Affordable On-Demand CD/DVD Duplication Using Kunaki: A Comprehensive Guide

 

STEP 00: Why I chose Kunaki; Duplication Vs. Replication

After years of hard work, your music is finally ready and you’d like to make an affordable short run of CD’s to sell at your next gig, to give to your friends who won’t care anyway, or just for keeps. There have been relatively recent CD replication services operating on the internet that will work on average with a minimum run of 300 copies, which isn’t bad at all, but even this short run of replicated discs can result costly to the DIY musician who is unsure whether he/she will be ever able to sell a fraction of these.

Now, there is a fundamental difference between CD duplication and replication, the latter having higher set-up costs because it entails having physically pressed data into the surface or the disc, whereas duplication is pretty much burning discs. You may wanna google for further information. Luckily for us, the less expensive choice of CD duplication has been catching up quality-wise to its counterpart. Of course, it’s not just there yet, but it’s pretty darn close. The fact that duplication is amazingly cost effective and requires no minimum order makes it the ideal candidate at least for those experiencing their first foray into DIY physical CD distribution. This is how I found Kunaki, which is one of the most popular CD duplication services out there.

There are several articles out there on Kunaki, how it works and how much it costs. But I wanna go the extra mile here and expose as many details as possible that may have gone unnoticed elsewhere. Before delving into the whole Kunaki shebang, I went through all other major online duplication services (discmakers, createspace, etc.) and decided to give this a try – there was no major philosophical consideration behind except its cost/value ratio, which is pretty high for the kind of product I had in mind, taking into account that I was entirely at peace with the fact that Kunaki is supremely automated and positively faceless. More of that on Kunaki’s FAQ.

Ok, here we go.

 

STEP 01: Try before you buy (virginity’s greatest nemesis, etc.)

As impersonal as Kunaki may be, it is kind enough to ship samples of their CD’s and DVD’s, FREE of charge, at your request. I was particularly curious about the print quality and texture of the CD itself, so I decided to go down this road. Please mind that requesting physical samples will NOT be notified by email confirmation or any message whatsoever, nor will it provide you with a tracking number (which is actually present on the package). Luckily, this is not the case once we create a login and publish our very own projects. But again, for the particular instance of samples you will need a little faith and patience.

Couple of days later, the package arrives:

 

If anyone cares to know, Kunaki ships from Nevada, and there is nothing out of the ordinary compared to any other mailing service. I received a CD and a DVD, both shrinkwrapped and in perfect condition. On a nitpicking note, I found the bubble mailer to be a bit too thin, which may yield undesired results if the package is treated roughly. Luckily for my particular purposes, the bubble mailers for individual CD’s are much much better, as you will read later on.

 

The print quality/texture on the CD itself was even better than what I had expected. I tried to catch some light reflection with my iPhone so you can appreciate the matte texture on the CD. The colours are crisp and vibrant so that was a good sign as well. The bottom of the CD is silver – the exact same way replicated discs are. This is quite unique, as most duplicated CD’s have traditional, green CD-R bottoms.

 

For the curious lot, the CD had 5 instrumental songs (the second one was hilarious), and the DVD was a NASA video talking about solar flares and some other stuff. You may want to skip ordering the free sample altogether if you deem my explanation decent, since it’s gonna save you quite some time. And more importantly, you will also be able to order a copy for free of your own published CD before ordering larger quantities.

 

STEP 02: Publishing with the Kunaki program

The Kunaki publishing app is pretty straightforward and easy to use, with the caveat of being a Windows-only program. Being a Mac user myself, I will warn you that this particular program will not work on CrossOver, so you may want to use Bootcamp, Parallels or any other equivalent.

Upon booting the program, the first screen you’ll see is an introduction of sorts. I don’t remember if at this stage it will ask you to create a login for Kunaki, so if it does, happily oblige. When you’re done, just hit the green button in the upper right corner. The next step is where we begin to input all our info – product type, artist, album and track info among others. I reckon this is not essential to actually publishing your CD/DVD, but I like to go by the book so there you go.

 

 

Notice how I clicked “NO” on ‘add UPC bar code’. This is because RouteNote previously provided me with a free UPC/EAN code when I published my digital stuff online, which is also valid. I took this number and copied it on a free UPC/EAN barcode generator, of which there are many available on the internet. This resulting barcode is the one I actually used on my artwork; otherwise, if you want a free UPC code click yes and it will automatically place one for you on the lower right corner of the back of your CD case (as seen in the free samples that I received). Please take precautions accordingly graphic design-wise.

