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").