Quizboy

The two most recent Quizboy releases (“1985A and “Un-Greatest Hits) are available on Vinyl record or CD on a “combo” album. It’s available on ElasticStage, and if you’re an artist interested in my experience with it I’ll go over that a little bit later on. First let’s get the “sales pitch” out of the way:

Buy a Record or a CD Here

As an artist you might be familiar with the notion that trying to produce a physical media for music can get tricky as far as cost, capability, quality, all that jazz. I had been curious about the Elastic Stage experience after seeing ad for it, I don’t know, like a year ago or something. I had used companies called Art Glider and Kunaki in the past, so I was curious as to how ElasticStage measures up in terms cost-effectiveness and on demand production for my releases. The overall experience up front? I went from me thinking, “eh. This ain’t that great,” to “wait a second, did I just waste some time and money?” to “You know what? This is pretty rad, I actually really like this.”

In my opinion the biggest “downside” to it is not actually anything unique to ElasticStage. It’s cost. Any of the vendors I’ve used for cutting vinyl is not particularly cost effective at the number of units an artist like me would need to purchase anyway. Could I buy 1000 unit at a good unit price? Oh, for sure. However, that upside is also not unique to ElasticStage. The issue with bulk buying for me is that I’d be stuck with a lot of dead inventory that I usally just end up giving to record stores for free anyway just to get the records on the shelves, and I’d be out a considerable amount of upfront money. Every artist varies in terms of what they are capable of moving and how they do it though, I get that. For me, I mostly measured the convenience and value in the on-demand services. ElasticStage’s on-demand prices are decent and comparable in comparison to Art Glider and Kunaki. Here’s a few bullet points about what I think are the pro’s and cons of each service I’ve used:

Art Glider

Pro’s: Cost effective. You pay a one time fee for “establishing” the release. The pricing is comparable to others and international shipping is available, it is more expensive, but the additonal expense you take on for international shipping is better (on average) than Kunaki. You can do both CDs and Vinyl Records, but you need to setup two different accounts for each. You can buy with no minimums to keep some inventory on hand. Obviously, the unit cost gets better the more you do buy, but there are no minimums.

Cons: Establishing the artwork for your release is not very intuitive. The instructions speak in very deep graphic design specfics that at least I found challenging to understand (for CD spines in particular) and support isn’t that responsive. Maybe it was just my personal experience, but they also weren’t very nice the couple of times I had to reach out. Order tracking is possible, not the best, I had to keep my own local orders tracked and “cross reference” my information against the information they provide. Many situations where you might need ETAs for your customers, it takes reaching out to customer service.

Kunaki

Pro’s: It’s simple to use. The website is a little quirky, but it is very basic so it’s not complicated to use. Order tracking is available and the depth of information provided makes handling any estimated arrival issues managable. CDs and Vinyl Record services are both available. Shipping times are the best with these guys too by comparison, in my opinion. The minimalism that goes into their user interfaces translates to also the most cost effective in my experience. And artwork? They have a designer tool for CD and Records. This was a huge selling point for me. Also no minimums on orders you want to place for some units on hand.

Cons: You get what you pay for. When it comes to vinyl records, sometimes the service is not available. Almost like clockwork, don’t plan to get anything going or cut during Christmas time, it’s not out of the norm for them to completely cut off vinyl record services until the following year around that time of the year. The busier they are, the more your shipping prices go up, and significantly. CDs are not a problem usually. If I were looking to do something exclusively on CD – I would probably go Kunaki all the way. If you’re going to do vinyl with them, I’d recommend buying units ahead of time and keeping some inventory on hand, given the basic interface and low up front cost, that seems more feasbile with these guys.

ElasticStage

Pro’s: Presentation is what I think sets ElasticStage apart from the others. The end product has a nice design, you get a “catalog” page and a “release” page to link people to. And while Kunaki does the same thing, ElasticStage’s presentation is more “slick.” Although, to be fair, I do love the virtual CD player and Record Player interface that Kunaki uses in theirs (guess I’m kind of nostalgic about that). Also similarily to Kunaki, ElasticStage’s page for your release handles the order intake and payment which is convenient. I’m still in the early stages of my journey so I don’t have much insight on the order management part yet. The thing I like about ElasticStage’s approach is that they kind of set you up for longetivy, your catalog page can become and permanent fixture for presenting future releases. The artwork interface is easy and once you get through creating a release for one medium (in my case it was a record) it is really easy to just create a CD version of the same release without having to re-invent the wheel. International shipping certainly is available, but unlike the other vendors I’m on the wrong end of that because ElasticStage is not based in the U.S.

Cons: During the process of setting up your release it can get a little cumbersome with all the information you need to have handy and put into the system. It’s for good reason, but can get a bit tedious. I remember being really confused about what all was going on with their process as it relates to “release groups” but I eventually stumbled my way through it. And shipping is expensive to get it out to the U.S. The silver lining is that the “retail” price is reasonable enough to keep everything in the same ballpark for what you’d have to sell the records with the other vendors. So, any U.S. orders I may get the shipping will be high coming in, but from what I’ve seen so far, the additional costs associated with international shipping as an overall service is cheaper with ElasticStage by comparison to going “out” with the other vendors. Which is generally good, not as good if most of your orders are domestic to the U.S. And lastly, if you’re looking to get around the shipping by keeping some on hand quantity, there IS an order minimum with ElasticStage set at 25 units.

Overall I’ve been happy with my ElasticStage experience so far, and as it stands today. I do plan on releasing some more things with them in the future, and perhaps in combination with others in some way.