Thoughts on making an album

[Mike_S]

Like most of of us I've been doing this music thing for a long time now.

I was thinking someday when I get time, to choose a bunch of tracks and make them into an album. Probably more for myself more than anything...

Where is the cheapest/best way to do it? Do you have to get all the volumes equal yourself first?

Cheers
Mike

[Farrell Jackson]

Mike, you should get the volume levels as close as you can. The same for the eq. Then run the songs through some sort of mastering plugin or service. Check out this place https://kunaki.com/login2022.asp It's the most economical place I've found and you can get small cd runs plus their shipping is very reasonable. I used them for at least 4 CD albums.

Farrell

[Ray Brookes]

Mike, it's good to have that interest in creating an album, especially when you have been writing songs for so long. To be honest it's not something I've ever indulged in as I figure that if I had 50 or so CD's stamped out they'd all end up in a box under the bed, unsold.

I think a good guy to talk to about this would be my mate Ron Bowes who has done a stack of albums and would know all the ins and outs. 

[T.C. Elliott]

To release it, I recommend bandcamp and then decide on streaming. If it's primarily a vanity project (which it is for most of us) then soundrop is mostly free (minus a 15% cut) and gets on the big distributors (spotify, amazon, apple) but not most of the little ones.

To 'master' it, at the very least, get a meter and have the LUFS roughly the same for all the tracks. Ozone etc., have some damn good presets that allow you get a similar sound to most of your tracks as well. There are other online options from free to fairly expensive and there is always the pay someone to master it (which isn't cheap but not nearly as expensive as I assumed at first.)

[Zoltan]

Another idea, although i doubt there are any "takers" for this... would be to release a C-Cassette. It's the format of the future!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSBQC85ZLEE

Then include a download code for the buyer to get the songs on MP3 too. That's most likely the format the potential buyers (amongst family) would listen to the songs anyway...

[Johnbee]

You want to get those songs close to the same volume as possible.  You don't want your listener to reach for the volume control with every track.  A good cheap way to accomplish this is to run a bunch of your tracks into Audacity and pick "Normalize" from the Effects menu.

  John B

[kenny mac]

I think also,and I've mentioned this a few times ,there's a tax issue if streaming on the amazon etc.
No matter what you earn on some,it's still counted as extra earnings.
It put me off with all the hassle.

[Oldrottenhead]

I use routenote.com to publish my songs and albums they take a cut but it gets released to multiple streaming services. You can pay if you want to take all the income. 😝 I've made about 30 bucks in ten years. 😝

[T.C. Elliott]

I think also,and I've mentioned this a few times ,there's a tax issue if streaming on the amazon etc.
No matter what you earn on some, it's still counted as extra earnings.
It put me off with all the hassle.

I have a fair amount of money sitting with distrokid that I'll have to have paid out eventually. I purposefully have left it there until I can get the tax bit sorted. The tax implications can be overwhelming but the short of it (in the US) is that you report royalty income and then it's part of the taxable income. It's really not a big deal according to most of my musician friends but it surely seems overwhelming to get started.

[Mike_S]

I think also,and I've mentioned this a few times ,there's a tax issue if streaming on the amazon etc.
No matter what you earn on some,it's still counted as extra earnings.
It put me off with all the hassle.

Thanks for the feedback guys...

Yes so it really is just something for myself, a vanity project like TC says.

I think like you Kenny the idea of tax and filling out forms and the like and figuring that out is a pain. But I don't think that will not come on my radar. I am imagining just having it for free download somewhere if anyone is interested. And then burning just a few CDs for myself really.

I applaud anyone that has actually sold some... that in itself is really cool.

Cheers guys
Mike