Mad Chatter

With declining CD sales and all the hyperbole about this leading to the death of the music industry, it makes you wonder why you should even bother with manufacturing a CD.  I’m old school though; I still buy CDs and like them more than MP3s.  For us, not manufacturing a CD was never an option; we just knew we would -if for no other reason, than to have something to provide to booking agents, venue owner/managers, and media.  A “demo” to persuade, if you will.  So who should you hire to do it?

There are lots of businesses that will make your CD for you.  I happened across one completely by chance and their promotional materials looked good and prices were pretty decent (I did shop around).  I guess it depends on what factors are most important to you: price, turnaround time, quality, etc.  For the money, I don’t know if Disc Makers can be beat.  That’s who we used.  It’s based in New Jersey.  We opted for the “breakout package” which included 1,000 CDs, 24 tshirts, 300 posters and 200 stickers, all of which cost us about $1,720.  We paid extra for use of their graphic design department to design the jacket and CD art, which was also included on the posters, stickers and tshirts – a unified production.

We sent some ideas for the artwork, which were ultimately included, but they managed to do so much more with it than we could have.  You can opt to upload your own art, but unless you have the graphics software and/or know-how, I think a quality product will be hard to pull off.  We were stoked with the end result!

No complaints with the tshirts or posters.  The stickers are pretty lame though – very small square doodads that really would be shameful to sell (if anyone would actually buy).  We’re using them for mailing labels.  The posters are big, but the downside is that a block of white space is left at the bottom for the band to fill-in gig details.  That’s okay if you don’t mind handwriting in the details of each gig on say 25 posters, or gluing on pre-printed info.  Also, if you’re gigging with other bands, the poster is an attention hog that doesn’t do much to promote the overall show as much as your band.  If you’ve got 4 bands on a bill, this poster is not going to be very helpful in promoting the show.  If it’s your band’s show (headliner) with maybe one supporting act, it will work okay.

Turnaround time is fast – several weeks.  They FedEx the art proofs for approval – to make sure you get an accurate view of the colors, which digital proofs do not.  The longer you take to approve, the longer production takes.  You also need to mail your master recording to them (no uploading of digital files).  All in all, very responsive, very professional and a great end product.  Check ‘em out.  Oh, and for purposes of full disclosure, they are not paying us for an endorsement, didn’t ask for one, don’t even know about this post…if the product/experience had gone badly, I’d be posting about that too.

Doesn’t strike you as something particularly difficult to do — not like say for instance, calculating the tensile strength on the nose of the Space Shuttle.  That’s rocket science, or math, or both.  Hard stuff.  Yet, putting together a band is not easy to do.  Not a decent band anyway; one with a promise of staying power and creativity.  I can’t say that the way I’ve done it is the best way, but it worked and it’s at least worth a try (or several tries).  I discovered this powerful website called Craig’s List – really a community board of sorts, that allows people to post “ads” for just about anything.  It’s organized by cities across the U.S., so you can narrow it down by choosing the CL page for your location.  Good choice unless you’re Metallica and looking for band members on a national scale.  I wasn’t.  Every CL page has a “musicians” link where musicians (or people who think they are/want to be) may post ads looking for well –anything –but usually people to play with.  In the fall of 2005, I posted an ad and received responses from many people, including one of the guys in Mad September.  We started jamming, which then turned into a regular band of sorts.  That project morphed into another when we added a new bass player, also located via Craig’s List.  Finally, when my patience and interest wore thin, I posted yet another ad on the CL in August 2007.  That is how this band got its start.  Make no mistake — you will likely have to kiss a number of toads before you find a prince, and Craig’s List is no guarantee of chemistry amongst musicians, but overall it’s a great place to start looking.  There are other musician boards on the net, but none seem to be as active as CL. 

Another tip: don’t waste your time with the vague post like “rock band Kill Em Dead looking for kick ass drummer, must have pro gear and be ready for the big time cuz we are!”  This kind of post is wrong on many levels, but in general, it doesn’t tell the reader much.  Be descriptive; tell your story or the story of the band you envision or the sound you envision.  The post that led to Mad September did that and was written from the heart (helped with a few bourbons) and that made all the difference.  It got noticed and if you peruse the posts on CL you will quickly see that it isn’t hard to stand above the chatter if you give it a little effort.