There have been a few musicians that have been trying to redirect the kids away from cassette tape nostalgia to CD nostalgia. The reason is simple, in 2026 its cheaper to burn a CD than it is to manufacture a cassette tape. And CDs are vastly superior (the relative virtues of Vinyl and CD are a little more complicated, though on pure technicalities, CD still wins).
The thing with CDs is a DIY home musician can do the whole manufacturing chain at home. You buy one of those cheap laser screen printer engravers for about $1K. You pick up a CD bulk duplicator second hand off ebay for maybe $200. $100 will buy you more blank CDs than you'll ever sell. You bulk duplicate your album using the CD burner. You screen print the art onto the CDs. Get those cardboard CD sleeves and screen print the art (If you want better detail, grab a colour laser printer from Brother for about $500.)
Oh and that laser engraver screen printer setup will also make you the band shirts, just remember to grab one of those cheap chinese flash dryers to properly cure the ink on the shirt. Too many DIY shirt makers dont realise this.
Then you set up your bandcamp store, and maybe set up a merch desk at your gigs. Last gig I played we sold over $1K of merch.
Buy CDs. Play CDs. CDs are good. Especially CDs from local pub bands. Tapes are trash and sound like trash. VInyl is great but too expensive for a small band to produce at anything resembling a profit.
