i wanted to see what experience people have had with selling cds at concerts.  what is the best route for making decent cds?  i am going to borrow someone's recording equipment to make a good recording, but the only way i have to print a cd is on my personal computer.  are there more professional ways to print a cd that don't cost a fortune?
There are 21 comments, leave a comment.
www.discmakers.com can print in bulk quantities.
1000 cds depending on the colors, packaging is around 1.00 or more per cd.
my roommate ordered 100 cds with just black text printed on them for $99.
they came on a spindle or spool, so no packaging.
along that same line, what about creating mp3 files and selling
them online.  anybody had success at this?
jmkarns,

i have a hard time imagining selling mp3s online unless you have an established reputation.  my thought on selling cds at concerts is that people are much more likely to buy cds of someone they have heard live, even if that person is not a big name.
beware of cover songs:
you can not post anything on itunes  and similar online stores unless the copyrights have been cleared. also professional companies like disc makers will not reproduce your cd unless you prove all the copyrights have been cleared.

songs are only public domain if they were written before jan 1st 1923.
harry fox licensing agency will charge you $91/song for the mechanical license. this really adds up.
you can obtain the license for most songs through hairy fox with a credit card.
there is a also $25 digital downloading license per mp3 as well if you post your music on sites like itunes.
having an album of jazz covers will most likely be impossible to make a profit with if you have to pay all these fees on top of the manufacturing.

i would plan on selling a couple cds or less at a gig.
beware of cover songs:
you can not post anything on itunes  and similar online stores unless the copyrights have been cleared. also professional companies like disc makers will not reproduce your cd unless you prove all the copyrights have been cleared.

songs are only public domain if they were written before jan 1st 1923.
harry fox licensing agency will charge you $91/song for the mechanical license. this really adds up.
you can obtain the license for most songs through hairy fox with a credit card.
there is a also $25 digital downloading license per mp3 as well if you post your music on sites like itunes.
having an album of jazz covers will most likely be impossible to make a profit with if you have to pay all these fees on top of the manufacturing.
~ chris marx
mmmm.... redundancy. well done chris.
that's excellent information chris. i never knew what that cost. very helpful for us budding recording stars!  

i'll have to come up with some originals...not really too bad since you can still use the same chord progressions. i read that back in the old days of dizzy, monk, bird, etc. they just steal chord progessions constantly. how hard is it to come up a new melody if you are already an improviser? bird probably has a hundred new melodies in one tune.
i think irving berlin wrote some pre-1923 standards that are general public but its pretty sparse.

rc, you should do what jamey abersold does...  
just come up with a spoof of the original title.
i'm thinking about doing "steps for a tall person" for those good old coltrane changes... just kidding.  

even a tone deaf person could improvise a melody.
catchy melodies can take some effort to come up with, but will make people want to buy your cd.
unfortunately for us instrumentalists, what makes people buy cd's is somebody's beautiful voice. but we have to express ourselves, whether or not anybody buys it.

if i just prepare a demo cd (not for sale), i don't have to pay anybody right? i've just been preparing this cd (standards) just to give a sample of my playing.

but i'm really planning on going full on with composing. i've been jamming with lots of ideas that i never write down. so i think i can be original. we shall see.
"so i think i can be original."
you already are original rc.  you job now is to communicate
that to the masses!
the only time you have to worry about paying for the licenses is when you ship your cd to a company for a mass production.
dont worry about it if you burn the cds yourself, but it will take forever to burn 500 copies.

you could probably invest in a burner that would duplicate 5 cds or more at a time and avoid the copyright... the copyright police dont come to jazz shows. ;)
couldn't you pay a company to copy the cds, but make the cd cover yourself?  this should get around it.
maybe this will be clearer:
when you pay the $91 licensing fee, you are paying for the right to sell your recorded version of that song.
professional companies that are trying to follow the law will not duplicate your audio recordings unless you prove you've cleared your licenses. in other words they will not copy your cds because the song's name and melody is what theyre trying to protect.

i think the cd cover is irrelevant. hypothetically, you could probably even use the same cd cover as a famous release, (changing the artist name of course). this is because i dont think artists usually copyright album covers? anyone else know?  
copyright law is supposed to protect things like visual art as well, but you dont buy a cd for the album cover, you buy it for the music on there. so maybe this is why no one bothers with copyrighting their cover art?  

to recap:
the copyright laws are trying to protect most of what you would write on a lead sheet: melody, lyrics and title (everything but chords).
why do i write such long winded remarx?
artwork (including album cover artwork/graphics) go by the same copyright laws as anything else.

once it's been created, it is copyrighted whether or not you have registered it. registering it is an insurance policy in case of a legal dispute, but in most cases being able to establish proof of date published is enough to establish your rights.

also, you should be aware that a song title cannot be copyrighted.

what is copyrighted is the lyrics and melody.
thanks 7 for the correction about song titles.
so i could print a fakebook which includes the title, "out of nowhere," and a set of changes to that tune, excluding the melody and lyrics, and, voila, insta-legit fakebook?

also, any transcription of any solo on any tune could be printed and distributed, provided the original melody of the tune wasn't included.

i didn't know that.  maybe things are a bit more complicated, but i'm inclined to trust 7's knowledge in this area.
my point was that unless you are doing very well known tunes, the cd copying company is not going to know that you are doing a rendition of a copyrighted song.  my point about making the cover yourself is that you can print the list of tunes, and the cd copying company need never know what the tunes really are (again, assuming you are not doing really well known tunes).
"the copyright police don't come to jazz shows. ;) "

i like this! lol. if they came to jazz performances, it also means you can and will sell more cd's!

btw - the "real", i mean official, law enforcement agency for copyrights is the fbi.
"

not true. solos are melodies. consequently they are copyrighted.
7 you are right, intellectual works are copyrighted once you finish the work.
this statement i made should be rephrased:
"so maybe this is why no one bothers with copyrighting their cover art?"
would lawyers come after you for using another album's cover?  
or do they only keep their eyes out for the covered music?  

i had this question when i saw a pink floyd cover band that had an album cover very similar to the "darkside of the moon" album cover. it wasnt a professional band.
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