Very difficult to be totally definitive on this one but the following list is a bunch of websites we consider to be essential bookmarks for music artists, bands, band managers and indie labels alike. Whether you’re just releasing your first digital EP and want it selling on iTunes or if you want to build up your ‘musicbiz’ network and don’t know where to start, these sites will help to get you up and running.

Digital Distribution

Tunecore - I use Tunecore to distribute Buzzsonic Records tracks to iTunes worldwide and AmazonMP3.There’s a signup fee of around $25 and then an annual fee of about $20 for maintenance. Adds up to peanuts for a worthwhile service that takes no percentage from your downloads which means you see something like 70c out of every 99c download straight into your own pocket. They also duplicate and shrink wrap short run CDs too.

Snocap - Founded by ex-Napster wunderkid Shawn Fanning, Snocap was supposed to be the first major legal P2P service in its formative years but licensing problems with the majors put paid to that. A change of business plan means that now Snocap powers thousands of MySpace artist music stores, using their store widget that you can paste into your MySpace profile and anywhere else online. Artists see something like 60c from a 99c download, though you can set your own price.

CD Baby - CD Baby and its founder Derek Sivers have an impeccably solid reputation with artists and its up there with Tunecore as the ones to go to. CD Baby’s digital deal has them take 9% of your revenue, though they distribute to a much wider array of download stores than Tunecore. Those short run CDs you got done at Tunecore? CD Baby will sell them via their much vaunted CD distribution channel.

Indistr.com - Another promising looking outlet is Indistr.com. Artists keep 75% of download revenue and get paid the same day of the sale via Paypal.

Music Biz Resources

Music Business Resources For Students - UK based college lecturer Daz Smith’s comprehensive website is packed to the rafters with tips and links on networking, manufacturing, record companies, promotion and diy record labels. Useful for bands and DJ’s hoping to make their next move, students of popular music and music technology and anyone else wanting to get involved.

Luke Hits - LA based Luke Hits specializes in placing unsigned bands music onto TV shows and film soundtracks by circulating compilation CDs with his contacts that he painstakingly picks from the bags of submissions he gets. He promises to listen to everything he’s sent. There’s no upfront fees, just a slice of whatever deal he sets up.

Hit Quarters - Database of A andR guys, record companies, songwriters and publishers. Useful if you are a songwriter trying to place a song. $15 annual fee sounds like a deal for the information here.

Moses Avalon - Moses Avalon is the author of three crucial books, ‘Confessions of a Record Producer’, ‘Secrets of Negotiating a Record Contract’ and ‘Million Dollar Mistakes’ which are required reading for all industry wannabes (and never has beens). His website has a bunch of useful artist friendly articles and advice.

Bemuso.com - Another astonishing labor of love from UK based Rob Cumberland. A very detailed and exhaustive collection of articles and links for artists going the DiY route. The site covers self distribution, publishing, do it yourself record labels and how the music biz works from a UK perspective.

Rap Coalition Intelligence Program - Astonishing site packed to the rafters with information, case histories and every fine detail you need to strike out on your own. Starting your own label, business basics, worksheets, writing a music business plan, start up checklist and every angle in between.

Music Tank - A business development network for the UK music industry, owned and operated by the University of Westminster. Run a unique programme of think tanks, conferences and events.

BBC 1Xtra - Great resource from BBC Radio 1 with tips on demos, music industry how to’s, studio and diy tips. Radio 1 is the most popular national radio station in the UK and the possibility of getting your music heard on national radio isn’t impossible. The Homegrown section of the site pick two unsigned artists/bands a week and play them on the air to a potential audience of millions.

Music Industry Forums

Velvet Rope - Legendarily frank and very busy music industry forums, populated by bands, labels, artists and wannabes. Littered with news of music industry happenings and rumors, unsigned bands and hype.

Harmony Central - Great musician’s community with discussion forums, industry news, guitar tabs and user reviews on music gear. Its the forums that make this site an essential visit though.

