Cassettes for bands and labels: a short-run release guide

11 October 2026 · 7 min read

Cassettes are one of the cheapest ways for a band or small label to put out a physical release. You can dub a few dozen at home or order a short run from a duplicator, sell them at gigs and on Bandcamp, and add a download code so buyers without a tape deck can still listen. This guide covers the choices: home dubbing or a duplicator, preparing the audio, the J-card and its credits, licences, download codes and barcodes.

Dub them yourself, or use a duplicator?

	Home dubbing	Duplicator, real time	Duplicator, high speed
How	You record each tape on your own deck	Each tape recorded at normal speed from your files	Copied fast onto bulk reels, then cut and loaded into shells
Sound	As good as your deck and your levels	The best; full frequency range	Consistent, with slightly less top end
Suits	10–30 tapes, a demo, a gig run	Small runs where sound matters most	Bigger runs at a lower price per tape
J‑cards	Print and fold them yourself	Usually printed for you from their template, or you supply your own

Home dubbing takes the length of the album for every tape, so a run of 30 C-46s is a long weekend. Duplicators load each tape to fit your longest side, offer coloured shells and printing on the shell itself, and many take orders of a few dozen.

Prepare the audio

One file per side. Put each side's tracks in order in a single file with the gaps you want; about two seconds between tracks is usual.
Use a lossless master. WAV, AIFF or FLAC at 44.1 kHz, 16-bit is what duplicators usually ask for. Your streaming or CD master is fine.
Balance the sides. The tape is loaded to fit the longer side, so a 19-minute Side A and a 12-minute Side B means seven minutes of silence. See how much fits on each tape length.
Test one. Whether you dub at home or order a run, listen to a finished tape on an ordinary player before you make the rest.

The J-card

A standard J-card has three panels: the front, the spine and the flap. Duplicators also offer longer cards that fold out (four to eight panels) for lyrics and credits, often printed on both sides. Whatever the size, put these on it:

Front: artist, title and artwork.
Spine: artist, title and catalogue number, readable on a shelf.
Tracklist: Side A and Side B, with times if you like.
Credits: who played, recorded and mastered it, the artwork credit, and the ℗ and © lines (below).
Where to find you: your Bandcamp or website, and the download code if there is one.

Printing it yourself: a jcard.studio PDF is made for home and copy-shop printing: one side of A4 at real size, with 2 mm bleed and crop and fold marks. Our guide to printing J-cards at home covers paper, cutting and folding. Ordering printed J-cards from a duplicator: use their template. It sets the panel sizes and bleed, and many ask for CMYK files, so check their artwork guidelines before you design.

℗ and ©: the credit lines

Releases carry two copyright notices, each written as the symbol, the year and the owner:

℗ (the P line) is for the sound recording: the year it was first released and whoever owns the recording, often the label or the band. For example, ℗ 2026 Night Bus Records.
© (the C line) is for everything else: the artwork, the printed words and often the songs themselves. For example, © 2026 Night Bus Records.

Keep them as two separate lines even when the same person owns both. On jcard.studio, the Credits box prints as small print along the bottom of the inside panel, where credits sit on a shop-bought tape.

Do you need a licence?

If the songs are your own and you haven't signed the rights to a publisher or a collecting society, you don't need anyone's permission to put them on tape. If you're a member of one, or have a publishing deal, check with them first. Cover versions are different: in the UK, putting someone else's song on a physical product needs a licence from MCPS, part of PRS for Music, and other countries have their own organisations. The same goes for samples. This is general information, not legal advice.

Download codes

Plenty of people who buy a tape don't own a deck, so a download code is a nice extra. Bandcamp lets artists and labels generate codes for an album from the Tools page, in batches of 100. Accounts start with 200 codes, more can be bought, and you earn more as you sell. Print them on a small card, or on the J-card itself, with your redemption address (yourname.bandcamp.com/yum).

Barcodes and the charts

You don't need a barcode to sell tapes at gigs or on Bandcamp. You only need one if you want sales tracked for the charts or want shops to stock it. In the UK, the Official Charts can only count physical products with a unique barcode and catalogue number for each format, and releases have to be registered with Kantar, either by your distributor or directly through Kantar's free registration system. Sales of download codes at shows aren't reported to the charts.

A quick checklist

Master, one file per side, with gaps and balanced lengths
Choose the tape length to fit the longer side
Home dubbing, real-time or high-speed duplication
Licences for any covers or samples
Download codes and where to redeem them
Barcode and chart registration, only if you want them
Test a finished tape before making the rest

Design the J-card

The Your photo looks on jcard.studio are classic album-cassette layouts built around your cover art: Title Band, Square Art, Side Stripe, Full Bleed and more. Add an inside panel for the full tracklist and credits, then print your run at home or take the PDF to a copy shop.

Making a tape? Design a J-card that fits the case.

Try the Your photo looks →