Suggestions for Making Limited Run CDs?

[Chris Gohlke]

<p>I'm on the board of directors of <a href="http://www.stlcharity.org/" target="_blank">Spread the Love Charity</a>. &nbsp;We have organized a huge charity concert with 12 local bands to take place at the end of January. &nbsp;Most of the bands are donating a song that we are putting on a compilation CD to sell at the event and I volunteered to take the music files and create the physical product. &nbsp;So far I've created the artwork and figured I could just knock these out with a color printer and a paper cutter and manually assemble them into CD cases. &nbsp;</p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1262216887.usr10.jpg" style="border: 0;" /></p><p>We are looking at producing 200 CD's. &nbsp;So we certainly could duplicate these using a handful of computers, but a quick search of the internet has found a few sites, like <a href="http://www.doadisc.com/Default.aspx" target="_blank">this one</a>, which will knock out the disks for $124. &nbsp;I figured at this price it was well worth my time and sanity to pay someone else to make them. &nbsp;I've never done this before, so I'm looking for suggestions on the best/easiest/cheapest way to get this done.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

[timmy]

Hi Chris,

I have no good suggestions for CD companies since I don't live in the US.

But I just would like to give another view on the problem. What is your target audience? Local bands could of course mean middle aged audience as well, but if it is the younger generation bands you might go a little more "techie". Why not buy a bunch of cheap 1GB USB drives, put all the songs on them including an ISO image and the artwork.

Younger people would probably think that's cool and also be able to sort out how to use it, and it would probably sell better than CD's, but of course if it is "older" people then it might not be true.

[Chris Gohlke]

It is a pretty eclectic mix, but our targets are mostly the 25-40 range. Do they make super cheap flash drives? Our target is to sell these at $5 a pop to make them impulse purchases. I'm donating everything to make these and I'm trying to keep the costs under $200 figuring a $200 investment on my part would give $1,000 to the charity. But you have me thinking $5 might be too cheap. Even so, we are going to have people just working the crowds selling these, so explaining what is on the flash drive might be harder (in a loud envirnoment) than just a CD with a price sticker.

[Reid Kistler]

Our youngest son has produced two musical CDs and had them pressed by a professional (or at least a Commercial) outfit. CDs themselves turned out fine, and artwork - which was provided by our son - also came out very well, albeit with some minor text formatting issues (that MAY have been due to incorrect input on his part....)

Will send a request for the name of the outfit he used, as (amazingly!) it doe NOT appear anywhere on the packaging!

Good luck with your project - and with Spread the Love in 2010!

Reid

[Reid Kistler]

Outfit Pete used (Pete = Youngest Son, in this case...) was "Disk Factory."

Think you can find them online under diskfaktory.com (intentional misspelling).

He found them through a referral from a local Guitar Center store, which certainly tends to lead to increased confidence in the outfit.

Apparently they have a variety of options available, and, as noted earlier, both of Pete's CDs turned out very well: standard quality jewel box, double sided front insert, with single sided back cover, and clear text - expect for a formatting problem with one inside cover text block (partial line overlap, but still legible).

There must be other companies around that do the same thing, but this is the only one we have any actual experience with....