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Comment by delinka | Hacker News Reader

"...the production of hard copies of music hasn’t been a barrier for a long time."

How many copies must one have ordered up front? I'd guess it was so many as to have been prohibitively expensive for a fledgling artist to handle.

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You can do as little as 100, but I think most small artists get 300 made cuz that’s where the price per unit gets low enough that you can at least hope you’ll make your money back.

Prices have gone up a lot in the last 5 years. I think it’ll run at least $2,000 to get an LP pressed. Plus a year wait. Probably half that or so for a 7”.

Depending on the label youre with (theres a ton of 1 person labels), you can split the cost. If theyre bigger, they’ll just pay for it.

Meh, you’re asking me to dig up memories of 20 years ago. All I remember is that if you an okay day job, it’ll be a stretch but you could swing it. It seems to stick in my head that about 1000 copies was where the setup fees didn’t take up the majority of the cost. After that, IIRC, they kept the masters around and you just picked up the phone: “send me another 500”.

500 was the minimum. We pressed up 2000 because we were hopelessly optimistic.

This was 1980, 7 inch 45, we sold about 800, gave away the rest over the next 20 years.

Total cost of production and pressing was at least $5,000, which wasn't a sum any random garage band could muster up. We broke our piggy banks and hit up our friends because our success was a sure thing.

The good old days, I guess.

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