Labelnotes 06/26

We started the month by assembling about half of the Quasi Casa copies: remove the protective sheet from the booklet, stick a download code on a card, put the card in the booklet, put the booklet in the record sleeve. Slide in the 30x30 cm print and a small gift (itself assembled beforehand). Then add a protective sleeve and place the hype sticker. Repeat 150 times.

Then came the packing.

And then it all had to get out the door.

We made three trips to the shipping hub, which is about 9 kilometres away. The largest one with the car, then two more with the cargo bike. And no, we did not ride all the way with the load you see in the picture above. But since the street our office is on was completely closed to car traffic that week (great timing!), we had to get the packages to the car first, so we loaded the bike to the max and pushed it two streets down.

To be honest: I had a lot of respect for handling all those pre-orders and I set aside plenty of time to do so. But in the end, it was even more time-consuming than I expected.

Still, it became clear fast that all the hard work was worth it, the moment I saw how happy people were with the record. People posted their copies on Instagram; some emailed us just to say thanks. That kind of feedback is incredibly motivating.

After all the physical work, I spent the end of the month tinkering with our digital tools. I'd already built a CRM for our press work with Claude's help, and a few months back I'd vibecoded a sales dashboard. This month a Download Code Manager joined them — we used it in the last newsletter to hand out Bandcamp codes for the Nitrada album.

So while I was at it, I pulled the tools together and launched version 1.0 of the 2nd rec OS. Once it's a bit more mature, I might do a post about it.