Just Plain Folks - Another very busy, long running and active forum community, this one squarely aimed at songwriters and musician networking. The forums boast over 40,000 members.

Planet Shark - If you want to creep your way into LA’s Hollywood film and music business community this is a great place to keep your eye on with news on parties, movers and shakers events, industry shindigs, casting calls and industry jobs. There’s an A&R 411 section on the site too thats worth bookmarking. If you live in LA that is!

Songwriter 101 - Another educational website and forum for songwriters with everything about the business side of the songwriter’s profession with information, education and advice from music pros and teachers.
Record of the Day - UK based subscription based music business news network but with a busy forum and UK music industry jobs board.

Recording.org - Professional recording studio forums bustling with over 30,000 members.
HomeRecording.com - And at the other end of the scale a forum for home recording enthusiasts discussing gear, techniques and the music industry in general.

Various Resources

Indie Music Bible - David Wimble’s Indie Bible is now into its 9th year and the 330 page book is crammed with thousands of contacts and articles on how to get your music on radio, where to get reviewed, where to sell music, where to upload it and 500 resources just on promoting your band.

Sister publication the Indie Venue Bible is a comprehensive directory of live music venues. It is in electronic (PDF) format and lists 26,000 venues and 2000 booking agents in the US and Canada.

The UK published tome the Unsigned Guide is an excellent companion to the Indie Bible and boasts 11,000+ contacts and over 800 pages brimming with every music contact you could ever think of.

Everyone already has a page on MySpace, like it or not its the number one destination site for networking bands and artists. But before MySpace there was Garageband. Now owned by iLike. Garageband has a neat community review process which works by encouraging bands to review other tracks in return for free webspace. Eclipsed now in terms of popularity compared to Bebo and MySpace but a great tool for getting real critical feedback.

Industry Bodies

For news on the business side of the industry the BPI (UK) and the RIAA (USA) are good for keeping your eye on the industries ruling bodies. The IFPI covers the rest of the world and in the UK the MCPS/PRS cover copyright issues whilst the ASCAP do the same in the USA. The independent music organizational bodies are the Association of Independent Music (AIM) in the UK and American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) in the USA.

Blogs and News

Mashable and Techcrunch are the two essential destinations for keeping up with daily news on new music and web 2.0 apps and developments and the blogs I fire up first in my RSS reader daily are the newsy Coolfer and Hypebot and the acerbic and essential Lefsetz Letter, written by industry veteran, Bob Lefsetz and filled with no holds barred finger pointing, analysis and comment.

Related Reading

New Music Strategies
Future of Music Coalition
Music Week
CMU Music Network
MP3 Newswire

Sometimes when I’m looking around for inspiration for a post I’ll start researching one then wander off into a completely new subject matter all together. I began the weekend writing a piece on physical music distribution tips and ended up stumbling onto the KLF (again) via a 2007 link on Metafilter.

* “Be ready to ride the big dipper of the mixed metaphor. Be ready to dip our hands in the lucky bag of life, gather the storm clouds of fantasy and anoint your own genius. ”

That reminded me of when I first discovered the book ‘The Manual (How To Have A Number One The Easy Way)‘ . It was the early 90s (though the book originally appeared in 1988) and I’d been stumbling around as lead singer of the Fruit Eating Bears (not the 70s punk band of the same name) traveling from one disastrous gig to the next for a while and it was getting boring.

* “All bands end in tantrums, tears and bitter acrimony. So if in a band, quit. Get out. Now. That said, it can be very helpful to have a partner, someone who you an bounce ideas off and vice versa. Any more than two of you and actions develop and you may as well be in politics.”

I’d happened across ‘the Manual’ at the local library (pre-Google!) and was fascinated by the straightforward and easy to understand instructions on how to have a hit record. I quit the band after one more drunken gig and fled to London from South Yorkshire and decided to pursue a ‘career’ in dance music.

The appeal of getting involved with dance music was mainly due to the fact that you didn’t have to learn to play an instrument first, and you could steal all the best ideas using samples from other records. Brilliant.