If you wanna do things right, being consistent with your UPC/EAN codes is essential if you ever want your album to make it somewhere. This is one of the fundamental criterion that Nielsen SoundScan uses to gauge the success of a record, however outdated it may seem. Maybe I’ll talk about that in some other occasion, as I’m honestly not too acquainted with the subject myself.

 

 

Next step – artwork placement. This part is pretty self-explanatory, but make sure you comply with the set of guidelines for Kunaki’s artwork; Kunaki doesn’t even require that you place bleeds on the artwork, which makes it easier even for those less experienced. Please be aware that on the top left corner of this screen, “auto design” is selected by default. If you have custom artwork (which is my recommendation), please click on “custom design”, otherwise you’ll be confused like I was for about 5 minutes. “Auto design” will duplicate just one image that you upload everywhere, overlapping it with some auto-generated text, which yields furiously tacky, spastic-looking results, so “custom design” is the only way to upload all our artwork properly! Click on the green arrow yet again when you’re ready and off we go to the uploading phase.

 

At this stage Kunaki asks that you insert a master CD in your drive and continue once it’s ready. There’s nothing you can really do at this point except gawk at this smug message of confidence on the screen.

 

Kapow! You’ve uploaded your finished product to Kunaki! Now you can log on Kunaki and find a plethora of options for your recently published record. The first thing you may want to do is order a free sample copy of your newly uploaded product for quality control purposes, before we order 500 CD’s with faulty audio/artwork (thanks again, Kunaki). You can do this by clicking on the “Order and ship your products to a single address” button. You may explore the many different distribution options on your own.

 

STEP 03: Determining your distribution methods / DIY Vs. Automated

 

 

Orders are now trackable, yay! Now it’s just a matter of waiting for our CD to arrive. You may want to read the whole Kunaki FAQ to determine which of these distribution models is most suitable to your needs; there’s great level of customization to the point where you can have 3rd party fulfilment companies distributing your product, freeing you of the hassle to do the mailing yourself (though I personally enjoy mailing the CD’s myself, as it allows me to add a thank you note or any other thing I can think of).

 

I finally received my sample copy of Battle For Rome (which you can buy here for only 6 bucks *cough*) and it looked and sounded gorgeous. This time around, the CD bubbler mailer felt much sturdier – which gave me confidence to ship straight from Kunaki for all my international orders (as they are cheaper to ship from the US, unlike individual domestic shipments). I’ll post USPS price and details in a different article.

Here’s part of the shipment taken from our trusty Instagram. Hopefully this will motivate you to get out there and distribute physical copies at super affordable prices!

I will write a follow-up article on the specific course of action I will take with these copies.

 

Brilliant Songwriting tips I’ve garnered from music pariahs: Frank Zappa and Wesley Willis

This article will contain plenty of foul language and bizarre themes. Zappa’s music was intentionally crass at times, and what Wesley Willis spewed out in front of the mic is a whole different ballgame. So just for this one time I won’t be able to keep it PG – you’ve been served.

Frank Zappa (left) and Wesley Willis (right).

If you’ve ever heard of Zappa or Willis, or at least Frank Zappa, you may be disagreeing with the idea of Frank being somehow a pariah, having been quite successful to the point where new records are consistently released each year though his family trust, even decades after his death. I beg to differ though; Zappa was an outcast of sorts. His business model (one forged out of bitter confrontation with major labels trying to fudgepack him financially) reeked of very specific practices tailored to his own design, as well as complex musical shit that required the coordination of dozens of people, some of which weren’t the least bit amused to be bossed around by Frank (Scott Thunes comes to mind, on his liner notes to The Torture Never Stops).

Number 1. I’m gonna do this song again.
Number 2. I’m gonna do this song again all the way up your ass.
Number 3. I’m gonna fuck your ass up like in a car crash.
Number 4. I’m gonna fuck you up like a goddamn accident.
Number 5. Jesus is the answer!

