| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Music, Independent Music, CD Manufacturing, and Manufacturing |
| Founded | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1966) |
| Founder(s) | Ivin Ballen |
| Headquarters | Pennsauken, New Jersey |
| Key people | Tony van Veen (President) Michael Allen (EVP, Finance) |
| Products | CD Replication & Duplication |
| Website | www.discmakers.com |
Disc Makers is primarily a CD and DVD manufacturer that caters to independent musicians, filmmakers, and small businesses. Disc Makers competes with many established CD and DVD replicators in North America including ISOMEDIA, VSG, CD Video, WTS Media, OEM, and The ADS Group. Despite the competition, Disc Makers sometimes outsources its replication jobs to its competitors such as ISOMEDIA for logistical reason. This accounts for its quality inconsistency.
In addition to its manufacturing plant in Pennsauken, New Jersey, Disc Makers has sales offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta, Nashville, Puerto Rico, Boston and Berkeley, CA.
Disc Makers was started in 1946 when Ivin Ballen[1] began pressing 45s for record companies in Philadelphia and New York, at 1626 Federal Street. His son Morris Ballen joined the Company full time in 1959 at age 21. During the years leading up to 1982, the Company progressed through various formats such as vinyl LPs, 8-tracks, and audiocassettes. By 1982, Disc Makers made the two popular formats – vinyl LPs (66% of company sales at that time) and audiocassettes (33%).
From the 1940s to the mid-80s Disc Makers was a commodity supplier to the music industry, selling to record companies in New York, Philadelphia, and the Baltimore/DC area. With the popularization of home and project recording studios in the early 80's a new DIY record pressing market began to spring up. In 1983, Disc Makers began to actively target its marketing to smaller, independent clients (mostly musicians who needed runs of 500 or 1000) who required more service. In 1984, the company opened a branch in New York City to better serve this market, and sales began to rise. In 1986, the compact disc was introduced (the first successful new audio format since 1969), and Disc Makers began selling that format in 1988 in small quantities – as few as 300 CDs. Disc Makers began by subcontracting the CDs from outside vendors.
In January 1995, Disc Makers moved to its present location in Pennsauken, going from a 40,000 sq ft (3,700 m2). facility to 80,000 sq ft (7,400 m2). Also in 1995, Disc Makers acquired Music Annex, a Fremont, CA cassette duplicator and CD broker, and got its presence in the San Francisco Bay area and Los Angeles. In 1996, Disc Makers entered the B-to-B market for CD-ROM, adding more printing capacity and in 1997, die cutting, folding, and gluing facilities were installed. Then in 1998, Disc Makers purchased Martin Audio, a Seattle CD broker. Disc Makers’ NJ building was expanded to its present size in late 1998, when the company began replicating CDs instead of subcontracting them from trade CD replicators, making it one of the few in the independent music business to fully handle all three basic components: the discs, the printing, and the assembly of the packaging.
In 2006 Disc Makers was purchased by Corinthian Capital Group and is no longer family owned although Morris Ballen remains involved in the role of Chairman.[2]
In August 2008, Disc Makers acquired the online music sales company CD Baby.[3]