Bands- Why you shouldn't order physical CD's of your albums

A physical CD is only good when you have a record company taking care of the order and/or if you have a good marketing campaign to support it. Otherwise, you can start saying farewell to your investment.

After you spent a few thousand on the recording studio alone (plus rehearsals, transportation, food, mixing, mastering), when it gets to the time to search for places to order your physical CD's, companies will try to allur you with manufacturing minimums: "Get 50 CD's for 158 Euros or Get 100 CD's for 239 Euros".

Here's the usual though process scenario:
"Let's see... the first offer is 3.16 per album and the second offer is 2.39 per album and 50 CD's won't be enough, I will be playing a lot and people might want to buy more, I'll take the 100 for 239 Euros."

-Now, you will probably give 5 or 10 of them away for your family and band mates. Which is more than fair. It means that, if you gave out 10, 23.90 Euros is what you did not get back. But no worries, you will sell your album for a price bigger than the unit price (how else are you going to get any profit?).-

"Hm... the usual CD is sold somewhere between 12 and 25 Euros. I know! I will charge 10 Euros because it is lower than what stores sell! People, after hearing my show and create some value, some will surely want to buy it! I play jazz (or rock or metal, whatever) and there's one place I perform that jazz lovers go to, I will definitely sell a few there and make a 8 Euro profit for each sell to help cover the studio expenses!"

Here's a picture from a Washington Post article published earlier this year.
The only reason singles is going up is for the "single downloads".

Reality check #1
People will NOT buy your album unless they are a friend, an exception or hardcore fans of yours.
The way to have an honest view about this is to look at your own way of life. If you are the person who still buys a lot of albums, you are the exception but most of us (artists included) do not buy albums unless we really love the band because we know it's worth it.
The time you will take to get the money back from the albums in order to make some kind of profit is worthless for most artists. ("But I'm not part of the 'most'!")

Reality check #2
In this economic crisis, people don't like to spend money on things they don't know much about or on things they can get it for free.

Reality check #3
If you do not have a record company paying for your albums and/or marketing them... the rule is that it isn't worth it.

However, there are other ways to achieve the same end.

Major tip #1
If you want to feel fulfilled and have your album, order 10 and give them out. However, I suggest you make your own CD's. Copy it to a CD, add artwork of some kind and make your own packaging. Use recycled paper, something! Make only one. Then you have a profit on your first sell. Afterwards, if you realize you need to create 2 now, make 2. Make more as demand raises. Profit will raise faster and the people will enjoy the original packaging. Keep costs to a minimum of course, without loosing originality or concept, so that you can profit easier.

Major tip #2
While only 50 CD's cost you 158Euros (and that's a cheap price), services like CD Baby can add your album everywhere on the internet for unlimited use for a fraction of the price (CDBaby charges 49$ which rounds up to 36 Euros in today's conversation rate). They will pay you miserably though, but it's better worth for exposure, which, frankly, is the only value it has nowadays. We're back at the "yes, play at my restaurant for free and, in exchange, you will get exposure".
Quoting from a yesterday's article by David Byrne:

"Damon Krukowski (Galaxie 500, Damon & Naomi) has published abysmal data on payouts from Pandora and Spotify for his song "Tugboat" and Lowery even wrote a piece entitled "My Song Got Played on Pandora 1 Million Times and All I Got Was $16.89, Less Than What I Make from a Single T-shirt Sale!" For a band of four people that makes a 15% royalty from Spotify streams, it would take 236,549,020 streams for each person to earn a minimum wage of $15,080 (£9,435) a year. For perspective, Daft Punk's song of the summer, "Get Lucky", reached 104,760,000 Spotify streams by the end of August: the two Daft Punk guys stand to make somewhere around $13,000 each. Not bad, but remember this is just one song from a lengthy recording that took a lot of time and money to develop. That won't pay their bills if it's their principal source of income. And what happens to the bands who don't have massive international summer hits?"

Major tip #3
If you are in a rock/metal band, make your own t-shirts but make them cool. People are more willing to pay money for a cool t-shirt than an album of an unknown artist (aren't we all?).

