An Interview with Micah Solomon, President of Oasis CD Manufacturing

In my previous article, I dropped the following:

Perhaps someday, someone will explain to me why anyone would order CDs through Oasis when all their packages are at least $100 more expensive than identical packages from Discmakers.

I didn’t realize that “someday” would actually be the next Monday, and “someone” would be the president of Oasis, Micah Solomon.  Google Alerts is a beautiful thing, and Solomon responded to me immediately.  He was friendly and professional and he got me curious.  Nothing impresses me like real human beings, so I wanted to give Micah Solomon a platform, right here on Audible Hype, to correct me. 

And to be clear: I do stand corrected. The packages are not identical.  The Oasis benefits package is considerably more impressive than what Discmakers has to offer—and although there’s manufacturing plants that are far cheaper...so is their product.

I leave it up to the reader to decide for themselves—here’s Micah Solomon to argue his case. 

The Interview

What separates Oasis from lower-priced competition and what advantages do you offer specifically for independent and DIY musicians?

Solomon: Almost all of our lower priced competition consists of brokers who job out their orders all over the country and even the world.  They tend to have the best of intentions (in fact they are probably musicians just like you and me), but they will never have the kind of control over the project that we do, manufacturing it from start to finish.

We offer a very strong and personalized project management system run right out of the plant so if anything goes wrong, if there are any little wrinkles along the way we can stay right on top of it.

$100 is $100, and it’s certainly valuable.  We try to give a lot for $100. If you do choose to spend an extra $100 with us, here are some of the things you get:

Most famously, you get the OasisSampler radio distribution sampler.  I know you’re a great fan of the amazing marketing guru Seth Godin, as am I.  In what is perhaps his most famous book, Purple Cow, Seth singles out the OasisSampler as one of the remarkable things a company does for its clients.

We take the track that you, the artist, feel is the most important to your career at this point in your development and we get it out to a minimum of 400 broadcast radio stations, at our expense (yes, that expense far exceeds $100) in your selected genre.  We send you a list of all the stations it went to.  We also send it to a private list of industry insiders who have asked for it for their own purposes. 

You were specifically concerned with resources for DIYs.  Here are few we offer: 

Galaris, a database of 22,000 music industry type names and contact info, many of which can be accessed by the click of a mouse.  Some of the key ones are venues that are organized by town, geographic area, state, etc., some that are more mundane but no less important are resources such as photographers, and some are record labels and the like.  We also offer Hostbaby:  6 free months of musician-oriented web hosting including free, comprehensive, very easy to use do it yourself web design.  We offer online distribution through CD Baby and on-demand Brick & Mortar Distribution through Super D, the biggest independent One Stop distributor.  We offer digital distribution through iTunes, DigStation, Rhapsody, and more.

What inspired you to start Oasis in the first place?

Solomon: I have always been a musician.  When I graduated from college I intended of course to be a rock star.  Graduating mid-year there were no guidance counselors to help me get a job as a rock star so I successfully started doing business as a recording engineer, eventually creating one of the more successful recording studios in my area, Oasis.  But when we would send the masters off to be turned into cassettes (yes, this was a long time ago) they would come back sounding kind of funky—and not in a George Clinton kind of way—or the artwork wouldn’t be printed right and eventually I said “I’m going to learn to do that better myself.”

The Lesson

I love to be corrected—that means I’ve learned something.  This is a valuable lesson in the importance of authentic human contact.  Rather than merely direct me to their website, Solomon was generous enough to answer my questions directly.  It’s hard to imagine a more persuasive argument for the quality of the customer service at Oasis.  I know that my friends in The Aztext went through Oasis for their last album, The Sacred Document, and they were very satisfied with the final product. I got the scoop from emcee Pro:

It’s a pleasure dealing with Oasis.  Once you start pricing out the cost of pressing up an album, you realize most places are competitive with one another… the reason we selected Oasis CD (twice now) originally was because they print up a promotional CD of their clients that they deliver to genre specific radio stations, and give you all of the appropriate contact info.  However, much more importantly Oasis is the only place that offers guaranteed turn around time, which is extremely important when planning album release parties, tour dates, and press releases.

The Question

Do you have experience with getting CDs manufactured?  Do you have painful lessons you’re willing to share—or great experiences?  Help us build the braintrust—your input helps everyone.