format (such as FLAC), you can still retain the rawness and uncompressed sound of your audio. Your listeners can still enjoy the music on their devices, while getting a sound quality that is much better than a CD.

 

And instead of carrying around a box of dusty CDs to sell in every single show you play, I think it's much more convenient and efficient for both you and the fans to leverage the technology that's already there. There are sites like Bandcamp that lets you put up your music in a lossless format for your fans to purchase. And the thing is, with streaming platforms, the listener doesn't get to OWN the music. But with sites like Bandcamp, they get to actually OWN the music. And by the same token, you can make WAY MORE money with less hassle. It's a win-win for both parties because there's hardly any overhead or production costs involved on your part and your listeners already have the platform to use it. So it's just a much better alternative in many ways compared to selling CDs. Ponder on that...

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