Before you get into investing on something, make sure to perform a reality check on yourself to see if you are thinking clearly or if you are just mixing hope with expectation. There's a difference! You should have both but be sure not to mix them (e.g. "I hope to have some kind of success but I'm only expecting to sell a few CD's").

Creating something that never existed

The title comes from a question a younger cousin of mine once asked me a few years ago. His first question was "what do you do?", I replied "I compose music". He acknowledged my answer and then raised his head again with wide, admiring eyes and said "So, you create something that never existed before?" - it seemed both a question and a statement. I was surprised by the depth of his simple words.

Creating a piece of music can start through many ways and it is a question that I get many times from non-musicians and by composers who are just starting. However, the most important part of it isn't how you start but what comes after it.

The process of music creation does not only apply to music composition. I believe it applies to anything that involves problem solving: art, business, technology, law... Although people tend to separate one another and think of them as complete opposites, it's impressive how many similarities they actually share when it comes to the process of creativity. Everything that involves problem solving requires creativity. Either you need/want a new composition, a new business strategy, find a new way to produce energy or even create a new dish at a restaurant, you need to use creativity, build the puzzle, solve new problems that are raised throughout the process, readjust, try again, erase it, start all over... until you get to the final product. It can be a short or long process.

There are several ways a new composition can be born:

• An idea Something little comes to mind and you loop it countlessly until you get somewhere where you can jot it down or record it and start working on it.
• Through improvisation Improvise and improvise over a specific situation until something makes you intrigued.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'eureka!' but 'that's funny...' - Isaac Asimov

• Brain storming Analyze what you have and brainstorm over it. The "cannot"s will be extremely helpful.
• Research Analyzing what other people have done in similar situations is a good way to evoke some ideas. Just make sure to make it your own! Steve Jobs was amazing at putting ideas together and then making them his own.

The most important thing to have in mind in the Film Scoring world is that there is no time to wait for inspiration to strike you because you have a fixed deadline. As Mychael Danna jokingly said in an interview (composer of Life of Pi) while explaining the importance of deadlines: "It doesn't have to be good but it better be there".

Often, you will get the movie later than predicted because the production got delayed due to some unforeseen circumstance. This means less time to compose which means you have to have great time management and adaptability skills. You have to be comfortable enough to shift mindsets. It might mean that you have to simplify everything without loosing effectiveness. Also, after composing, you still have to record the players, mix it, master it and dub it with the SFX.

Being paid as a freelancer

Being a freelancer requires a lot of work. The money is not the reason for why you do it. It's too hard for it, if you are only searching for financial satisfaction. However, it IS important to have it in mind if you do plan to continue creating your art.

Although I have done free work in the past, today it's just something I never do except if there is any real value that can justify my time and expenses.
I have turned down more work than I have accepted because, during the very beginning, I learnt that sometimes the project idea is amazing but the work is never finished; or you just find out that the director/producer just wants to keep more money for himself by having you work for little; or they actually just don't care about their project (strange, right?). Moreover, they just might want free work and not care for you at all.

The thing that remains a constant is that they try to justify it by saying "There is no payment involved but your work will be promoted and you can use it on your portfolio". - Let me tell you now that that's RARELY the case with free work.

This video is a bit of a rant and aggressive but it does provide some good points.

So, which ones do you accept? Personally, I do my homework. I try to research more about the person contacting me, know their portfolio and if they have actually done something worthy of my time - as I only work on projects that I personally believe in. I also try to understand their personality. Are they just talkers or actually do-ers? Who is being paid? If they are, why am I not? Is the project being shown/marketed in a public place with people that would want to hire me? Is my name going to be an "above the line" credit? Will bills and investments, entangled on working on a project, be covered in the end and still be able to make some profit?

This research once helped me during the earlier process of my carreer. I was hired to compose for an iTunes game and they wanted 20/30 min of music in exchange for a % of the game's profit. 20/30 min is a lot to compose and requires a lot of hours per day throughout various days and even weeks. I did some research about their sales and found out that they were close to none and could never pay me anything close to all that work.

In the very beginning, it is important to get experience and if you believe the project is worth it, then do it. However, don't diminish yourself by always working for free. You also need to think about profit as it is the only way you are ever going to pay your bills and even upgrade your equipment to be able to produce better quality work.