vinyl pressing and distribution

[patrick bateman]

Mastering, we use Matt Colton from UK for mastering/cut.

just had a track of ours done by him, was blown away with the job he did

Matt is FANTASTIC !

We switched to Dietrich Schönemann for digital releases, also very very good.

[Brian Ffar]

$1000 wont' get you very far unfortunately. You have to account for:

Mastering
Dubplates
Artwork and stickers on each side of vinyl
paper inserts
cardboard sleeves (including artwork and printing/shipping to distro)
storage fees for those records tha don't sell (your distro's warehouse space ins't free)
Shipping for unsold records back to your house/apartment - do you have room for that?
Artist fees (if any)

If you're looking to press vinyl, I would imagine you would need an initial investment of somewhere around $3500 to press 1000 records. Hopefully you'll sell over 700 to break even and if you decide to also sell digital, you'll have to take into account how that might a) cannibalize your vinyl sales (btw, your margin on a vinyl unit sale is just over 4 times that of a digital download assuming your splitting digital sales 50/50 with your artist).

I definitely think it's still possible to be slightly profitable selling vinyl, but probably not enough to live on.

Best of luck.

[PsyTox]

why on earth would you need to press 1000 copies... That's just overkill in these days.

For 300 records you'll pay about £550-600, so roughly 650 euro. Of course if you start doing stuff like printed sleeves, picture discs, mastering cuts from other engineers than at the plant, etc etc... it all adds up. But it surely is possible to make a quality release with $1000. Breaking even will be another story ofcourse