About the SCALA CD CollectionIn 1994 SCALA commenced an ongoing CD project to enable SCALA members to test their professionally recorded songs on the broader market. The CD project is generally run in conjunction with Song Competitions which SCALA administers but it is not necessarily dependent on them. We are currently looking for original material for our next CD.
Why CD?Nowadays most radio stations (even public or community stations) do not play cassette tapes. Consumers (the "General Public") often prefer to buy CDs in preference to cassette. A&R managers and venue owners are sometimes more impressed by a CD than cassette.
Doing it yourselfAn individual (or group) which wishes to release an independent CD generally spends thousands of dollars (in Australian currency) which includes recording costs (to CD quality), mastering, CD pressing (generally a minimum of 500 CDs) and printing, marketing and distribution costs. For first time independent recording artists (and sometimes second and third time) that can be a lot of CDs to dispose of and (let's face it) a lot of money to lose (or have sitting in a box under your bed!).
The SCALA ProjectSCALA's CD project is designed to help SCALA members cut the costs of releasing an original song on CD. Recording costs are cut because the member is looking at only recording one song at a time. Mastering, pressing and printing costs are reduced to a fee which SCALA charges members whose songs are included on the CD. Currently the charge is 65 cents (Australian Currency) per second (or just $39 per minute). Thus a song that is 3 minutes long will cost just $117. This is substantially cheaper than recording a whole CD.
But wait there's more!!In addition the member receives a proportion of the CDs produced according to the length of the song. The current formula used is the number of seconds multiplied by 0.185. Thus for a 3 minute song the SCALA member receives 180 x 0.185 = 33.3 /ie 33 CDs, a 4 minute song (cost $156) will result in 240 x 0.185 = 44.4 ie 44 CDs. Those CDs are yours to sell (to recoup costs), to give away, to use for promotion, whatever (even to leave under the bed if you must!).The resulting CD is presented as a professional package which includes full lyrics, photo of the artist/songwriter/band/group, brief bio and recording details.
DistributionA CD can hold over 70 minutes of recorded material. That can amount to 20 or so songs. Importantly that's 19 or so other people spreading your song around. SCALA also has copies to sell and it distributes copies to radio stations and other music industry contacts. The release is also announced to relevant media and included in our Complete SCALA Catalogue.Return to Contents What to send usIf you are a SCALA member who has professionally recorded, unreleased material which you think would be suitable we would be interested in hearing it.We would prefer to hear your material on
NOTE: Original material can be submitted at any time from anywhere and in any style. It just has to be original and preferably unsigned and previously unreleased. You don't have to be a SCALA member to submit material (although we give preference to current members) but you do have to be a member to be on the CD. Fair enough? Extra NOTE: We strongly recommend that material submitted be MASTERED for CD before submitting. Further details can be obtained from:
SCALA (Songwriters, Composers And Lyricists Association Inc.)
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