IS THE PHYSICAL ALBUM DEAD?

You’ve painstakingly poured your heart and soul into writing, recording, mixing, and mastering your new music... now what?  How do you get it to your fans? Obviously you get CD’s made right? Or what about vinyl? Or is the physical copy a dying breed you’ll reminisce on with your grandkids as you tell them about how you used to have to push your own skateboard because it didn’t hover? 

This is a dilemma many bands are faced with in the new coming age of download codes and spotify streams. Is it worth the hundreds of dollars to print your music? This is a tricky question. The nostalgia of holding a physical copy in your hands, ripping that nice shiny plastic off, popping it into your dusty cd player and reminiscing about how amazing this band rolling through town was will never get old. 

Luckily, with the ever emerging non stop growth of new technology, it has become more affordable to order small batch orders of CD’s. Yes, I say affordable...don’t roll your eyes. Vinyl is cool, everyone wants it. I spend hours myself flipping through vinyl collections every chance I get. I was told vinyl printing was affordable...and then I fell off my barstool. You can do the research. Hopefully you already have. But don’t fall off your barstool if you haven’t when you see the $1000 price tag for a decent sized batch. In the grand scheme of the physical copy debate CD’s are something you can stock a few extra band bucks away for and print affordably to connect with your fans and to stay up to date in this hoverboard era, throw in a digital download code to keep the kids happy. 

Physical copies may be more than you want to spend after shoveling out all of your hard earned money creating your new music baby that took months to brew. But I think it’s safe to say that even in this self driven car, phone face recognition world we live in, the nostalgia will win. Physical copies hold not only the songs, but more importantly, they hold the memories. 

In the end, your fans want memories they can dig out of a box one day, blow the dust off of, and think about that time their college friend, Sarah fell in love and almost left to go on tour with that one lead singer from that amazing band rolling through town with the beautiful voice and golden locks. But she didn’t. She bought this dusty CD instead. 

Just think, how many dusty CD memories do you have packed away in a box?