thanks jeff, now i want noodles...

i thought you were gonna talk abt Obsequiae since the cover , great band btw

Think you may have inspired me to make some tapes, cheers!

Good point about physical constraints though. I suspect less physical constraints might encourage more mental restraints - but that's a bit of a tangent. Nice vid. Thx

Walkman rocked because you got portable soundtrack facility 👍 But cassettes still suck because distortion, noise, wow, flutter , easily fekked by nearby magnets, big, clunky and rewind time. I believe nostalgia is pain.

Bussin viddy! Only tape is real. Thanks for always giving PIYAKDU a shoutout on your IG Jeff! You, and Fiadh rule!

Always love your vids Jeff! Keep em coming. Always so much to learn!!!

CDs are 12cm

I knew the Dire Straits fact. That album was the first pop record to sell more on CD than any other format, partly because it was recorded completely digitally and the album was longer on CD than Vinyl. As a holdover from the Vinyl mastering days, there were allegedly two different masters sent out on different pressings: one mastered by John Dent and the other by Bob Ludwig. I have a promo copy of the original John Dent pressing, where the front cover is amended to say "Dire Straits - Brothers In Arms: A Full Digital Recording"

The pits and lands in a mass-produced CD-ROM are not like the grooves in a vinyl record. Vinyl grooves are direct physical representations of frequency and amplitude (width and depth, respectively), and are a form of analog recording. The pits and lands of a CD-ROM are uniformly wide and deep, and do not represent physical waveforms, but rather bits of information in a digital audio source. CD-Rs and CD-RWs don't have pits and lands. During burning, the LASER alters the color of a light-sensitive dye. Burning doesn't refer to changing the plastic. Anyone who claims to be able to tell a difference between a CD-ROM and a CD-R/RW, in terms of the medium, and not the specific burn, by sound alone is delusional. There's not room for disagreement. CDs are data. If a CD-R has write errors, it doesn't degrade audio quality, but rather cases skipping, and sometimes seeking problems. There is literally no audio quality difference. You can confirm this yourself by ripping a CD-ROM to a digital file (and verifying that it's 100% accurate before proceeding), burning that file to a CD-R (also verifying the burn accuracy before proceeding), ripping that CD-R to a digital file (again, verifying it's an accurate rip), and then comparing the two files. They should be identical. And I mean, exact same file, down to the bit, the only differences being the created/modified dates, and the name. The reasons one might care if a disc is a CD-ROM or a CD-R are related to players. Very old players can have troubles with discs burned using the "track at once" method (as opposed to "disc-at-once"). Some players, regardless of age, have trouble with CD-Rs burned at higher speed, because as speed increases, relative precision decreases, and things might not quite line up the way the player expects, or can account for. This can be reliably prevented by performing error-checking on the burned disc. If you get reports of errors, it _might_ be a problem for playback. A local band, wanting to crank out 50 copies of their demo might well not take the additional time to verify each disc's data integrity, and are not the most likely to be using a great quality drive, and are not the most likely to be using great quality CD-Rs, and are very likely to be burning them at maximum speed, and not the most likely to deliberately pick "disc-at-once" mode for their burns, all of which combined results in a higher-likelihood of playback problems. In addition, an "audiophile" is more likely to have very old audio playback equipment (for... usually dumb reasons), and as such, a higher-likelihood of having problems with playback, even if the disc is burned flawlessly. It's also worth noting that CD players typically feature error correcting capabilities, which are limited. If a disc does exhibit errors (either in write, or because a disc is scratched, or w/e else may interfere with proper reading), those errors can be accurately corrected on the fly, up to a point. I don't remember the exact limits, but it's less than a thousand bytes (~1KB). If errors are substantial enough, the error-correcting can interpolate that missing data (as opposed to correcting), which may or may not be identical to the data that was originally present. (The idea being that a listener is much more likely to care if their disc fails to play at all, or skips heavily, than if the playback is 100% bit-accurate.) So, in specific cases, when a disc is really, really badly burned, or really beat-up/dirty, but not so much as to be unusable, there is a possibility of degradation of audio quality. This is where the "most people can't tell" part actually comes into play with CDs. However, it should also be noted that in order to tell from sound alone, a person would need to be beyond intimately familiar with that specific rendition of an audio track, and also in possession of demi-superhuman audio differentiation capabilities (well above and beyond that of a child with perfectly undamaged hearing), such that anyone claiming to notice a difference is by far more likely to be fooling themselves. Keep in mind, these people are also the ones that will sometimes claim that de-ionizing a disc improves sound quality, or that shaving a bevel into the edge of the disc improves sound quality. In almost all cases, they can safely be ignored on these matters.

Great quality content, I hope you break through on KZbin, man!

though I am anti-digipak this is an incredible video

I once had these cheap cd-r's that after you burned them. They smelled like celery. 22 years old and still play fine. I will have to check if they still smell. Like how a fresh Maxell cassette is when you unwrap it. Where's that Febreze flavor?!? Digipacks have always been the worst. Good luck ever finding a mint one in a used store.

I love what you've done with your mom's basement.

Jewel cases are much better than digipacks. Digipacks are very fragile, the paper wears easily. Every digipack in my collection that wasn’t in a protective sleeve is scratched and has abrasions, and there is no way to fix it. Jewel cases can be easily replaced, giving you a brand-new looking album.

Something I learnt about CD burning at home is that when the burning software asks what speed you want to burn at, usually 2x - 24x, it's better to burn at slower speeds where the etching is "stronger" and more likely to be playable on older drives with a weaker reading lazer.

