Well, it got me to thinking – why do people stop doing business with a business and I remembered reading somewhere that the number one reason people leave a business is not because of price or other things but when it appears or seems to the customer that the business no longer values the business dollars that that customer brings.

Huh. Perception is reality in this case for sure.

Because its human nature to scan any topic for “what’s this got to do with me?” I of couse wondered if we as a business had made a point of making that clear to our clients? So in the interest of making CDMaker’s position clear, those that wish to do business with CDMaker, we do value your business.

That’s why we always strive to have a live (knowledgeable) person answer the phone. We don’t have a receptionist – there’s no one too good here to pick up the phone.

We response to emails within the hour for the most part during the business day – what’s the point of sending an email if no one responds? We believe this is how we show you how much your business means to us.

We give realistic turntimes – again, we value your business. How insulting would it be for us to know how much is riding on a CD or DVD being available but never tell you if your due date is realistic?

We just had a client ask us something about his CD and we followed up on it and made sure it wasn’t a problem. We weren’t content until we had put our hands back on the CD and were able to confirm without a doubt that there wasn’t any problem. His response? “You really care about my CD, don’t you?”

Yes, CDMaker really cares. And…

You are welcome! It was no problem to make sure you are happy.

Introducing Google Music

According to Google, Google Music is your direct route to selling and sharing your music with your fans. And they will even help you build your artist page and set your own prices so that you can sell your original songs.

Who should create an artist hub account in Google Music?

According to what I can see from Google HQ -

Currently this is only available to US artists.

All you need is a Google account and your original music where you own all the rights.

And if you already work with a record label or distributor? This isn’t for you.

Your music, now on Google.

This platform is through the Android Market. So any Google Music users can play their Android Market music purchases instantly on any device.

You set your prices, you keep the profit.

With Google Music you set your own retail prices for albums and tracks. You can quickly make your own promotions, like limited time price reductions, or make some tracks available as album-only purchases. The choices are yours.

You keep 70% of what you take in, paid to you monthly.

originally published on http://music.google.com/artists/

How much does this cost you?

One-time fee, unlimited albums.

Google Music has a one-time $25 setup fee for each artist page and keeps a 30% commission on your sales. There are no other fees — not for uploading tracks, creating albums, making changes to existing albums, editing your artist page, or anything else within the artist hub.

You have the power to select and change what you sell, including new demos, live recordings and unreleased tracks.

Your page, your presence.

Every artist or band has a page within the Android Market to help Google Music users find out more about you. The artist page includes your bio, photo, links and the original music you have available for sale.

Once you’ve set up your account and activated your artist page, you can edit your information so that fans can learn more about you.

Sell on YouTube

Our integration with YouTube helps you sell your songs with a buy link in your music videos. If you are a YouTube partner, your store link can be promoted next to your video content so that fans can buy the song and add it to their Google Music libraries automatically.

Share on Google+

Plus, when any fan purchases your song or album from Android Market they will immediately be able to share a free play with the friends in their Google+ Circles. This lets your fans brag about their purchases and encourages their friends to buy your music, too.

Learn about Google Music more here in Google’s Help Center.

If you have experience as an independent musician or band and already have a Google Music account, we’d like to hear about your experience. Contact us and let us know what you’ve experienced. Contact Us

All Google trademarks and brands are property of Google. CDMaker is not endorsed, sponsored, affiliated with or otherwise authorized by Google. All content in this posting is intended for informational purposes only. Read all terms and conditions and perform your own due diligence before initiating any relationship or business with any company.

Luckily for all of us, none of this data comes from the disc (which means its not a manufacturing issue) instead it comes from an online database and what people see in this case is just a guess by the database as to what you’ve just put into your computer.

We’ve done a video on this which you can see on our facebook page - http://www.facebook.com/CDMaker if you like our page the video can be accessed.

Now this doesn’t GET your music on itunes for sale what this does is incorporate your information in the database that itunes and Window’s media player utilize. And there are many many servers that make up this database and so from whichever one your information first goes into, it takes time to filter and update through each one.