-Wesley Willis

But the really amazing thing – and cutting to the chase – beyond the pomp of his sheer compositional genius, is the fact that Frank was never afraid to embrace that which made silly popular music what it is. He was aware that, for whatever reason, people favoured human voices attached to the instruments. Zappa was all about practicing proper balance: when his harmonic/rhythmic passages would spiral into ungodly clusterfucks he’d counteract with simple, approachable lyrics. He had no fear of combining genres, instruments, or writing about that which genuinely interested him, but deep down he was still somewhat mindful of the audience he was catering to.

Bottom line though, none of these considerations deterred him from doing exactly what he wanted, which was arguably concocting one of the most eclectic catalogues of the 20th century. Any real Zappa fan knows how obscure and hard-to-digest his music could get. In his own words, “all the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.” And you’re allowed to have hit-or-misses with that kind of street cred, after all, not everyone tells Steve Vai that his guitar tone sounds like an electrical ham sandwich and gets away with it.

Casper was fucked in the ass by fifty Muslims,
He was fucked twenty-five times on top,
He was also fucked thirty-seven times bent over a wheelbarrow,
And eleven more times at the bank,
He was fucked at night in the ass,
His ass was a bit ruptured.

-Wesley Willis

Dat Jazz.

My first serious attempt at music came in the form of a 4-track EP for a project named Duchamp Jazz Unit, which was canned with underwhelming, trite “jazz”. The bitter truth is that the idea sucked from the get-go. There’s no money in jazz, and in Zappa’s wisdom, jazz “just smells funny”. Seriously though, there was just no room or manoeuvring for me to get a message across with my very limited instrumental songwriting skills – forcing myself to write ‘jazz’ when I barely knew what a 7th chord was is a dumb idea (albeit unknowingly and somehow I obliged to the genre). And even more so when it’s clearly difficult to convey ‘I’m happy, sad, sleepy, hungry, horny, interested in purchasing this equity at 0% APR‘ with an instrument alone – unless you’re Hiromi Uehara.

Once upon a time,
I was cursing in Morning Star Baptist Church,
I called the evangelist a stupid crucifuck,
Reverend Richard Price preached about my vulgar language,
He told the congregation in the sanctuary
That I got a nasty filthy mouth.

-Wesley Willis

Many people have questioned my ludicrously high regard for Wesley Willis, especially Cazzo Vecchio – a.k.a. Milli in the Milli Vanilli Equation. After many nights of getting our asses hammered I was somewhat able to extract and lay on the table objectively some of the very powerful traits his musical DNA had. Wesley had so much elite shit going on for him: shock factor, consistency, profound political incorrectness – aided and abetted by schizophrenia, and strict, unequivocal abiding of his “success formula”. Even his vocals were technically up to par with a notable parlando, and that’s not shit I’m making up.

His song themes, according to Wikipedia, were “full of bizarre, tense, and often obscene rants about crime, fast food, cultural trends, bus routes, violent confrontations with superheroes, commands for his “demons” to engage in bestiality, and praise for his favorite actors, friends (both platonic and romantic), politicians, and hip-hop and rock artists.” This alone in the modern musician universe is pretty smart, knowing that whenever you typed ‘Dave Grohl’ or ‘Kurt Cobain’ as search terms in Google/Spotify/you-name-it will somehow and in some way yield his songs as a result. It was also inadvertently determining at the time I decided to use the term Walmart Etude, which is a handle I plan on using for the last two tracks of my upcoming records.

Every Wesley Willis song ended with two things: the phrase “Rock Over London, Rock On Chicago” which I believe was drawn from a famous radio show in the Chicago area [citation needed], followed by the name and slogan of a brand, such as Napa: It’s The Parts Store, hoping that connecting it to a corporate campaign would be mirrored off in his commercial endeavour. Even if this had turned into a case of copyright infringement, I would reckon any publicity is good publicity in his case.

‘It’s the parts store.’

Last but not least, he had a specific length range for his songs. Someone once told him that the ideal duration of a track for steamy radio success was around the 2:50 mark. Since many of his songs were lyrically not fit to fill this mark, he would create filler bridges using the autochord function on his keyboard. Most people find this annoying – I’m reminded of my Casiotone childhood, so it’s a win situation for me.

All these antics that were to pave a way for commercial rock success earned him, at the very least, a solid cult following – of which I proudly belong. Remember those times when you’d open good ol’ Winamp and it would go “WINAMP – IT REALLY WHIPS THE LLAMA’S ASS”. That’s actually some Wesley Willis legacy right there seeping into popular culture.

