Advice on Releasing our first record

[andrew_over]

Hey TalkBasser's!

So you know the current situation, my band has been a band since december '07, and have been through much to be where we are today. Not saying "we had it worse than... " or "we're big shots now" -- but 3 drummers, 5 guitards and 3 rehersal spaces later, the 3 of us are ready to record our first full-length record this August. (singer/guitarist is going to record all guitars... glad i'm not him! lol just jokin')

We are between 20 and 22 years old.

Regarding those of you who have been in bands, toured, made an album/sold your album, i'd like your advice on our plan.

We are releasing the 11 track album later this year, and pitching in equal amounts to record, mix and master the album. The singer/guitarist and I are paying to press 250 copies of the album on Vinyl, and our drummer is paying to press x amount of CD's in Digipack. We're thinking of selling the Vinyl for 10 bucks at shows, and passing out the pressed CD at shows as well. When you buy a record, you'll get the CD with it. You are more than welcome to throw in a donation if you want.

I've mentioned the idea to about 5-10 friends, and all of them are stoked to buy the vinyl. Then again, i only told my friends who own a record player.

How does that sound to you veterans? We're obviously not too concerned about making our money back. Anyone see any unforseen problems? Based on your experiences do you think Vinyl will sell? Any other advice/ comments would be greatly appreciated. If you would like to hear us, 2 older songs that are not on the new album are on our MySpace. www.myspace.com/themightyfine

All the best,
Andrew

[Getaway Driver]

Sounds like a really good idea, but I can't say how it works from experience. I love the vinyl idea!

[heath_r_91]

Are you wanting to do the band full time?

If you are, you should be worried about making your money back.

I know I wouldn't personally invest in the vinyls, I don't see the appeal to vinyls-but thats just me.

If it were me I would use the money you are going to spend on vinyls to promote your shows and cd.

[Nick Kay]

The style of music that you play doesn't seem like it'd have a very big vinyl market, to me. A lot of the big-selling vinyl I see nowadays is prog rock, art rock, and the lo-fi side of indie. 7" singles are huge in the punk market, but LPs aren't seen nearly as often, especially with an unestablished band.

As far as a business plan goes, your idea is ludicrous. You can't expect anyone to value your music if you don't value it yourself. You might not care about making your money back now, but when you're half a country from home and you can't afford gas or food to keep the tour going, you're going to regret giving anything away for free.

If you still feel like giving something away at shows, or something to include in your press kit without giving out the whole album, consider pressing a promo EP to go along with the LP release. Two or three songs plus a B-side, to give people a little taste of what the album's like. Maybe take your vinyl budget and use it to press the EP instead.

[Tony-bobs]

I think a 7" would be more likely to sell, and like Nick said, toss in an ep with some B-sides. pry a little cheaper to press as well. then sell the full album seperatly. dig the tunes tho, I would come see you guys!

[kurtwash]

We just did a run of 500 7 inches and we'll just about break even once we sell all of them, but we were kind of silly and went full colour on the jacket along with some other things that we probably wouldn't do again.

A run of 250 would be way too expensive; most of the cost involved in pressing vinyl has to do with setting up the lacquers and masters. The cost goes down quite a bit once you up your run size (around 1000 and you start to see some real profit potential). I don't even think any places will do a run as small as 250.

As far as selling vinyl, well that's for you to decide. Our music scene is pretty receptive to vinyl (glam/power-pop), but I'm not so certain if the style you guys play would be. Do you buy mostly vinyl, and do most bands you play with mostly sell vinyl? You need to be sure it's something your fanbase will want to buy.

I wouldn't give away the CD w/ the record either. You could sell that for 10$ as well for people who just want it on CD, and possibly offer a digital download card for those who buy vinyl. I know some vinyl companies offer this service for somewhere in the neighbourhood of 300-400$ (it costs money to run a dedicated webserver).

Anyways, understand that even if you think this out and try to be as efficient as possible, you probably won't much if any money until you start to actually get a bit bigger and be able to sell more volume. That doesn't mean you should just give things away; when you're having trouble scraping together the rent, you tend to resent your band for being such a money pit.