Production & Distribution



Production & Distribution

Options for distribution

Once an album has been recorded, there are various options for distribution

  • Bulk production of CDs .

    • CDs can be produced in bulk quantities of 50 for around £2.50 each. A CD image in DDP format is loaded up to the Duplication Centre together with jpg files containing the graphics for the case or cover.

  • CDs on Demand

    • The Digital Production Center offer a service to produce CDs on demand at a competitive retail price, retaining a percentage

  • Sale of tracks

    • The Digital Production Center offer a free webpage ready tailored for the sale of tracks that can be uploaded as mp3 or .wav files, retaining a percentage of the sale price. This page can be linked in to the main website of the artist.

  • Digital distribution

    • Companies like Ditto will distribute albums to the various streaming and sale platforms. These are uploaded as collections of .mp3 or .wav files together with a .jpg file for the front cover.

Typical Workflow for production and distribution

A typical workflow is shown below. First the client prepares the album song list complete with authors and arrangers, and arranges venues for the recording and photoshoot. The audio production and mastering is shown in blue and the graphic production in green. In this example the final output would be an image file for CD production, either on demand or bulk distribution, with tracks uploaded to the Digital Publishing Center who provide a sales page which is linked to the clients web page.

The audio files would be prepared to suit CD production and optional distribution via a digital distributor such as Ditto. Distribution requires a square album cover, and no pauses greater than 5 seconds in the sound files. CDs are laid down in chunks at a rate of 75 per second providing a basic grid in the DAW (digital audio workstation) for trimming beginning and end of tracks.

In this example a sample track has been edited into a short "snippet" track to be played from the album webpage.

The client is responsible for managing the webpage, and establishing third party contracts for copyright (such as Copyright House), duplication, digital publishing, and distribution, which we can advise on.

External resources used

Copyright House for copyrighting, copyrighthouse.org/

Ditto for Distribution, dittomusic.com/en/sell-your-music/

Duplication Centre for CD production, www.duplicationcentre.co.uk/order.html

Digital Publishing Center for web sales, www.thedigitalpublishingcenter.com/

Fastnet for web hosting fastnet.co.uk

Equipment available,

Microphones: Matched pair of AKG C314 condensers, 3x Sennheiser dynamics, Shure SM58, Pair of Behringer C-2 condenser mics for instrument recording

USB interfaces : Zoom UAC-2, Focusrite Scarlett 18i20

Software: Reaper digital audio workstation (DAW), Hofa Pro for mastering

Equipment subject to investment if required.