* “If you are already a musician stop playing your instrument. Even better, sell the junk. It will become clearer later on but just take our word for it for the time being. Sitting around tinkering with the Portastudio or musical gear (either ancient or modern) just complicates and distracts you from the main objective.”

Every other book on the music industry then and probably every one since has made getting involved in the music industry sound about as exciting as a lifetime career as an accountant in a sewing factory and as complex as studying to be a brain surgeon.

I’ll relent a little and say that Moses Avalon made it all sound interesting again with his two popular books in the early 21st century. I’m sure there are more but I’m only talking about ones I’ve actually seen.

It took me about two years (compared to the books suggested three months) but by 1995 I’d had that illusive hit record in the UK top 40 pop charts with a record that had the vocals stolen from an acapella from the b-side of an Italian single and the disco hook from an old disco record (naturally). This blatant disregard for sample clearance protocol lost me 40% of the publishing but looking at it philosophically, 60% of something was always better than 100% of nothing.

Better still, the hit record and a follow up had both been released by 80s pop factory PWL, the hit machine given the thumbs up by the authors Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty in the book.

“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”—Hunter Thompson

Surprisingly the book hasn’t lost much of its appeal since it first appeared twenty years ago. If you’re American lots of the 80s cultural references will be lost on you (thats what Wikipedia’s for right) but a lot of the instruction is still relevant today and with the advent since of social media, 90s Napster/P2P and downloads counting towards sales charts (none of which were around in 1988) its probably even more easier.

Other successful acts have since used the long since out of print book as a ‘blueprint’. Edelweiss, the Pipettes and most recently successful UK ‘nu-rave’ act the Klaxons have confessed to having also used the book as an ‘influence’.

* “It’s obvious that in a very short space of time the Japanese will have delivered the technology and then brought the price of it down so that you can do the whole thing at home. Then you will be able to sod off all that crap about going into studios.” (Bill Drummond/Jimmy Cauty-1988)

* Quoted from ‘the Manual’ .

Related Reading

Seeing as the book is out of print (and listed at $300 at Amazon.com!) there’s a txt download of the whole book here, or if you prefer a PDF download here.

Getting Permission for Sampling Others Work (Nolo.com)
How To Have A Number One The Old Fashioned Way (PYLB)
How to Clear Samples (BBC One Music)
The Self Made Pipettes (Exclaim!)
The Easy Way (Philip Sherburne)
99th Floor Elevators (MySpace, Discogs)
Nu Rave (Last FM)
KLF Burn a Million Quid…. (Boing Boing) August 2007
The Manual (How To Have a Number One - The Easy Way) (Metafilter) July 2007

I started the Buzzsonic music industry directory about ten months ago after importing the database from an older music directory at my other blog at 99th Floor Elevators. The old script I was using there, PHP Links was getting a little dated and had these unwieldy session ids and a creaking admin area.

I upgraded to a much sleeker, streamlined script called Indexu which has proved to be much easier to look after, edit and customize. I was thinking that old school directories (including the granddaddy of them all DMOZ) are just that, old school. Well, you’d think. But even in the age of a million and one bookmark organizers, social networks and web 2.0 hype, I have still to find anything that has made the Buzzsonic music directory obsolete.

That would be backed up with the fact that the visitors have kept increasing month by month so there is certainly a demand. Its not millions, far from it, but the first months visitor count of just over 600 uniques is now closer to 5000 unique visitors a month and 50,000 page views.

So, I’m painstakingly updating the directory entries right now, but with 3000 entries in there already its going to take a while. Hopefully we’ll have things tidied up pretty soon. We’re also working on music industry specific RSS news aggregator, which has been heavily ‘influenced’ by the brilliant PopUrls. Watch out for that one as the early version (Beta?), should be around in a couple of weeks, its called MusicFizzlr.com.

There’s been much talk here about digital distribution and even vinyl records and its true enough that digital distribution has demystified music distribution for the diy label and artist but the reality is that (legal) download services still only have a third of the full retail music market share, so CDs, (at least for the time being) and even vinyl are still around and wont be going anywhere for a while yet.

