STEP 00: Why I chose Kunaki; Duplication Vs. Replication
After years of hard work, your music is finally ready and you’d like to make an affordable short run of CD’s to sell at your next gig, to give to your friends who won’t care anyway, or just for keeps. There have been relatively recent CD replication services operating on the internet that will work on average with a minimum run of 300 copies, which isn’t bad at all, but even this short run of replicated discs can result costly to the DIY musician who is unsure whether he/she will be ever able to sell a fraction of these.
Now, there is a fundamental difference between CD duplication and replication, the latter having higher set-up costs because it entails having physically pressed data into the surface or the disc, whereas duplication is pretty much burning discs. You may wanna google for further information. Luckily for us, the less expensive choice of CD duplication has been catching up quality-wise to its counterpart. Of course, it’s not just there yet, but it’s pretty darn close. The fact that duplication is amazingly cost effective and requires no minimum order makes it the ideal candidate at least for those experiencing their first foray into DIY physical CD distribution. This is how I found Kunaki, which is one of the most popular CD duplication services out there.
There are several articles out there on Kunaki, how it works and how much it costs. But I wanna go the extra mile here and expose as many details as possible that may have gone unnoticed elsewhere. Before delving into the whole Kunaki shebang, I went through all other major online duplication services (discmakers, createspace, etc.) and decided to give this a try – there was no major philosophical consideration behind except its cost/value ratio, which is pretty high for the kind of product I had in mind, taking into account that I was entirely at peace with the fact that Kunaki is supremely automated and positively faceless. More of that on Kunaki’s FAQ.
Ok, here we go.
STEP 01: Try before you buy (virginity’s greatest nemesis, etc.)
As impersonal as Kunaki may be, it is kind enough to ship samples of their CD’s and DVD’s, FREE of charge, at your request. I was particularly curious about the print quality and texture of the CD itself, so I decided to go down this road. Please mind that requesting physical samples will NOT be notified by email confirmation or any message whatsoever, nor will it provide you with a tracking number (which is actually present on the package). Luckily, this is not the case once we create a login and publish our very own projects. But again, for the particular instance of samples you will need a little faith and patience.
Couple of days later, the package arrives:
If anyone cares to know, Kunaki ships from Nevada, and there is nothing out of the ordinary compared to any other mailing service. I received a CD and a DVD, both shrinkwrapped and in perfect condition. On a nitpicking note, I found the bubble mailer to be a bit too thin, which may yield undesired results if the package is treated roughly. Luckily for my particular purposes, the bubble mailers for individual CD’s are much much better, as you will read later on.
The print quality/texture on the CD itself was even better than what I had expected. I tried to catch some light reflection with my iPhone so you can appreciate the matte texture on the CD. The colours are crisp and vibrant so that was a good sign as well. The bottom of the CD is silver – the exact same way replicated discs are. This is quite unique, as most duplicated CD’s have traditional, green CD-R bottoms.
For the curious lot, the CD had 5 instrumental songs (the second one was hilarious), and the DVD was a NASA video talking about solar flares and some other stuff. You may want to skip ordering the free sample altogether if you deem my explanation decent, since it’s gonna save you quite some time. And more importantly, you will also be able to order a copy for free of your own published CD before ordering larger quantities.
STEP 02: Publishing with the Kunaki program
The Kunaki publishing app is pretty straightforward and easy to use, with the caveat of being a Windows-only program. Being a Mac user myself, I will warn you that this particular program will not work on CrossOver, so you may want to use Bootcamp, Parallels or any other equivalent.
Upon booting the program, the first screen you’ll see is an introduction of sorts. I don’t remember if at this stage it will ask you to create a login for Kunaki, so if it does, happily oblige. When you’re done, just hit the green button in the upper right corner. The next step is where we begin to input all our info – product type, artist, album and track info among others. I reckon this is not essential to actually publishing your CD/DVD, but I like to go by the book so there you go.
Notice how I clicked “NO” on ‘add UPC bar code’. This is because RouteNote previously provided me with a free UPC/EAN code when I published my digital stuff online, which is also valid. I took this number and copied it on a free UPC/EAN barcode generator, of which there are many available on the internet. This resulting barcode is the one I actually used on my artwork; otherwise, if you want a free UPC code click yes and it will automatically place one for you on the lower right corner of the back of your CD case (as seen in the free samples that I received). Please take precautions accordingly graphic design-wise.
If you wanna do things right, being consistent with your UPC/EAN codes is essential if you ever want your album to make it somewhere. This is one of the fundamental criterion that Nielsen SoundScan uses to gauge the success of a record, however outdated it may seem. Maybe I’ll talk about that in some other occasion, as I’m honestly not too acquainted with the subject myself.
Next step – artwork placement. This part is pretty self-explanatory, but make sure you comply with the set of guidelines for Kunaki’s artwork; Kunaki doesn’t even require that you place bleeds on the artwork, which makes it easier even for those less experienced. Please be aware that on the top left corner of this screen, “auto design” is selected by default. If you have custom artwork (which is my recommendation), please click on “custom design”, otherwise you’ll be confused like I was for about 5 minutes. “Auto design” will duplicate just one image that you upload everywhere, overlapping it with some auto-generated text, which yields furiously tacky, spastic-looking results, so “custom design” is the only way to upload all our artwork properly! Click on the green arrow yet again when you’re ready and off we go to the uploading phase.
At this stage Kunaki asks that you insert a master CD in your drive and continue once it’s ready. There’s nothing you can really do at this point except gawk at this smug message of confidence on the screen.
Kapow! You’ve uploaded your finished product to Kunaki! Now you can log on Kunaki and find a plethora of options for your recently published record. The first thing you may want to do is order a free sample copy of your newly uploaded product for quality control purposes, before we order 500 CD’s with faulty audio/artwork (thanks again, Kunaki). You can do this by clicking on the “Order and ship your products to a single address” button. You may explore the many different distribution options on your own.
STEP 03: Determining your distribution methods / DIY Vs. Automated
Orders are now trackable, yay! Now it’s just a matter of waiting for our CD to arrive. You may want to read the whole Kunaki FAQ to determine which of these distribution models is most suitable to your needs; there’s great level of customization to the point where you can have 3rd party fulfilment companies distributing your product, freeing you of the hassle to do the mailing yourself (though I personally enjoy mailing the CD’s myself, as it allows me to add a thank you note or any other thing I can think of).
I finally received my sample copy of Battle For Rome (which you can buy here for only 6 bucks *cough*) and it looked and sounded gorgeous. This time around, the CD bubbler mailer felt much sturdier – which gave me confidence to ship straight from Kunaki for all my international orders (as they are cheaper to ship from the US, unlike individual domestic shipments). I’ll post USPS price and details in a different article.
Here’s part of the shipment taken from our trusty Instagram. Hopefully this will motivate you to get out there and distribute physical copies at super affordable prices!
I will write a follow-up article on the specific course of action I will take with these copies.
Brief Tenderloin 