This is how I got to eventually embrace lyrics such as

Wet bitches,
Fake bitches around me,
Out of control.
Wet bitches,
And their nipples harden,
Hollowing souls.
Lousy crowd,
United We Stand Proud.

-Jolly Doomsday’s La Cocotte Moist

knowing that they would commit to my own convictions more so than instrumental songs – not that there’s anything wrong with that.

There’s a tragedy of a different nature, completely unrelated to what has been discussed in this article, and it’s the part where you don’t tell your mom and dad that you love them because they’re alive and it’s an embarrassing thing to say for many. We revere the dead because their legacy can’t be possibly tampered with – unless there’s some funky, unlikely unearthing that nobody was ever aware of.

Frank Zappa and Wesley Willis are both gone, and that makes me nostalgic and appreciative at some level, but the truth is that several artists out there who are alive and kicking, such as Hiromi Uehara (the person who I dedicated A Minute A Day A Year to) and Mattias ‘IA’ Eklundh (probably the source of direct inspiration for 70% of my music) are people who have all my sincere praise and gratitude. Look’em up and tap your feet to their musical genius.

Mattias ‘IA’ Eklundh (left) and Hiromi Uehara (right).

 

 

Where to expose your music: Less Is More – When you know what ‘less’ is.

Kind-of-Disclaimer: This is highly unprofessional opinion not meant to be construed as advice. It simply works for me. Please take into consideration that this particular array of thoughts should be geared preferably towards first-time/debut releases.

Ok, so my album is finally ready. Wat do?

Logic dictates that tending to select few social media channels will give you more time to be focused, thorough and detailed in your promotion efforts, rather than spreading out too thin over platforms that aren’t really worth the time. This being said, I concluded after much thought that I am not a wizard and I can’t foresee what random event could possibly snowball the band into wild success, because the right person at the right time stumbled upon my crummy Reverbnation profile (hahah, I know). This is an idea further backed by the fact that I’ve only begun to use promotion tools about a week ago, as my debut album got released this very month.

I really wish I was, but I’m not.

You will need plenty of time and patience to go through every channel and fill out info fields and upload all kinds of media – although ironically, time is of the essence at the time of release. Luckily for me, I’m currently not authorized to work in the US until my work permit arrives, and the World Cup ends this week, so yeah, free time. Since the number of sites and communities to engage in is pretty much daunting, the most apparent hazard in going wide across the entire social media gamut is writing half-assed, incomplete profiles that lack songs and information. Just one weak link will tell the listener your project fell through the cracks, even if it actually didn’t. I did my best trying to be as uniform and detailed as I could on each and every site, so here’s to hoping that a couple of weeks of intense community managing will shed light on what is actually working for my particular market, and perhaps even discover the fact that less favoured platforms could yield suprising, good results. Speaking of which – and I’m sure some of you will relate – going for a full-blown aggressive push to get everything published and properly sorted within a week or two goes well with the ethos of inconsistent, procrastinating people such as myself. So here’s the whole list (I hope) of communities where I got my band promoted:

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Bandcamp (The purported ‘main core’ so to speak)
Facebook
Youtube
Twitter
SoundCloud
Reverbnation
BandPage
MySpace
Last.fm
Grooveshark
Pandora (Approval pending)
PureVolume
Artistlink
Instagram (That’s right)

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Far fetched, yes indeed. But if you stick to the basic purpose of each site you shouldn’t have trouble achieving real, meaningful response. For instance, my first [and only thus far] Instagram entry was a Cinema 4D render of a mixing workstation I’ve been working on for a while. No ‘download now pls’ attitude to be seen – if anything, the band’s website is posted on the profile, but nothing else. A few hashtags later you have a couple dozen people relating at some level, people that may potentially connect to your music if you generated enough interest. Avoid shoving your tracks up anyone’s face, because quite frankly no one cares about your band on Instagram, nor should they.

Face it, this piece of furniture here is tearing new cloacas.

