We are probably only about halfway through recording our latest album or so but I am already thinking about how to release it out to the world. We know we are going to do a digital release and will likely release the individual songs freely in some form. Higher quality versions maybe for donation (whether or not that donation can be $0 is still up in the air). We also talked about doing a run of CDs.
The thing is, CDs are boring and low quality anyway. Our album is not exactly the best example of dynamic range given than there isn’t much range to be had from our chip-synths, but CDs, just, bleh. If it were between iTunes and CD, I would go with the CD but we are already going to be releasing our songs in 24-bit/96kHz which is already well above both mediums. So, to me, a CD is pointless. But vinyl?
A friend of mine who is into vinyl and I were talking and he made an excellent point – a vinyl record is about the album. While our songs sound good outside of the album, we really liked the idea of telling a story not unlike what you would find in an NES game. So, for us, the album is still somewhat of an important idea. Beyond that, yes, there are audio differences – whether vinyl is better or not is beside the point. It surely won’t be better than our master, but would our music naturally sound warmer by being carved into grooves? I honestly don’t know but would love to our album on vinyl myself to find out.
I do like the idea of vinyl as a collectors item. I have thought about a lot of crazy options for the special edition version of our album, but this is perhaps my favorite idea. The issue for us is definitely cost. Doing a full LP could run us probably around $1,000 dollars. We’re a small band and $1,000 could buy us some very very nice gear that we don’t currently have. While I don’t expect to recoup all the costs of doing a small run of vinyl, to make it justifiable, we would need something.
I am not sure what we will end up doing but my thought is to sell the special edition of our album, in whatever form we decide, for around $20. WIth that comes a copy of our music in digital (and maybe analog) form, copies of our masters in the form of Ableton Live packs which include the original FamiTracker and LSDJ content, a non-commercial license to remix and distribute your derivative work (if you wanted to do something commercial, just ask us), and perhaps print copies of some of our artwork.
I’m a collector and as a fan of any band, I really like to have something unique and memorable about the band. I kick myself for not buying Pendulum’s latest album (Immersion) when it was available on vinyl (now I can only find the remixes off their store). It’s my extra donation, if you will, to the cause, but also something for me. Vinyl is that, and then some. So for me, it’s something I’ve been pondering about for a long time just as an enthusiast. How about you? Would you buy vinyl in a digital world? I put up a vote topic just to see what our fans thought. It’s on the bottom right side of the page of our website. Let us know!
