Sell Your Demo For $50!?!? Indie Music Minute


Hi, I’m Tony van Veen CEO of Disc Makers.
You know last month I was hanging out at a conference with Sydney Austin who was
one of our awesome product specialists at Disc Makers, he’s based in LA, and
Sydney told me this story that I thought was brilliant. He manages bands and one
of his bands had just recorded a demo, I think it was 5 songs I don’t really
remember; and he told me they had a gig and he ran out to Staples and he bought
a stack of CDrs and he just burned the demo onto the CDrs and he hand
wrote with a marker with a sharpie the songs and stuck him in a window sleeve
and then at their gig they sold them for 50 bucks each and they sold all of them.
And my first thought was that’s crazy, and then my next thought was that’s
brilliant. Because I mean imagine if almost 50 years ago you had had the
ability to buy like a test pressing of a Jimi Hendrix record that Jimi had
handwritten the song titles on. What would that be worth today? So the point
is this if you have fans if you can create something that’s truly special
and if you can make it scarce fans will pay almost anything for. So what you can
do just is limited by your imagination it could be a song that is not on
streaming services, it could be a footage from backstage, it could be any of a
number of cool things; but this little demo trick that Sydney and his band did,
anybody could do it. So open your mind and anything is possible, see you next


7 thoughts on “Sell Your Demo For $50!?!? Indie Music Minute”

  1. Mildly Creative Productions says:

    What a cool idea! I've always thought that shows with unique and exclusive merch were cool, but selling demos is very special. Thanks Tony.

  2. Joe T says:

    I'd love to know the name of the band that got $50 per a hand written CDR.

  3. JerryCherryBand says:

    Love your video's and your product. Thank you.

  4. highwaysoul says:

    interesting Idea, but I think price setting should be more thinking of the consumer in mind and not with them specifically for profit. It has to be reasonable for someone to shell out $50 for anything, so maybe adding some other incentives. Just my two sense. peace

  5. Amy Petty says:

    I did this and it worked!
    I had acoustic versions of five songs that I wanted to take into the studio as part of a longer ep. I burned the acoustic tracks at home, handmade some artwork for the cases, sharpie on the disc and took them to shows. I let everyone know it was “Pay What You Want” and they were helping fund the new album. I sold 150 over the course of 15 gigs, everyone paying at least $10, most paying $20 and several dropping $100 or more, just to be part of the project. As a result, the new album was funded and release is in two weeks (1/24/20).
    DO THIS. Fans want to be involved!!

  6. Christensen Tony says:

    i had that privelidge my friend

  7. New Begining says:

    What is "fence"?

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