Don’t get this database confused with CD-Text that does get embedded in your master in the studio. That’s something altogether different.

If you have questions, please free to contact us via the support page at http://www.cdmaker.com/contact even if you haven’t used our services for manufacturing, we welcome the opportunity to introduce you to the high level of knowledge and experience that CDMaker can offer.

In the meantime, remember to head over to facebook and watch the video – http://www.facebook.com/CDMaker

A data CD as long as you have already confirmed all your data fits onto a single CD which you can do by burning your master, is definitely right up our alley. Its going to stay exactly as you have your master set up so when you receive your copies back, they will match your master file for file.

Music CDs tend to be a little more involved because how fast the data is duplicated will affect the sound quality.

Reproduction can take place in two ways – duplication (which is great for quantities of less than 500) and replication (which is suitable for quantities 500 +). Which one is best? Hard to say, in our 24 years of producing audio/video/data content, there are times where normally we would duplicate but once we know what someone wants to use it for, we recommend replication. Of course, usually this also means upping the quantity desired so that replication is as cost effective as it can be.

To get started with Data CD Reproduction in Austin Texas call 512-388-1998

If you think that your only option is a paper label – think again.

When a disc is manufactured one of the aspects of that manufacturing is also what is printed onto the disc. Also, adding the print directly onto the disc means that confusing one title for another is diminished. Of course, ISO standards for handling different services is clear about the seriousness of this, it is something that we get asked about. Often the question is can I save money if I don’t print my discs.

There are three ways of getting artwork onto a disc face – using pantone colors and silk-screening, using process CMYK colors and silk-screening and using process CMYK color and offset printing directly onto the disc. These days most projects released on an independent basis are using full color offset on disc printing.

Printing Directly on CDS in Austin

Now when it comes to duplication, labels are definitely a thing of the past. Professional duplication facilities will use ink jet, monochrome thermal or full color thermal direct to disc printing. Yes, you can still find labels in the stores because there will always be a demand for low-end home production but labels are not recommended because they can cause the disc to spin off balance in a player.

If you have any questions concerning what would be a good option for your project – use our contact page and let us know what your specific question is and we’ll be happy to review your situation.

The actual duplication process of creating an image of the source disc or the master is the same whether you’re duplicating music or data. But there are concerns that are specific to music that will have an effect on the final result.

First, there is the quality of the blank disc itself. There are different professional grades. The kind of discs that can be gotten very cheaply from Office Depot are not even as good as the lowest professional grade. The quality of a disc is determined by the amount of the dye on the bottom of the disc. More dye is going to be a better disc.

The more dye that is there the greater the amount of data can be deeply burned into the dye on the bottom of the disc. The less grades of discs have less and less of this coating. They have enough to be copied but it makes a music cd more likely for there to be a loss of playability as the dye begins to breakdown over time. You have to know who is making the CDR because you can’t tell by the color – there are other disc characteristics of a CDR that also help determine its quality grade.

Wikipedia has a great write up on what makes a great CD-R.

Then there is duplication speed, how fast is the laser being asked to burn the data can affect how well the data is written to the disc and how deeply the information is set into the dye.

I mean what good is it to have a great disc if you don’t give it a chance to have a good burn of the data?

And this has a huge impact on music CDs when they are duplicated. Unlike a file with some text on it – there is a huge amount of data that even a 3 minute track will contain that a data only file doesn’t have. All that data is information for the CD player. So the more data available on the disc, the better the sound.

We’ve run tests of the same master at 4X, 8X, 16X, 32X and 64X. Then we did a blind test to see what if any difference we could hear from the naked ear. Not on headphones – just ambient playback. Same source master for each, same high quality blank disc, the only difference was the speed.

The results were interesting. No differences were charted on the 4X, 8X, 16X. It wasn’t until we got to the 32X and faster than we could actually hear a difference. We didn’t go into what was causing the differences because once we heard a difference it didn’t matter.

