Lazerbeat
Offline
Tokyo, Japan

Something which I find a little odd is that so few people use Kunaki. A quick summary of the service

- You upload music and artwork to Kunaki
- people buy your CD for what ever price you choose
- Kunaki charge you 1 dollar for ever CD sold which they deduct from the sale price
- Kunaki send you money every month if you sell cds

The way I see it, no netlabel or artist is likely to get rich form chip music but everyone seems to be ignoring a potential way to make money here. A couple of principles.

1 - If you have CDs available people might not but them but if you don't have any CDs available people certainly wont buy them.

2 - You are might not sell large numbers of an individual CD but a label with 50 releases might sell a copy or two of each release now and again. If you have wide range of CDs at 5 bucks a CD for example in 1 year you might sell 2 copies of each of your 50 releases, thats 500 bucks!

Stuff you could do with the money.

- Advertise your label on somewhere like penny arcade or kotaku for a day or two

- Put on a local show

- Fly in an international or two

- Send one of your artists abroad

- Hire a professional to video one of your gigs

Not something anyone has to do of course but I think it has a fair amount of potential. Are people not doing it cause its a pain in the arse to upload? because they had bad experiences with the service? they didnt know about it?

I know for example HHH has a few releases on the service.

http://kunaki.com/msales.asp?PublisherId=118176

https://kunaki.com/

very comprehensive FAQ

http://kunaki.com/faq.asp

Wizwars
Offline
Los Angeles, CA

Kunaki is a great service. The only thing I don't like about labels using it is that the order page gets a little cluttered. I mean, look at the HHH Kunaki page for example. It's pretty busy, and there is no order button on each individual page. I've actually heard a few people say they passed on buying my CD because they didn't feel like fucking with Kunaki.

A label a friend of mine runs bypasses this problem by ordering the CDs from Kunaki himself and then selling them through his website. If you order from Kunaki in shippments of 10 it's only a dollar per CD plus shipping.

Beverage
Offline
Central-ish VA

Kunaki really is a useful service that provides grand product for cheap; I personally have never used it because I feel I'm not quite at a level worthy of it but it's got serious respect from me that's for sure.  I mean, the thing to consider is "Will anybody actually buy this?" and I figure that's where I hang up.  As far as our collection of infinite droves of netlabels go, I figure more of them could benefit from such a service though.

Edit:  I didn't fully read your post until now and would also like to mirror your list of uses for the potential money here - we are always hindered by the big money issue.  It makes the world go round or in our case keeps it from going round.  The money that is made needs to be invested back into growth/promotion/etc... there is real potential here.

Last edited by Beverage (Apr 13, 2010 4:12 am)

nickmaynard
Offline
rochester, ny

i use bandcamp. similar thing?

Princess
Offline
Austin, TX

I'm pretty happy to be using Kunaki via Handheld Heroes.
I feel that, as far as producing CDs in the modern era, they're pretty ideal.

BR1GHT PR1MATE
Offline
BOSTON

HOLY SHIT.

thanks for this... these prices are like $8 less per unit than the competition (that i've seen). thats completely damn amazing!!

Crystal Labs
Offline
San Luis Obispo, CA

I wonder how the printing quality for insert, disc, tray card, etc compares to other duplication services like CD Man, Discmakers, Oasis, etc.

Saskrotch
Offline
Chicago IL
Crystal Labs wrote:

I wonder how the printing quality for insert, disc, tray card, etc compares to other duplication services like CD Man, Discmakers, Oasis, etc.

Jellica
Offline
England

looks pretty slinky, has anyone purchased any from HHH?

would anyone be interested in this for kittenrock? would it be worth it?

Might pay for some hosting charges n shit.

little-scale
Offline
ad-hell-aide

I have always been happy with the quality of Kunaki CDs

ovenrake
Offline
lolusa
little-scale wrote:

I have always been happy with the quality of Kunaki CDs

Was your CD from Blip a Kunaki press?
If so, I'm sold.

akira^8GB
Offline
New York City

Lazerbeat, thanks a lot for this. This is the solution I been looking for to make the Special Edition of Red October!

Dauragon
Offline
Washington DC

I've been thinking about kunaki for a good long while. The only thing thats honestly stopped me is the fact that my ideas for CD printing/pacaging are a little too ambitious for their system. In other words when I make cd's i want them to be a tiny bit fancier than the simple, front/back insert - black jewel case.

I'm probably gonna throw my old stuff up there though.

akira^8GB
Offline
New York City

Dauragon, that is true. My Red October release is very particular and the only reason I haven't made the special edition I said I would is because I don't see how I can translate that to a "normal" CD. However I cannot stand the quality with which Retinascan has produced my work.

egr
Offline
Abandoned on Fire
little-scale wrote:

I have always been happy with the quality of Kunaki CDs

I've only bought one cd from kunaki so far but I was very happily surprised with the quality of the whole package.  From what I've read on their site, they leave all quality control up to you so be sure all your info/labeling/etc is correct before sending anything in!

low-gain
Offline
Milwaukee, Wisconsin USA

if only there was a Kunaki for vinyl. hahaha