“Digital sales now account for an estimated 15% of the global music market, up from 11% in 2006 and zero in 2003. In the world’s biggest digital music market, the US, online and mobile sales now account for 30% of all revenues” IFPI Digital Music Report 2008

We’ve already talked about vinyl pressings and it has looked a little bleak for quite a while with stories of closures of vinyl distributors. Which has once again bought up the ‘vinyl is dead’ catcalls. But, despite the sometimes negative outlook there is a renewed interest in vinyl (which I wrote about here).

“Chain stores don’t know what to do with vinyl and I would rather indie stores make money off of my products. Nearly all of the records have been sold through the Vinyl Collective website or through mom and pop retailers..” Virgil Dickerson - Surburban Home Records

Vinyl or CD?

Well, how much money have you got? Manufacturing a vinyl record is much costlier than a CD. 1000 CDs in jewel cases, retail ready will cost around $1200 from somewhere like Discmakers. 1000 vinyl albums would be more than double that from somewhere like UR Pressings in Nashville.

Unless you have a major following (then you wont be reading this anyway) then 1000 vinyl albums (or singles for that matter) is probably over doing it a little. 500 still works out at around $4 per unit for vinyl. Its less than half that for CDs. Consider that if you’re worried about being able to shift 500 hard copies then maybe you should stick with the download option.

Where To Sell?

If you have a good live following and play regular then 500 sounds like a number you could sell via gigs, your website, a link on your MySpace page and mail order (CD Baby and Amazon Advantage are the two outlets that spring to mind).

Follow Virgil Dickerson’s advice (see above quote) and stick to indie stockists for shifting vinyl singles. Hopefully there will be an independent retailer left near you that you can approach. If not send a copy to a key retailer and see if they’ll take 5/10 copies.

Whats a key retailer? Any well known music store in a big/happening city. Rough Trade and Pure Groove in London would be two. Fat Beats (in NY and LA) would be one, Grooveman in Miami Beach would be one so would Amoeba in LA.

All the mentioned stores have a ‘buzz’ surrounding them, all have a bit of a scene around them. They’re hangouts too. Like good record stores used to be.

Of course this is no definitive list. Make your own. Do your research in your own particular music genre (and even left field artists have their outlets). Read MP3 blogs, artist blogs, make notes, use Google!

If you sign up for (CD) distribution via CD Baby, part of the deal is that your release (and you do need that barcode to get in there) gets added to the database at national distributor Super D who cover over 2000 stores in the USA.

Another way of an indie artist getting into retail chains is via FYE’s Localeyez program.

Be Aware!

I’d warn anyone against sending their whole pressing run (CDs or vinyl) to one distributor. Chances are you can shift that short run yourself anyway so instead send a box or two to outlets that can get you into key markets or exports. If you’re in Florida and you lost 20 units to a distributor in LA, you can live with that. If you had the whole run sent there and something goes wrong, you’re screwed.

Trying to get a distributor interested is not much different than trying to get signed to a label. Instead of sending your music to a record label, you’re sending your music to a distributor.

And again, here, do your research when looking for a distributor. Larger distributors wont really consider one off releases from bands or artists without a track record. Look at independent records or artists that you like and find out who distributes them. Find their MySpace page, email them. Make sure you get through to the person at the distributor who is most likely to be into the music you are pitching.

I’ve listed a good list of distributors to start you off here:

UK

Load Media- Drum&Bass, house, dubstep, reggae, breaks and garage
Toolbox Distribution - hard house, house
Plastic Head - (Extreme Metal to Hip hop, Techno to Reggae, Ambient chill out to Hardcore Punk
Proper Most genres
Kudos - Dance, soul
ST Holdings - Drum’n'Bass, Hip Hop, Breakbeat, Techno, House, Down Tempo and Dub Step
Shell Shock - Independents

