www.indierec.com

Isn't it great to live in a time when independent musicians — unaffiliated with any record company, big or small — can produce their own compact discs? Oh, it's wonderful, absolutely, until it's time to sell the damn things. Perhaps the most aggravating roadblock encountered by the CD-selling indie musician is the irritating Universal Product Code (UPC), aka the bar code. Currently many, if not most, retail outlets require that you have one before they'll stock your CD. Also, you must have one if you want to have any shot of getting tracked by SoundScan and making the Billboard charts. A membership in the Uniform Code Council (UCC), the entity that doles out and regulates UPCs, will get you a vendor code and the wherewithal to assign bar codes to your products. Unfortunately, joining the UCC costs a hefty $750.

Independent Records (IR) provides an option. Its system works like this: you register your CD (or any other recorded format) with IR, which in turn assigns it a unique bar code. Because selling or renting bar codes is not a legitimate practice, you officially become an IR artist. IR provides you with a copy of its logo, which must be placed on your record's front or back cover (you can put it alongside your own logo if you want to cross-promote it with your label). That's basically all there is to it. Your music is scanned at the register under your name on the IR label. You get all the credit — and money. The prices begin at a mere $40 per single-format release. The bar code remains valid as long as the album is in release.

Is it worth it? Well, some CD-duplicating companies provide a bar code as part of their service, in which case you don't need IR. If you plan on becoming a “real” label, it's probably better to pay $750 to the UCC. But if your cupboard's bare or if you're issuing CDs in small quantities, Independent Records provides an interesting alternative.