Short runs of lathe cut : where? who?

[piaptk]

Well, not to get into an accounting procedures debate, but if you want to compare margins that literally, then we should compare apples to apples:

1. that margin is a "POTENTIAL Margin". They can only make that high of a percentage if they sell EVERY record, which certainly in my case hasn't even been close to the case. The item you provide is pre-paid, so you have the money in advance.
2. This also does not account for the time value of work that the band, label, etc put into making the covers, assembling them in plastic sleeves, etc. That is a serious amount of time. You pay your employees before determining your margin. If I paid myself even minimum wage for the work I do, I would be WAY WAY WAY in the negative...
3. Also, don't forget that in order to get out and sell those records, a band has to get out and play shows. And, at least in my scene, most people use that $1 they make off a 7" to pay for food, gas, hotel, etc. Those are serious expenses.
4. Your mishaps = the bands giveaways... records that the band gives away to friends, people that they stay with, promotional records, etc.

I'm obviously not going to convince you that it's not just your customers fault that you aren't making the money that you want, so by all means, go on believing it and ranting about it. I hope that it serves you well. But as someone who has spent a LOT of my own money that I make at my real job pressing records that don't recoup, I do not appreciate the accusation. I would never use a company that treated me that way. I work too many hours making records for which I get nothing but mounting credit card debt to have to put up with that kind of guff from a supplier.

[fraggle]

@ piaptk where can i listen to your music you released? and question how many do you get pressed at the time?
do you have an international distributor? can we get your music in Europe and Asian pacific area?
You guys should relax:)

[piaptk]

@ piaptk where can i listen to your music you released? and question how many do you get pressed at the time?
do you have an international distributor? can we get your music in Europe and Asian pacific area?
You guys should relax:)

You can buy my records at www.PIAPTK.com or they are distributed world wide through Revolver and Midheaven.com. In Europe you can also pick them up at altvinyl.com. I press generally 500 copies each.


So, I just wrote another big long, railing diatribe, and eventually worked myself around to realizing that, as much as I have a bad taste in my mouth from being treated with (what I perceive to be) similar attitudes (to Chris') by pressing plants I've worked with, Chris probably has a bad taste in his mouth from people haggling with him (which I think he misconstrued our initial discussions of cheap pricing to be). So, because of our different perspectives and the fact that we don't know each other, or how each others operations work, I'll apologize for going off.

I spent 30 minutes typing my diatribe, and I feel like it has some valid (if redundant) points, so if you want to read it, you can.
I'm relaxed. I just have a problem with working my ass off, losing a bunch of money to make money for record pressing plants and ebay speculators so that I can keep my records affordable for people who appreciate music and art, and then having a pressing plant accuse me (or people like me) of being unfair with them and ripping them off. I (and probably 95% of people) pay the prices asked by the plant and don't try to negotiate, but I'll be damned if I'm not going to look around for the best deals and take advanatage of any specials that are offered. I understand that this whole business is a low margin affair, because for me it is a gigantically negative margin. It just really pisses me off, and I take it very personally. For the same reason that I take it personally when I hear my customers complain that my lathe cut LP records are "too expensive" at $20. When I had them made at Peter Kings for $10 US, had to have them shipped to the US ($2 per record), and then had to spend money and a ton of time making fancy unique jackets, and then give the artist 30% of the run. Each record I sell cost me $23 to make, yet I'm the a-hole for selling them for $20. The pure lack of appreciation is appalling. Obviously this is a very small percentage of customers that share this attitude, but it's infuriating nonetheless.

As far as pressing plants go, which is back to my original point, before Chris started bellyaching, URP has never treated me as if I was a burden. In fact, when they have screwed up (and they have), they've always bent over backward to make it good... once they even went so far as to offering to repress an entire run of 300 records for free, because they had put blank labels on it when I paid for printed labels. I refused to let them do that and just asked for my label money back (which they did), but they shipped me 100 copies with my labels without me knowing anyway.

Erikaaa, Reignbough, and rekurdpressssingdotcom, all totally abused my good nature, either making literally multiple mistakes on single records, almost refusing to fix test pressings that had very pronounced skips, taking 5 months to get me my records when I sent them metal parts, etc. And then, when they did fix THEIR mistakes, they tried to make me think they were doing me a favor. I've had problems with every pressing plant I've ever worked with except URP, and so I have a bad taste in my mouth for any kind of criticism from one. It seems like Chris has the same mentality of all the people I've worked with from those other plants.

Perhaps I'm getting too worked up over it, but I've just had so much frustration over the years from that kind of attitude.