#104

Wow, I’d actually never even thought to do that comparison. That’s hilarious! And to be honest $3 a tape on 25 copies doesn’t even cover the time you’re spending on dubbing, let alone actually creatively making the music or learning your art form. Insane. Anyways, as a fellow cassette release-r I do appreciate just the fact that people buy them - any profit no matter how small is a bonus really.

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#105

You’re right that $3 doesn’t factor my time dubbing. But I have the system dialed enough that I can set it up while I do other chores, flip tapes every 10-30mins depending on length. I have 4 Tascam 302s so I can bulk out about 8 at a time depending on how fussy my record decks are being.

The time to record etc would be the same regardless of whether I release to Spotify or anywhere else so I don’t include it in my calculation. It would, however, cost me either CDBaby fee or distrokid fee to get it up to spotify, so I’d start in the hole there between $30-$60 which I also don’t include in the calculation.

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#106

Ah nice, i’m still dubbing mine 1 at a time on a technics deck through my mastering chain - can’t afford to buy any more! But yeah I do the same - other chores returning to flip every while.

Is that $30-$60 per release or a one time user sign up fee? I only use bandcamp so far,

#107

theres a good and short set of videos on youtube from 424recording. touches on a lot of these points and shows a small tape label making their diy releases.

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#108

Yeah, my current release has been delayed for a long ass time due to the world wide ferric oxide shortage. Doesn’t help that the double cassette library clam shell cases we ordered for it were also out of stock. I get my stuff done by Corey over at Cryptic Carousel and it’s top notch. I’ve done the DIY dubbing to order thing too, but don’t recommend it because it’s a time suck!

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#109

I couldn’t possibly agree more with all of this (although I’m terrible at selling my own music and still have copies of the last tape I released the year before last!)

#110

How long would it take you to get 160k streams on Spotify? That’s how long you have to sell each cassette. :slight_smile:

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#111

I feel much more satisfied now :slightly_smiling_face:

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#112

Anyone try 3D printing cassettes? There’s a design on Thingiverse.

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#113

I was recommended this nice little operation in Berkeley, CA for tape duplication. Good prices! Gonna do a run of 50 soon. Will report back.

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#114

After learning more about the company recently, I completely agree. I have removed the link and post above with this.

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#115

Quick question to those of you who have had tapes made by bandcds.co.uk:

I’d like to have a full-face cassette print, but it’s not very clear how I’m supposed to prepare the files. Asking for clarification directly at bandCDs hasn’t been a success. So I wonder, how did you prepare the files for the on-body printing?

#116

A quick note of caution: I had a middling-poor experience with bandcds.co.uk. I had a cassette made by them and the communication was poor. Lost emails, unresponsive and generally very long lead time to replies. I received my tapes in the end, ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶I̶ ̶a̶l̶s̶o̶ ̶o̶r̶d̶e̶r̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶i̶t̶e̶m̶ ̶(̶s̶a̶m̶e̶ ̶o̶r̶d̶e̶r̶,̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶p̶a̶i̶d̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶)̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶I̶ ̶s̶t̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶r̶e̶c̶e̶i̶v̶e̶d̶.̶ My order was placed in June. Bandcds are currently not responding to my requests for an update. It’s a shame because the turn-around for the cassettes themselves was pretty good, and I was generally happy with them once I received them. For some reason they’ve just dropped off the map for the rest of my order. Very strange. Edit: Bandcds have since phoned me and a refund for that portion of the order has been sorted.

With that out of the way… My cassette isn’t full-face, but perhaps this might be helpful regardless.

Bandcds have the PDF templates available on their website. For the partial faced printing, the (side A) PDF I sent off to them looked like this (it’s been converted to a png here):

cassette-tape-onbody-print-template-std-coverage_A
cassette-tape-onbody-print-template-std-coverage_A2376×1517 787 KB

The resulting cassettes looked like this:

0020905238_10
0020905238_101200×900 326 KB

Update 05/11: I did eventually receive a refund for this portion of the order.

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#117

that’s good to know. I was considering bandcds for my next release because the turnaround times for duplication.ca are long (6 - 10 weeks + shipping) currently and bandcd did full face prints. Now I’m not sure who to go with. Duplication.ca are ok but they annoyed me when they ran out of shells and only told me 4 weeks after I placed the order, so I had to switch colours.

#118

there are files on the bottom of this page and explain about the need for having a white background or using white tapes https://www.bandcds.co.uk/cassettes/cassette-tape-body-printing/

#119

Thanks @mlogger and @Byzero! I do have the templates of course, but these are pretty coarse to say the least (basically a lowres bitmap, not vector). Also it’s not very clear how one is supposed to prepare the files. Customer service was very responsive at the beginning but recently went silent.

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#120

Interesting… the templates I used were PDF (so very high resolution).

The PDF template for the full coverage on-body printing is here…

If you load that in photoshop you should get the guide layers, etc.

#121

I opened it in illustrator to open it and it just shows a bitmap embedded into the PDF. No vector data to be found. But I did open it in PS and at least there’s layers giving you some hint.
I guess I’ll just send them a file at the same size and be done with it.
If I do use BandCDs… I’m not so convinced anymore.

#122

Just chipping in to say that my experience with Band CDs was also a mixed experience. Follow up questions were ignored and it felt like every email was answered by a different person.

Furthermore, they didn’t mention until the very last stage that they had to add a minute of blank tape to each side’s running time. This was a HUGE issue to me, as the running time for my tapes was very short. Effectively doubling it changed the whole nature of the project. Eventually, I had to order blanks and borrow a tape deck from a friend and do the recording myself. I will admit, though, that I had very specific requirements.

That said, the end product was OK. The printing of both the labels and on the shells was pretty sound. I had one duff tape, but there was an extra one in the box, so that worked out.

It’s perhaps also worth giving them the benefit of the doubt due to the pandemic.

PS - it’s thanks to this thread that I ever thought of making a tape. Many thanks to everyone who posted!

1 Like
#123

I’ve been going forward with BandCDs despite some concerns, due to mixed experiences reported here. My decision was mostly due to not having other choices anyway.
So far they have been a bit slow but generally nice and responsive. I always talked to the same people and my questions were always replied to. They even did 2 free test prints to make sure that the printing would turn out ok on the tapes. Now I’m waiting for the order to be produced. Fingers crossed!

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