USA

City Hall Records - Jazz, Blues, Rap/Hip Hop, and World Beat
Revolver USA Rock, punk, dance
Nail Distribution - Indie rock, indie pop, electronic, punk, alternative rock, avant-jazz, vintage funk & soul, classic punk, experimental, evil metal, sweater-core, strumpet core, hardcore, emo and just about any other edgy genre
Koch Distribution - all genres
Red Eye USA - all indie genres
TRC Distribution - DJs/dance
Thirty Tigers -
Sector Media -New York- Dance

Related Reading

Why Do People Buy Records? (MatadorRecords.com)
Find Music Distribution (About.com)
IFPI Publishes Digital Music Report 2008 (IFPI) 28pg PDF
Vinyl Roundup (Donewaiting.com)
Coalition of Independent Music Stores (CimsMusic.com)
Music Industry Statistics (Wikipedia)
The Vinyl Frontier (Test Industries)
Response to Wired’s “Vinyl May be Final Nail in CD’s Coffin”(IndieHQ)
USB Turntables Raise Vinyl From the Dead (Straight.com)

Before I started producing dance music I used to strut my stuff as the lead singer of an alternative rock band called the Fruit Eating Bears, who’s main claim to fame seemed to be the ‘unpredictable’ nature of the live gigs (ie: things tended to depend a lot on how much we’d been drinking that day). We also discovered another Fruit Eating Bears which meant we had to ditch the name as well.

In our rare sober moments we got a bit of a following in our local area of South Yorkshire, UK, played the legendary Bull and Gate in Kentish Town, London, appeared on Gary Crowley’s Radio London show, Demo Clash and even had (the then) Phonogram Record company A&R guy ringing us.

Getting to the point a little, we recorded a four track EP which never saw the light of day but which we have decided to get uploaded to iTunes to see how things go. So, starting today the ‘Uptempo Tantrum EP’ experiment begins. We decided to use the band name, the Buzzsonic seeing as its the only thing we could think of that hadn’t already been used for a band.

I got a contact to design the cover (which looks pretty neat) and am signing up for distribution using Tunecore, whom I also used for my 99th Floor Elevators remix project release.

So, step one. Encode hi-bitrate MP3s from my CD master using the CDex Lame encoder, add tags and upload to Tunecore as we speak. Now to put together some kind of readable PR sheet!

To help the project with some much needed PR, one of the tracks, ‘Remember’ has been picked up by an independent film company for usage briefly in the film, ‘Behind The Scenes of Total Hell’. BTSOTH apparently gets it premier at the Curzon Cinema in London sometime next month and is the work of film maker Andy Wilton. I think the film is going straight to DVD but there’s supposed to be a CD tie in which should be good.

Related Reading

Fruit Eating Bears (MySpace)
Get Your MP3 Tags In Order (Wired.com)
Bob Bakers Indie Promotion Blog (Bob-Baker.com)
Cyber PR (Ariel Publicity)

OK then, its nothing short of amazing that today, theoretically you can have your music on sale, worldwide in one of the biggest music retailers stores on the planet. Without a tour, without a manager and even without a record deal. You can be based in Brighton, UK (for instance) and someone in Alaska or Australia or Russia or wherever can download your music without leaving the house. You don’t have to leave the house to get in on sale either.

Also, if you signed up with a good distributor, you’ll be keeping around 75% of the retail price too.

I must admit, when I first saw my music on sale on the iTunes store it was exciting as it was another ‘career’ landmark for me. Still, as music career landmarks go it really was no comparison to the day I walked into the Virgin megastore on Oxford Street, London, the day of its original release in 1996 when the original version of the 99th Floor Elevators ‘I’ll Be There’, went on sale.

There it was, prominently displayed in a rack with all the other big 12 inch releases of the week. And there it was in the big HMV just up the road too. More importantly to me, there it was in stock and in the top 10 buzz chart in Trax Records in Soho, ten minutes walk away from the glare of the west end. A few days later ‘I’ll Be There’ had gatecrashed the national pop charts.

I used to spend a lot of money in dance music specialist Trax back in the days in the late 80s when I had to travel 160 miles by coach from my home in South Yorkshire, UK to seek out those elusive Euro imports and Belgian New Beat gems that only Trax had.

