Audio content delivery

[Soniclife]

These guys are getting small duplicators to do runs of a couple hundred at a time, almost like Print On Demand books.

Is this dependant on the large duplicator facilities, or is CD duplication now easy to do small scale?

 

[SIY]

is CD duplication now easy to do small scale?

Yes. You can even get stamping and silkscreening if you do a run of 1,000 units. There's half a dozen places near our soon-to-be-former-home that will do CD-R runs for under 1,000 units, including thermal printing and packaging.

 

[Soniclife]

Yes. You can even get stamping and silkscreening if you do a run of 1,000 units. There's half a dozen places near our soon-to-be-former-home that will do CD-R runs for under 1,000 units, including thermal printing and packaging.

Ah, CD-R that seems easy to scale to small volumes. I was asking because I was wondering what would happen to the proper CD facilities if / when the majors stop making CDs, and the implications for small artists. Did CD manufacture ever get to the simple and cheap stage or is it still expensive facilities required.

 

[SIY]

Well, most of the local facilities have "proper" CD (i.e., stamping rather than burning) for 1k+ part runs. So I'm guessing the capital expense isn't terribly prohibitive since they're all moderate size operations.

 

[Hugo9000]

ArkivMusic has had a licensing agreement for many years with a number of classical labels and classical divisions of the majors for at least ten years or so, to produce copies of selected OOP material on demand. Presto Music does that as well for a number of titles, and occasionally I see a note on Amazon that a title is available as a CD-R on demand. Arkiv and Presto reproduce the entire original liner notes and art, I have a number of their issues and never had a problem with them. No experience ordering an on-demand item from Amazon. I'd be afraid they might use MP3 as the source, since that's what they have as their download and streaming options haha! Amazon went down the toilet a number of years ago IMO, so I avoid them when possible. Shipping is unreliable since they gave up on UPS only and went to horrible rinky-dink "couriers" lmao for much of their deliveries, and their packaging sucks. I miss the days of books and CDs shrink-wrapped to a cardboard backing fitted into correctly-sized boxes so pages wouldn't get crumpled and CD cases wouldn't get smashed. Time marches on! lol

Edited to add: I have always made my own CD-R as well as a FLAC image/cue backup just in case the on-demand CD-R might not last. Another note, the Presto discs I received were not CD-Rs, although the liner notes were clearly NOT factory-style prints--they were Deutsche Grammophon, and didn't have the metallic gold imprinting on the cover that was done for the original DG releases haha! So perhaps for the most-requested/ordered reprints, they have a commercial run of discs made, and do CD-R for the low-volume titles.

 

[Soniclife]

Well, most of the local facilities have "proper" CD (i.e., stamping rather than burning) for 1k+ part runs. So I'm guessing the capital expense isn't terribly prohibitive since they're all moderate size operations.

The wikipedia article makes it sounds otherwise, are you sure they are doing the duplication locally, and not farming it out to a large facility?

 

[SIY]

Yes, I'm sure. Parts of the process are done externally, but once the stamper is made, the small houses do the rest- molding, metallizing, printing, packaging. Turnaround is 10 days, typically.

 

[Soniclife]

Yes, I'm sure. Parts of the process are done externally, but once the stamper is made, the small houses do the rest- molding, metallizing, printing, packaging. Turnaround is 10 days, typically.

So as long as stamper making continues the CD can continue, even if the majors and the public lose interest.