Cds forever 2024 still selling and buying them like crazy Better sound quality u own the music and support the artist 💿💿💽📀📀📀👍👍👍streaming is garbage 🤢🤢🤢🤮🤮

My band's demo got zero love from labels, but we made our money back from tapes, CDs, and bandcamp digital sales. And this is very genre specific, but if a band is making Heavy/Epic/Speed metal or anything in that sort of niche, the NWOTHM Full Albums youtube channel is a godsend. It pretty much guarantees 10k people will listen to your music, and probably more if your artwork is cool.

Been using CDBaby myself for the streaming stuff, I like that i don't have to pay forever for the music to be up. Cause you never know what happens. Other than that, honestly without Bandcamp we wouldn't be in business probably. Hyped to see what Ampwall does and hopefully it gets some more label support features.

as always, hugely interesting! Thanks :D

For an old, now defunct, project of mine I got several releases and it all begun with me handing out my demo out to big names in the scene on tape at a show. This was back when bandcamp and soundcloud didn't exist but of course even then there were websites you could upload mp3s to but I chose tape because to me it meant that I put actual effort and thought to it instead of just shitting up some mp3 in my bedroom in an evening. As for whether something is a demo or an ep, well, as you probably know it really depends on a genre, especially when talking about production quality and all that. I own a lot of full lenghts, 7 inches and such where the production quality or quality of the bands performance wouldn't pass even for a demo in a lot of scenes but for the genre the band is operating in it's normal. On other hand when it comes to selling or buying demos I am personally rather okay with it although then it's scene dependent too. It's all really dependent on the genre and the scene really and more than anything I think if a person is starting a project they need to figure out how the genre theyre working in operates so they can work properly within the genre and the scene.

Great stuff. I would note that it is not always necessary to have everything Jeff lists in your press kit or email or whatever and things should represent what your band is and where your band is. What I mean is that you shouldnt feel like you have to have toured, you have to have a lot of previous releases and all that to approach a label. What you should do is to tell honestly and professionaly what your band is, where your band is, what your goals are and all that so the label has a good idea about, well, all what has been mentioned. If your project is a single person bedroom project without plans about touring or becoming a full lineup band then be honest about it and there is a chance that you can find a label willing to support you. Thanks for the video. Its a good reminded of what I need to remember now that I am getting a demo together with which I am planning to cauge the interest in what I am working on and maybe find other people to play with me and eventually approach a label or several about further releases.

Intro gives me Strongbad vibes. Or, vibezzzz

Very useful knowledge for the ones interested. I'm not sure why this popped up to begin with. But, metal. Helping the kids out. That's what I'm talking about. Too bad my music abilities are shite.

Why did this start out like a Strongbad email lmao

Our boi in the backyard spilling facts. That being said, when you are into the truly heinous black metal and dungeon stuff that I am into, sometimes demos are the cool thing. Even if its really an EP named a "demo" for cool guy corpse paint points, so you are still right.

100% agree on all points. And yeah, labels are indeed fallible, I still regret missing ONE SPECIFIC BAND's submission that followed the proper channels (aka an Email to our demo email) hahah, took a big fat L on that one

ayyyy sick back yard

I feel called out but it's true, I don't know how to format my art to fit on the Mycopath CD I gave you

The amount of submissions we get that are like "We are a progressive deathcore-ned post-sludge band" and projects with zero followers being like "we want vinyl and tshirts"...

Ok this is a funny coincidence. I put the video on, and i was like "wow, why is his audio so noisy and hissy?" and then I realised i had the DAW on in the background with a send/return bus to my Tascam tape recorder.

With a mustache like that I have no choice but to trust you

You couldn't be anymore accurate in this video.

Great video and super informative! Making music as a teeny tiny niche artist has severely limited my view on this and it's interesting to hear a broader perspective on what full bands & larger scaled projects might face.

This is all spot on. A couple of added things (it's impossible to fit every little tiny fascet of all of this into one video!): I also cannot emphasize enough the importance of social networking. Talk to people in your genre (and outside of it), go to other bands shows, make friends with label owners without the intent of trying to use them for anything. Be a genuine, and plainly nice person, and it will go a LONG way. The easiest way to break into anything in the music industry is to just know enough people and be someone they like. I was lucky to have my first Feather album released through Folkvangr. I released it as an unknown, noboby musician, but I had become friends with the label owner and he liked it enough to put a run of tapes out. We've since built a genuine friendship afterward and I plan to release my next full release through that label. On that note I'll share something I overheard Austin (Panopticon, Bindrune Recordings) say one night at Hammerheart Brewing, which was this: If you are a small indie band and get on a small label, and the label treats you well and gets you launched further into the realm of success, it is worth taking the time to think about sticking with that label as you grow. A lot of bands just hop from small label to mid label to large label as they grow, which is of course ok to do, it's a business decision ultimately. But it also goes a long way if you and the label can mutually grow together (as long as both parties are being cool about it). Small labels can be wildly beneficial to be on, and generally offer a lot more creative control over your work than larger labels will. If you like each other and are able to grow together, it creates more opportunities in the long run. Just something to think about.

Great video Jeff! It also functioned as a kick in the butt to get out and push my own music more. I'm still sitting on a small pile of CDR's that i released on my own that i really should do more promo for.

I would be nothing without the piano roll.

Awesome video man. I'm starting to program from scratch on drums and watching you do it is cool to see your process. stills struggling on my fills though.

loving this series bud, nobody does this in real time so its really interesting to see the entire process

Watching a banger being born

Wow this is a sick rendition! Thanks for uploading, you did a great job with it :)