TUTORIAL: HOW TO MAKE A CUSTOM CASSETTE USING KUNAKI
INTRODUCTION TO KUNAKI
Kunaki is a really good place to make decently high quality physical media of many kind, including CDs, vinyl records, DVDs, Blu-rays, and of course, cassettes!!
you will need to make an account first in order to do any of this, so do that by clicking the “LOGIN” button and click “REGISTER”. after logging in, you will be directed to the INDEX/PRODUCTS LIST page.
in order to make a cassette, go to the “Create and submit new product” section, click “Make new cassette”, then “UPLOAD FILES AND ARTWORK”.
(IMPORTANT: please do not send unmodified screenshots or screen share this page to someone you dont trust!! it will show your email and password in plain text, so if you dont want your account stolen, DO NOT SHOW THIS PAGE TO ANYBODY YOU DONT TRUST!!!!)
MAKING IMAGES
making images for the cassettes is a little complicated at first, but once you get the hang of it, its super easy!!
the first thing you’ll want to do is make a j-card image. this is the artwork that will be inside the jewel case surrounding your cassette.
Kunaki’s j-card formatting is a little weird and stretches the image horizontally (or in the case of making and uploading one, vertically), so squash and stretch your front cover image until it looks right when uploaded to the website!!
making the labels are much more simple, so i wont provide a template for this one. make a document in your software of choice that is 1050 x 496, and just… create your label!! theres no specific guideline for it, just make sure the text isnt too close to the edges. make sure the elements of your artwork aren’t obscured by the cutout by uploading your image to the page and adjusting the elements accordingly, or make a 708 x 177 rectangle and align it to the center of your image (be sure to delete it once youre ready to export it!!)
MAKE SURE YOUR IMAGES ARE IN .JPG FORMAT! Kunaki doesnt accept any other image format.
when all of your images are ready, click the “Browse…” button and select your image, then click the green “Upload” button, and once its done, youre ready to move on to the audio!!
UPLOADING AUDIO
on Kunaki, each side of the cassette has a limit of 15 tracks or 42 minutes of audio. if you have more than 15 tracks, i’d recommend consolidating all of them into one track and then uploading it as one audio file!! Kunaki accepts just about any audio file type under the sun, but i recommend .mp3.
click the “Browse…” button and select your audio files, make sure your theyre in the order you want for each side, then click the green “Upload” button. once everything is done and uploaded, youre almost done!!
FINISHING TOUCHES
for convenience, i’d suggest setting the “title” field to the name of your album. the publisher can be pretty much anything, so i just enter my username. after youre done with that, click the “Submit product” button. it will then take you to a status page, where it will show you the progress of uploading your files to Kunaki’s servers.
the page will update every 30 seconds. it will take about five minutes to finish everything. once everything is done, the page will refresh, and you will be greeted with a 503 error screen. dont worry, this just shows that its done!!
ORDERING YOUR CASSETTES
log back into your Kunaki account, and click the “Order and ship your products to a single address” button. set the quantity of your cassette (or cassettes if you made more than one), enter your zip code, state, and country, then click the “Calculate Shipping” button. enter your shipping address, card information, and your billing address if applicable, then click the “Check out” button.
thats it!! pretty simple process. your order will take about a week or two depending on where you are, and you will have your very own custom cassette of pretty good quality!!
(DISCLAIMER: if your cassette contains any material you do not own, DO NOT distribute it to anybody!! copyright law is very serious and you can get in huge trouble for breaking it!!)
