DIY forever, apparently

[solarbird]

I’m seriously considering setting up a Kickstarter project for one of these:

Double-Sided Disc Duplicator

I figure small donors would get free copies of Dick Tracy Must Die and other music, large donors could get some free uses. It could maybe be a local resource. I do not want to get into the general business of CD printing, but I could see doing something like this for very small runs – bring in your LightScribe discs, I burn a few hundred free for large donors, a smaller number at amortised cost or something for other people.

I have the rest of the technology, this seems like a fairly simple step. And it’s so cheap now that it seems intuitive, really. Sure, I’d like to do four-colour scary glass-plate CDs, and hopefully will eventually, but I also do a lot of tiny runs – they’re almost like art projects. This would be cool for things like that.

Good idea? Dumb idea?

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil.

Comments

[maellenkleth]

It's an excellent idea. Do please tell us, by any convenient means, how much this thing would cost overall, and what a meaningful share would be.

[solarbird]

Thanks! I'm now leaning even more heavily towards trying. I mean, worst case, what - I don't get it, and nothing changes.

[mdlbear]

Sounds like a cool idea!

[solarbird]

I hope other people agree. ^_^

[cow.livejournal.com]

It's $459; I say go for it. I've seen some sad, unloved Kickstarter projects lately amongst independent musician friends, but they're always "I need like $10,000 so I can do everything for an album! yay!", which isn't going anywhere to start with.

But $459? That's a very reasonable thing to ask for.

[solarbird]

...$10k. Well, sure, if you rent a studio and hire an engineer. But damn, Dick Tracy Must Die's actual cost to produce is under 20% of that, even counting the bodhran I bought. (Lemmie think; audio interface, $260. New-to-me used mics, $130. Motherboard, CPU, RAM, HD upgrades: around $400, high-end-when-first-shipped but clearance-reduced at time of purchase. Home-built sound baffles: around $50 each in parts, $150 total. Pro mastering: $550ish, by far the single biggest expense. Cables, misc bamboo and other bits: $50ish. (I already had some of all of that.) Two mic stands and shock mounts: $100, on discount. Not including the drum, that's around $1700. Add drum: $300, that's $2000. 20% of the $10k budget.

Of course, this doesn't include mass duplication; if I went outside and paid out of pocket, a 300-disc run plus cases would be around $550, so that'd be around $2550 ($2250 without the bodhran).

Free and $0-additional materials: I didn't buy the zouk specifically for the album, so I'm not counting Kohaku. I already had Summer (my mandolin), a gift; Anna's octave mandolin (bassline, "Thought You Knew") was already here too. I already had some mics (some free, some repurposed from other uses) that got used on the album, but that's all pre-existing stock: a free SM57 gifted from an old Borg work friend who was cleaning out his closet, my old Sony ECM957 I used to use for live recordings on minidisc of other people that finally turned out to be good for something. A studio headset "bought" for $0 via credit-card rewards programme points - win for meeeeee! One of Paul's bass guitars, the hollow-body mid-60s fiddle bass that I restored to usability; Nevada's abandoned djembe; abandoned desk used for studio desk and also as instrument (Hide From Me - that BOOM sound is me hitting the desk with a mallet XD ); I made the flutes myself, out of bamboo; abandonware keyboard used for organ noises in "Shout at the Desert" (and I could've used freeware MIDI for that if I'd had to, but I'm glad I didn't need to); pop filters made out of coat hangers and old nylons; Paul's old Radio Shack synth used for accidental interference synth noise in "Outbirds;" bamboo sticks included in "misc" for strike percussion in several songs; glass vase (from flowers, some time ago) used for percussion in "Stay Away." I already had two mic stands and various microphone clips.

So, well - yeah! There you are. That's a lot less than $10k. But the $10k way would've been a lot easier - and faster, too.