Most duplication services are duplicating much faster than 16X and many will charge a fee to slow down because they are scheduling machines so the difference between the different speed could move only half as much through the machine on an 8 hour shift once it was slowed down to 16X. I hope that is clear – most duplication services do not distinquish between music masters and data masters.

We do.

If you’re interested in working with a music cd duplication service that cares about how well your copies reflect the sound of the work you did in the studio, give us a call (512) 388-1998. CDMaker can be found at 13581 Pond Springs Road, Suite 301, Austin, TX 78729.

Nest, clean, tidy and she is getting something done that she needed to do. Checking one item off her to-do list.

Because I was there, I asked her what did she see on her screen? And she showed me. I asked her was being so easy to see on the phone and having map location option help make up her mind. Can you guess what she said?

So right there I have a solid data point that having a mobile website closed a sale without requiring a phone call or any time of my staff until the point of placing an order. Client acquistion on easy.

Plus its pretty cool she got exactly what she needed with only the gas she used to detour a couple of blocks.

I love our mobile site – you can take a look at it m.cdmaker.com – its simple and easy – not a huge graphic design project  – its all about using the functionality of the mobile device or phone with the needs of the user which in this case was the question “where are they?”

For a reasonable price for a mobile website – I recommend that you head over to here to get an inexpensive powerful business mobile site working for you today like mine did for me.

Here at CDMaker we applaud this kind of corporate elbow grease because we’ve known for a long time that if you take care of your clients its good. Its good for them, for business and most importantly for us as human beings. We like what we do and we like it even more when we hear the relief creep into someone’s voice who was panicked about their project because they couldn’t actually talk with the same live person when they needed.

So we’d like to know your experiences – use the comment area below and let’s all treat each other as people not invoices.

What to Expect from a The Service before placing your order

Whether its a DVD or a CD duplication service, if they are reputable, there will be questions on the front end concerning the content on your master. Why?

On any master at the very least would be either an audio file, software, documents, video, etc and someone somewhere is the proud owner of this intellectual property. It should be you and some things have dual ownership. For instance, the song “Rolling in the Deep” By Adele, she wrote it and is the writer but the sound recording that came out of the studio and that is played on the radio and downloaded from iTunes most likely belongs to the record label that paid for the studio time, editing and mastering. It is even possible that a major performer would be performing a song written by someone else (who would own the writer portion) another company that is considered the publisher would have the publishers portion and the record label has the ownership of the sound recording. The artist has no intellectual property ownership. Crazy huh?

Likewise, if you have a video and a song is playing in the background, someone owns that sound recording and if you didn’t record it yourself, it belongs to someone else. You may have the rights to use it, but even then you do not own it. Any legal questions concerning copyright need to be addressed to an attorney – do not expect any professional duplication service to provide you with legal advice.

So a reputable cd duplication service is going to ask you about content. Typically there is a form called the Duplication/Replication Rights Form. There’s more about this later on.

You should be asked such questions as-

• how many copies from a single master you desire
• what type of packaging – paper sleeve, jewel case, digipak, or other cardboard item
• the state of the artwork for the disc face and any custom printed piece
• when you need finished product

What is Required?

You should be be prepared to provide:

• physical master(s) exactly as you wish the copies to be
• native unflattened artwork files
• paperwork
• deposit

Of course each CD duplication service may have slightly different submission requirements and in general you need to be prepared to provide for what they ask for because there must be some reason that they ask for it.

The Turntimes

In the end you have to ask yourself, you didn’t choose your songs because they were the shortest, you didn’t choose your recording studio because they could get you in within 24 hours, why would you have invested all that money and time into your project to not allow for adequate time to get the best results?

So how much time is reasonable? You want to go with a production company that is busy because that means they are successfully providing the same service you’re buying to others like you. So if they are successful you can expect a couple of days for bulk discs and anywhere from 3 – 7 business days on a printed jewel case insert. Cardboard typically requires something like 10 business days.

Depending on whether you need bulk, unpackaged discs or a 6-panel cardboard wallet, the time to produce your complete package will be different. While a cd duplication service may promise 24 hour turnaround, more time will get you a better product.