http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23840744

I laughed at the 'sometimes we make a loss' bit when some of the court cases and buyouts have shown the money spent on 'flowers' is in the thousands. I've a feeling they mean a few processed leaves in particular...

13% goes to the artists lol maybe but once the cost of production of the album, advertising and the physical costs of making the cd plus shipping are taken from it. Most artists wont see a single penny from an album apart from the advance.

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CDs? Why are people even contemplating CDs anymore?

My band is just doing vinyl and digital downloads. Since the recordings are no longer the product and are mostly promotional items the financial breakdown of making a CD is largely irrelevant. These days anyone with digital audio files and £50 can get their music up on iTunes and Amazon etc.

In terms of the mainstream industry those CDs are important - I think the figure was 70% of last year's album sales. Though I suspect that's partly because digital downloads of albums are consumer cherry-picked.

I do try and buy from independent artists directly. They get every penny of the revenue less any costs. The artists get a higher share from CD's than any other format.

As an artist producing and selling your own CDs is great in theory but actually not very cost effective in practice, because unless you have some alternative source of funding without the weight of a record company behind you, you can't get the best deals on production or promotion.

After taking into account the cost of recording, mastering, sleeve design and then production of the CD and it's packaging unless you can afford to produce and can guarantee to sell at least a couple of thousand copies, at best all you'll do is to break even. The more fancy your packaging (i.e. anything that isn't a CD in a jewel case with a 4-page booklet) the more it will eat into any potential profit margin, and remember that you'll need to give away a couple of hundred copies for promotional purposes.

Record companies may get a bad reputation for not giving their artists a very big percentage of sales, but I defy anyone to try and get a bank loan on the same terms as the average record contract...

My CD's from the independents are in simple sleeves. They are also available from Soundcloud.