And there is the point of this article. In a world where you don’t even have to leave the house to get the latest 12 inch remix or latest indie release or even pay for music anymore, how do you as an artist make a difference when everybody is a digital record label and everybody can sit next to Elton on the virtual record shelf?

“Further hinting at physical music format’s dismal future, a new study shows 48 percent of U.S. teens did not buy a single CD last year. This means not ‘Graduation’, not ‘Kala’ and not even anything from that Soulja Boy guy. It means literally not a single one.” Brock Thiessen from the Exclaim.ca article, ‘Teens Not Buying CDs Anymore?’

“I think the time is not too far off where some releases come out on vinyl and MP3 only — no CD. But who knows.” Josh Maddel, Other Music on Wired.com, Jan 2007

If you’ve more than a just passing interest in the state of the music industry you may have noticed a recent surge of interest and press on the apparent vinyl revival. Recently a representative from Sony BMG, mentioned that his parent company is working on releasing its entire back catalog on vinyl. Even Warners interest in the format has been revived.

“It’s not a significant part of our business, but there is enough there for me to take someone and have half their time devoted to making vinyl a real business,” says John Esposito, president and CEO of WEA Corp., the U.S. distribution company of Warner Music Group, which posted a 30% increase in LP sales last year.

So, there’s no vinyl pressing plants left anyway right? Very wrong. There’s a handful of pressing plants across the USA, UK, Europe and even two active manufacturers in Australia.

“One thing we took away from the talk that I feel is pretty important is pressing size. Some efforts are getting to the point where the records aren’t going to hit store shelves anymore. We‘re past the point where it can be difficult to move 300 copies. You folks making vinyl should strongly consider even a slight increase in the number of copies made available.

The demand is there as well as the infrastructure to handle it. In addition, increasing the number of available copies should do well to keep the eBayers off for a while. If you can do 300 copies, you might as well do 500. If you know you can sell 500, it’s very likely you can sell 1000. ” Tonys Tales of Texas BB discuss the Vinyl Revival panel at SXSW.

Pressing up a release on vinyl is undoubtedly more expensive than CD but as a limited run single or album its more of an event and even a great PR exercise. Safely Meeting Record label boss Carlos Wells sums it up best here. “The vinyl, it’s more of an event. If you throw on a CD, you can almost toss it in from across the room.” A record, by contrast, is a process. “In 20 or 25 minutes you’re going to have to go over, take the arm off, flip it over. You wind up paying more attention.”

Creating a record is a complex process, but essentially breaks down into six separate steps. Taken from the Quick Press website here:

1. Mastering: A mastered DAT or CD is brought to a vinyl press.Two main changes must occur to begin the process of audio mastering:tonal balancing and level adjustment.

2. Cutting: Once the mastered version is finished, the track will be cut into lacquer.A digitally created track will be converted into an analogue wave for cutting lathe.Transferred through an amplifier, the wave travels down the arm of a diamond-cutting stylus and onto a rotating lacquer disc.

3. Stampers: The lacquer or vinyl master is delivered to the pressing plant.The plant completes the following steps:
*The vinyl master is covered with a thin spray and dipped in a bath of electrolyte. A current is passed through the solution and the silver-sprayed lacquer becomes coated in nickel which creates a negative image of the vinyl.

*A second generation negative is created and the nickel plate is peeled from this lacquer to become the stamper. The stamper represents a negative image of one side of the vinyl.
*Two stampers are needed to press up both an A and B sided record.

4. Test Pressings: With both stampers in place, a “puck” of vinyl is introduced into the press. Two labels are placed above and below the puck and the press is closed. In order to flow seamlessly into the grooves of the stamper, the vinyl is heated up to 200 C.

It is then rapidly cooled so that the vinyl can be immediately lifted out of the press. This whole process takes approximately 25 seconds. Normally, a short pressing of 10 copies is made first. These “test pressings” are sent to the record label for approval.

