Piano Forum

Very nice playing, a certain amount of restraint but still with passion.  Congratulations on completing such a demanding project!

Having gone through the process of getting a CD pressed last year, I might be in a position to offer some advice. Re cover art, you could consider looking through various stock photo sites, where you may find a suitable image for a nominal fee. Bear in mind that if you do use an actual piece of non-stock photo artwork, you may have to (even if you find the image freely available via wikimedia or similar) locate the copyright owner and pay image rights. I paid almost £200 in image rights, but it was for a cover image which I particularly liked and thought highly appropriate. Classical cover artwork is imo generally deeply unimaginative, but such things are a matter of taste. It's stating the obvious, but it's also easily overlooked - you will need a front cover image, a back cover image, and one to be stamped onto the CD itself.

Get the CD replicated, rather than duplicated: I was told replication uses industry standard CDs, whereas duplication is effectively the same as copying a CD at home (degrades more readily). barnardo is right, the bigger your replication order the cheaper it becomes per CD. When I went through this process iirc 1000 was only 30-40% more than 500. Regarding the sleeve notes, the site I used didn't charge significantly more for an 8 or 12 page insert (£20-30, something of that order) than a small 2 page insert, so I wrote full sleeve notes. I had a graphic designer to help me with getting everything put together in the appropriate formats, which I found helpful. Oh, and you'll need to get a barcode (probably UPC format). I used https://www.barcode1.co.uk/ ; they were cheap, but if you go to some sites, you'll end up with the impression the barcode is going to cost hundreds of £/$.