Musings on My Music: 2010-August-11 | Making & Selling a CD
By Martie Hevia | Blue Beach Song™
MAKING & SELLING A CD
Well, I took another step toward putting my songs out there: I sent some of my songs to Amazon for sale as MP3s and CDs! Yikes!
The moment I finished uploading my songs and CD artwork I smiled… and then I thought to myself: “Are you crazy?!” There is no turning back now. They are out there… or perhaps the scary part is that I am out there. *Gulp*
The decision to sell my songs through Amazon came after some research – no, I’m a bit of a nerd, I did a lot of research! I discovered Amazon’s CreateSpace for artists, writers, and musicians. I did not have to front any money, and it walked me through the process of loading up my songs and artwork, to get them ready for sale on Amazon.
Using Amazon’s CreateSpace website offers you the option of selling MP3s and/or CDs. If you want to sell books, you can sell physical books and/or e-books. You can even sell DVDs. But the environmentalist in me loves the fact that everything is made on-demand, which means there is no excess inventory that gets thrown out.
Amazon’s CreateSpace takes care of the cost of acquiring a UPC number, the Universal Product Code, that is scanned via the bar code, and they insert it when they produce your magnus opus. And, yes, I checked, you retain all the rights to your works.
To sell CDs you need to create your own artwork for the jewel case, the booklet, and the CD itself. The requirements and dimensions are clearly explained, even explaining what parts you need to leave blank so that they can insert the UPC bar code. However, if there is something you do not know how to do, well, they offer services for just about anything… for a fee.
In the end, nothing was easier than loading up the song files and artwork. Once you do that, they begin work on producing a proof to send you. Although they normally charge you for the cost of creating the proof, I got lucky with my timing, for once in my life, and the proof was free.
The hardest part right now is waiting… sitting, whistling, tapping my feet and fingers waiting for the proof to arrive… and wondering… Will it look and sound great? Did I screw up anywhere along the way? Are the songs good enough or deserving of even being on a CD or MP3 for sale on Amazon?!?
Aargghh… and my horrible voice… I can hear the judges of American Idol shouting in my head: “Pitchy dawg!”
What was I thinking? I’m not a singer. I’m a songwriter. I don’t even know if I’m a good songwriter! Am I crazy?!?! And what do I know about recording music?! Nothing! I have an old 8-track digital recorder in my home – that’s my studio. Shoot me already!
Well, soon enough you will be the judge and you can tell me just how crazy I might be. In the meantime…
Thank you for all your words of encouragement and support!
Until the next update… all the best! -Martie (Blue Beach Song)
Martie Hevia © 2010 | All Rights Reserved
Blue Beach Song™ 
Congratulations, Martie!
That’s really cool. I’d love to sample the goods.
Do I have to buy ’em to hear ’em?
Thanks, UT. As soon as I have it up on Amazon I plan to place samplers of the songs here on the blog, YouTube, and MySpace – just in case someone is inspired at that moment to buy the download, they will have a link to go and buy it. The sampler is about 1m:30s of the song. I don’t know about putting the whole song out there yet… need to give a little incentive for someone to buy a song if they really like it. What do you think? -M
Martie don’t be so hard on your self I’m proud of you it takes lots of … to do what u did.
Tania, thanks… but wait until you hear me sing… you might be saying to yourself: “Is she crazy?” But it is one of those things that I had to do before I die. I don’t want to be on my deathbed wondering “If only I had…” The only ‘failure’ in life is the failure to try. Thanks, again, Tania. -Martie