Our product pages contain photos of our CDs – they should give you a fairly good idea what the quality is. However, our CDs are different from what you normally buy – mostly because they are CD-R, not factory pressed CDs.
We manufacture them using a bit of DIY.
CD-R disc
Almost all CDs we sell are CD-R, also known as CD recordable. The CD itself is professional grade, the brand depends on what is available.
The music on the CD is “burned” using CD recorder, not pressed in a factory.
The disc itself is inkjet printed. The print quality is very high and the printed surface of the disc is glossy.
Important point: the surface of the disc is not waterproof. If you spill water on the disc or handle it with wet hands, the print will be damaged.
Normal handling does not cause print damage. You can touch the surface and handle the CD like any other.
The print is durable – the print on discs we made over 10 years ago is still intact.
Booklet/Inlay Print Quality
Like almost all small run prints done nowadays, our booklets/inlays are printed digitally.
We use professional printing company that have standard industrial grade Xerox printing machines.
The quality of our printing is very high and unlikely to make you not happy with your purchase.
CD Box
Our CDs come in transparent jewel case boxes. It means that area under CD is transparent and contains graphic design.
Packaging
Our CDs are not shrink wrapped like the CDs in stores are – we have no facility to do so. They are wrapped in stretch foil or come in plastic pouches to prevent them from being scratched in transport.
Why do we release like this
CD-R is a compromise. We manufacture only CDs that got sold, when they get sold. We do not keep stock.
Making professional pressed CDs is expensive and you cannot do small runs economically. Realistically you need to order at least 100 cds. Some of our releases sell in less than 10 pieces – so if we used pressed CDs we would quickly go out of business.
Sales would not cover the cost of manufacturing.
We are underground and we believe DIY is an important part of Goth & Independent scene.
By releasing on CD-R we can still give those into physical CDs something they can own and enjoy with only small drawbacks.
Releasing a physical CD gives us opportunity to take our graphic design beyond just the front cover. This enables us to make the release visually rich.