The yang to this ying consists in publishing/distributing the album on major digital stores. I’ve written a detailed article on how I did this, at zero cost. This entails iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Google Play, Deezer, Rdio, and other major outlets, and truth be told it was much less time consuming to set up than I’d previously thought. On the other hand, this is a process that may take up to several weeks overall to be completed, so you may want to properly plan ahead if a release date is something of importance to you (each store is able to manage pre-orders and specific release dates as long as it has been uploaded within a reasonable time frame). So I’m just here trying to justify moot efforts, lol As if giving closure to the making of an album wasn’t enough, the subsequent distribution and promotion are unavoidable cans of worms for the DIY crowd, especially for us first-timers. On the bright side, once we sieve through the tools that really connect us to our audience, we’ll be on higher ground when promoting our future work with those who we really mean to connect with. The outcome of this experience should point towards those channels that worked for your case, and likewise indicate when/why to shut down those that didn’t (in a controlled fashion), so as to not waste your precious youth by the time the next release comes up. It’s a herding business. A second part of this article is bound to ensue where I’ll announce success or lack thereof. Guess we’ll have to wait for that one.

 

 

RouteNote: How to publish your music on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon and others totally FREE of charge

When I finally got around to releasing my debut album Battle For Rome, I knew major-outlet digital distribution was gonna be one of those things that isn’t really mandatory but would not make sense skipping, given the amount of time I’d invested in setting up social media stuff and what have you. It is also true that having your record on every regular channel is perceived as a sign of being somewhat serious about what you’re trying to do.

I’d been almost certain to use Tunecore or CDBaby as a digital publishing/distribution option until somehow I stumbled upon RouteNote.

RouteNote is a British-based (I believe) publishing service that offers both a paid and a free distribution model to pretty much every major digital outlet out there. For the sake of sharing the experience, I will jump straight to the free distribution part, which is something many of you may have not imagined ensuing a few years back.

The downfall to having free distribution on RouteNote is keeping only 85% of the sales. This isn’t much of a downer when I’m expecting super low sales (to none) of my debut album, and if a sale were to ensue I’d rather that it happened through a ‘name your price‘ feat on my Bandcamp page.

Hands-on experience with RouteNote.com

As for the actual use of the RouteNote website, it’s a bit sluggish but it does the job. To be fair though, it is indicated that they’re on the process of migrating their systems and things can be buggy at times.

Before publishing they will ask you about the pricing, divided in three vague options: low, mid or high, or regular and unleaded, something like that. I stuck to regular/standard and that is tantamount to a 9.99 USD album on the iTunes Store.

A few days after uploading my material to the RouteNote website, I got a mail from a chap named Liam saying the pending moderation had been successfully approved and I was good to go. Now, it was just a matter of waiting for the digital stores themselves to do their part.

My album Battle For Rome got published on the iTunes Store VERY quickly. The site says you should wait 1-2 weeks but in my case it was up and running probably in 3 or 4 days. As of today (still less than a week from moderation approval) I’ve yet to learn from the other stores. However, I’m giving it a solid vote of confidence seeing how iTunes was already running in what I’d say is record time.

Update: A mere day after posting this entry, Spotify has published the album as well.

Update 2: 11 days later, Amazon is carrying Battle For Rome.

Is RouteNote the weapon of choice for a professional musician?

If I was more serious about this I would have gone down the Tunecore path, no doubt. But since I’m just trying to get the album positioned on Spotify and iTunes Radio to catch potential new listeners, and willing to forego of a 15% chunk for every sale (since I want my earnings to be ‘name your price’ donations from Bandcamp anyway) it makes complete sense that I try RouteNote. Especially since my first release has thus far reaped a grand total of 22 USD – barely a little more than half the price for a yearly Tunecore subscription.

Again, if this was my career I’d probably have a team of people (and a producer that would have talked me out of doing wacky music) that ensured hefty sales of a record upon release. Meaning that losing a 15% of the profits would actually hurt in this particular case. There’s still the RouteNote paid model which retains full profits, but I honestly don’t remember how it fares against other competitors.

Further considerations

Be aware that you may need to ‘whitelist‘ your Youtube channel so that your publishing service doesn’t take down your own material. This is done by mailing the folks at RouteNote; paid-for publishing services may [hopefully] have a more automated method.

Last but not least, do not, under any circumstance, have two publishing services attempt to do the same thing for you. It will bring forth a catastrophe of unforseen proportions and it’s gonna be pretty hard to have iTunes put the reverse gear on either one.

Have at it and happy digital distributing!