Saturday, April 18, 2009

CD duplication - Summer Special Pricing

With all the economic doom and gloom these days it feels good to offer up some economic good news! Namely, all of our CD duplication in eco-packaging has just been reduced in price.

We're calling it "Summer Special Pricing"... even though it's no quite summer yet!

Our short-run CD duplication in eco-packaging begins at a quantity of just 100 units, while most competitors still have a minimum order requirement of 500 or 1,000 units. Being able to order in such low quantities is good news and makes good economic sense for clients who simply don't need (or cannot afford) larger quantities.

Now, because of such eco-friendly choices, you don't have to commit to buying a quantity of product that you don't need and cannot use. Environmentally-speaking this is a very good thing as it will produce a lot less waste - as the best way to keep un-wanted and unused product from ending up in the land-fill is to only produce as much as people need and can use.

Our "Summer Special Pricing" on short-run CD duplication in eco-packaging products includes all of the following:

1. CS100 CD sleeve - simple pocket sleeve.
2. CS200 CD jacket - a CD jacket that folds in half and features one closed pocket.
3. CS1000 CD digipak - the standard CD digipak that folds in half.
4. CS1020 CD digipak - a two-fold version with the tray being on the center or right panel.

Our package pricing includes CD duplication, full colour inkjet print, colour printed eco-packaging, all set-ups, one round of PDF proofs, barcode and wrap. You can get an instant on-line quote for all of these products from our website.

If you prefer CD replication, please know that we offer CD replication for all of our packaged products (whether they are in CD cases, digipak or eco-sleeves) at a quantity of just 300 units. You can also get an instant on-line quote for all of these product from our website.

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Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Short-Run CD Digipak - Summer Special Pricing!

Ahhh... summer is coming so what better reason to offer up some great pricing on short-run CD Digipak! Here are the details:

Duplicated CDR media with full colour inkjet print.
*CD style digipak with clear or black tray, colour printed (4/0).
All set-ups, assembly, wrap and barcode included.
Pre-press and one round of PDF proofs included.

Quantity of 100: $3.99 each
Quantity of 200: $3.50 each


*Style CS1000 and CS1020 are the styles available.
Applicable tax extra. Shipping extra.
Standard turn-time approx 7-10 days after proof approvals.

CD Digipak is definitely the #1 choice for independent musicians, bands and performing artists who want to boost their image up a notch or two. With its contemporary and more organic visual appearance than traditional plastic cases, CD Digipak will create some visual separation between your CD and all of those in plastic jewel cases. Our Digipak also scores points on an environmentally-friendly level as it's a completely recyclable package. Printed on FSC certified boardstock, printed on waterless printing technology and featuring a completely recyclable tray; our CD Digipak makes a great eco-friendly product you can be proud of.

Looking for more than 200 units? No problem! We provide replicated discs in CD Digipak starting at just 300 units.

Questions? Comments? Give us a shout!

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Sunday, April 12, 2009

DVD duplication - Indie-Musicians Are Missing Out!

At the present time very few of our independent-music clients have pushed into the realm of DVD duplication as to release live performance footage. Some very talented performers come to us for CD work so it seems a shame that the idea of live performances aren't being promoted in this fashion.

When you think about it, some very creative things could be done with a hand-held video camera, a basic video editing program (hey... almost every computer's operating system includes a video editing program these days), a couple of hours of time at the computer, and some short-run DVD duplication.

A while back I did that very thing for a friend of mine who sent me a bunch of video he had taken at 2 or 3 different performances. As you can imagine, the video quality was pretty good but the sound quality was just awful (those built-in microphones in hand-held video cameras cannot handle the volume levels at a live show very well) so I ended up using a song from his CD as the audio track and cut video on-top of it.

It wasn't possible to synch up the audio with the video performance (do you notice how a lot of bands always play the songs faster at a show?) so I grabbed a lot of short clips from the footage of the different shows and purposely selected anything that looked energetic, because energetic images would tie-in well with the energy of the song I chose.

The end result was pretty good (if I must say so myself). He put it on his website and got lots of favorable comments including some who said they wanted to check out an upcoming gig because (from the video) it looked like he put on an entertaining and energetic performance.

In addition to putting it on his website we also got some DVD duplication of the video done so he could include them as a bonus in his CDs. Because DVD duplication is cost-effective and quick for small runs of DVDs he still gets DVDs done from time to time and uses them for promotional and marketing purposes, sells them at shows and even gives them away to fans via his website.

I think indie-artists could get some good mileage out of DVD duplication. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!!

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Saturday, April 4, 2009

Graphic Design Issues

Back in January I wrote an entry about a particular "do-it-yourself" issue that was on the rise. This time I'm going to write about the undisputed heavy-weight champion of "do-it-yourself" issues:

----- Customer supplied artwork -----

In the last month I had the opportunity to jump back in to our pre-press department to cover for a colleague who was on holiday. Yikes! It had been a couple of years since I had been involved in pre-press of client supplied artwork, and things had definitely changed - but unfortunately, not for the better.

Having said that, issues with customer supplied artwork are not specific just to our company, as everyone in the industry has to deal with them, but graphic design issues can impact the timing and cost of the finished product.

With graphic design issues it's generally the 80/20 rule, whereby 80% of the design "issues" we see are caused by the same small group of mistakes. We've added plenty of good information on our website to help steer clients/designers down the right path, but we cannot force people to do the reading in advance of designing.

Unfortunately, if we cannot work with the supplied artwork the delay may impact the delivery date of the project. There is also the possiblity of incurring extra costs if our graphics team have to re-work your files and submit additional proofs. We always try to minimize these types of things but each order is unique.

Now time for my personal beef:

It's really disappointing to see projects that feature terrific music get spoiled by really amateurish graphic design. I see it happening far too often. I fully realize that budget is often a pressing issue, but there comes a point where people need to see that the harm done by going the "do-it-yourself" route can be greater than the cash you saved by designing it yourself.

Just one example of how the design can hurt your music:

Countless programmers, reviewers and booking agents have said, from their experience, amateurish packaging generally means amateurish music - so most times they never bother to listen to those amateurish-looking CDs. Why? Because of how busy they are, so they just want to deal with the pro stuff. The professional looking stuff goes in the "A" pile for further review and everything else goes in the "B" pile... and you know where the "B" pile ends up, right?

Just my $0.02 worth... I hope this didn't turn into a rant... I'll get off my soap-box now.

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