If you are aiming to sell your CD in physical format – in retail outlets such as Musica or Look ‘n Listen; or through an online shop such as Kalahari.com – you will need to get an EAN (European Article Number) barcode to be displayed on the back CD cover. You can either have the barcode included in your CD artwork design, or if you are one of the many artists who have already printed their covers without realising that you need to buy a barcode – don’t worry, it happens! – then you also have the option to print barcode labels which can then be affixed to the CD case itself.
The barcode which needs to appear on your album basically represents a unique number – which has never been registered to any other product, anywhere in the world – and is therefore able to identify your specific CD. The black and white lines of the barcode are what are read by the scanner when someone purchases your album at the shop’s till. This allows the retailer’s system to do three things simultaneously:
- Charge the customer the correct price
- Credit you with a sale; and
- Update the store’s inventory so that they know when they need to order more CD’s from you
As you can see this streamlines the entire process both for you and for the retailer, and saves a great deal of time. So how do you go about buying a barcode for your CD in South Africa? Well thankfully you need look no further than SA Barcodes. All we need from you is the name you want to register your unique barcode to – this can be your personal name, or the name of your band or group; and a contact email where your barcode package can be sent.
We will then send you what is called a ‘barcode package’. This contains:
- A certificate of registration. This is a legally binding document which proves you are the sole owner of the specific barcode number you have purchased.
- A spreadsheet and PDF document which contains the unique number you have bought for your CD
- High resolution images of the barcodes themselves. This we provide to you in JPEG, Tiff, and EPS (Photoshop) formats, so that your designers can use whichever format suits their software best.
We can also supply your designer with a sizing template, allowing them to rescale the barcode image itself to suit the space available on your CD cover without making the barcode unreadable.
As you can see the process is really not that daunting at all – but if you have any questions at all please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us!