5. Labels: Many people are under the misconception that a “white label” is much cheaper than producing a professionally designed four-colour label. The real expense, however, comes from having the label incorporated into the vinyl. The colour of the label really makes no difference in this process.

6. Artwork: Image is key in almost every industry, making the music industry no exception. Great consideration should go into the label and its packaging, as well as the marketing accompanying its promotional push.

For a rough guide as to how much music you can fit on a vinyl record Nashville veterans UR Pressings have a useful FAQ and quick reference here:

7″ - 4:30 minutes per side @ 45 rpm; 6:00 minutes per side @ 33 1/3 rpm
10″ - 9:00 minutes per side @ 45rpm; 12:00 minutes per side @ 33 1/3
12″ - 12:00 minutes per side @ 45 rpm; 18:00 minutes per side @ 33 1/3 rpm

And there’s more record manufacturing tutorials here and here.

California based Rainbo Records have several short run vinyl pressing deals which start at $1295 for 500 12inch singles and $799 for 500 7inch singles. Things like picture sleeves would add to that cost.

Some pressing plants, like UR are offering vinyl + digital package deals which includes a secure digital music hosting service, custom digital download coupons with unique one-time-use codes, packaged together. With the popularity of new USB turntables kids can plug their vinyl straight into their computer and rip to MP3 anyway.

As for vinyl distribution, well for these short runs a band or DJ would be better served selling discs at gigs and via mail order using Paypal and publicizing things on their MySpace profile and own website.

Such is the fragile nature of the vinyl distribution business that many of the once thriving vinyl specialists have disappeared, leaving a narrow selection of ultra niche companies and major label offshoots.

If you have a release in Florida you don’t want to be trusting your stock with a distributor thousands of miles away in California. Diy for short runs. Mailers you can get here, here or here.

“In the United Kingdom, where the CD single is basically dead, there is such a resurgence in vinyl that retailers can’t keep up with capacity. In the U.S., figures as high as 22 per cent are being floated about the growth in vinyl record sales.”
(National Post-March 17th 2008)

If you want to see what your tracks would sound like on vinyl you can get a one off 7″ cut for around $50 from Custom Records, who’ll even go as far as pressing it in colour vinyl and giving it a picture sleeve for an extra $58!

Part 2 To Follow

USA Pressings:
Dynamic Sun (East Newark, New Jersey)
Archer Record Pressing (Detroit, Michigan)
Erika Records (Downey, California)
United Record Pressing (Nashville,Tennessee)
Vinyl Record Pressing (San Fransisco, California)
Morphius (Baltimore, Maryland)
NSL Alpha Record Services (Plantation, Florida)
RecordPressing.com (San Fransisco, California)
Trutone (New Jersey, NJ)
Dungeon (Portland, Oregon)
Record Tech Inc (Camarillo, Califronia)
Bill Smith Custom Records (El Segundo, California)
Musicol Recording (Columbus, Ohio)

European Pressings
Key Production - London, UK
Curved Pressings - London, UK
JTS Studio - London, UK
MPO - France
Quick Press - London, UK
Portal Space Records - London, UK
Total Vinyl - London, UK
Record Industry - Netherlands
GZ Vinyl (Czech Republic)

Related Reading

Return of the Record: Vinyl Sales on the Increase (Amoeba.com)
Amazon Vinyl Store (Amazon.com)
Teens Not Buying CD’s Anymore? (Exclam.ca)
Hard to Find Records (HTFR.com)
Vinyl Gets its Groove Back (MIT via Time.com) pdf file. Slashdot response
Vinyl Maybe Final Nail in CD’s Coffin (Wired.com) Digg response IndieHQ response
Putting a New Spin on Vinyl Records (NPR)
How to Reissue a Record (Classic Records)
The Making Of Vinyl (Random Good Stuff)
Vinyl vs. iPod (The Huffington Post)
The CD is Dead… Long Live the New CD ? (LAist)
The End Of the Music Biz As We Know It (Forester Research)
The Inevitable March of Recorded Music Towards Free (Techcrunch)