Gracenote Registration

For $29, TrepStar will submit your Audio CD information to Gracenote so your music will be recognized by iTunes and other services.

Gracenote is the largest on-line database registry for CD-Audio (music or spoken word).  Every  professional audio CD needs to be on Gracenote.

When your CD is played on any computer or devices with an internet connection, Gracenote contains the data about the track names, artist, album title and much more.  Gracenote is the primary database for music recognition technology.  This database is used by iTunes, Spotify, Google music, Amazon, Pandora, and other systems like Windows Media Player, and more.

When your CD is placed in an internet connected computer or other device designed to gather disc information, the data comes from the Gracenote database which recognizes your specific CD.

We will need some information about your CD.  

• Artist
• Album
• Composer
• Genre
• Year
• Track name of each track.

Send an email to help@trepstar.com and we can get you started.

Site Update

 Some of the website UI has changed to a little bit different style.  Let us know what you think by sending an email to trepstar.

Wholesale order or retail buy now buttons? How does the TrepStar billing system work?

Let's start with your business.  You sell your own CD/DVD or USB custom products.  You either have your own website and use a shopping cart like Shopify, or perhaps you just marketed your products on Amazon and sold using CreateSpace or Amazon Media on Demand (both of which are now closed).   

In any case, to use TrepStar, you'll need a way to market your product.  By marketing I mean you have your own website or facebook or instagram pages that describe the products you offer.   TrepStar is not a marketplace like Amazon so it's up to you to get customers from your social media pages to your product description pages.

From there, you either have a shopping cart or not.   

Wholesale order method: If you do have a cart already (like Shopify or any of these for example ) you are going to be accepting money from your customer.   In this case, you want TrepStar to receive your order data into what we call our Wholesale order system.  We charge you our low wholesale price to manufacture and ship your CD/DVD or USB product on demand at order time and ship to your customer address.  You can also login to TrepStar, click the order button, and order any product you want to send to any retailer you have.  This is called drop shipping.  Many of our customers "drop ship" dozens or hundreds of items to FBA (fulfillment by Amazon) or any other retailer they may have.   If you don't have retailers, that's OK.  What you are doing is simply getting your individual customer order data into the TrepStar order system when an order occurs from your site shopping cart.  We have ways of automating that process so you don't have to type in each customer name and address.  In this model, you have a shopping cart that collects money from your customer.  You pay TrepStar only after you submit orders to our system.  Order go on hold until you pay TrepStar.  To pay TrepStar, you login, and click our "Pay Bill" button.  You can pay just what you owe, or pay extra to "fund" your account for future orders.  If you expect to spend $100 per week for example, you can pay your bill plus an extra $100 which will mean you only have to pay a bill once per week.  You can pay more if you want to avoid lots of payments.  We prefer large payments to avoid all the transaction charges we incur every time we take an online payment.

Retail order method: If you do NOT have a cart already and don't want to spend the $50 to $100 per month to have a cart, you can use our retail order buy now buttons.   You still need to have your own website where you describe your products to your customers.  Your pages will have our buy now buttons.  From there, the customer clicks on the buy now button which brings them to a purchase page hosted by TrepStar.  The TrepStar retail buy now buttons shopping cart receives the customer order, collects the address info and payment.  TrepStar then produces and ships those products directly to the customer at order time.  We pay you the net proceeds every few weeks.  Please read this over if you would like to consider this method.  We charge a low monthly fee to use our sytem and we only charge that fee if you have sales (unlike every other shopping cart).  We don't even ask for a credit card.  We only get paid if you sell product.   Our cost to you is basically the same as if you used our wholesale system.   You set a retail price and we charge the customer extra for shipping and handling.   There is an example near the bottom of this page

Why doesn't TrepStar offer dual layer 8.5GB DVDs?

TrepStar does not offer dual layer DVDs (DVD-9 8.5GB). Even the best blank dual layer media (as of this writing 10/14/21) often fails during the burn of dual layer discs. 

Our research shows that up to 20% of the burns are bad, and a fair percentage of DVD players are incompatible with even the best burned dual layer discs. This is why we do not offer them. It would cause too many support issues and costs for us, as well as refund requests from your customers. 

We suggest you re-author your DVD into two discs, or use compression software to fit your larger source DVD onto the single layer DVD-5 (4.7GB) DVDs that we offer. 

You might want to consider purchasing 1Click DVD Copy PRO. We do not receive any affiliate commission or money from 1Click. We've worked with them before and we trust their software and their company.

Another option is to re-author your DVD and set the video bitrate so it will fit on a single layer DVD-5 (4.7GB).

For example, the free DVDStyler DVD authoring software lets you change the video bitrate. By changing the video bitrate you can put more than 126 minutes but quality will go down. 

In the DVDStyler help section  you can read "On one single layer DVD (4.7 GB) can be stored up to 126 minutes of video in good quality (Video bitrate ? 4.5 MB/s). If you selected 'Auto' as video quality in new-project dialog, it is also possible to put more than 126 minutes but quality of video will be automatically reduced."

Most likely, regardless of which DVD authoring software you use, there should be a way to adjust the video bitrate such that it will fit to a single layer DVD.  Otherwise, you'll have to split the discs up into two single layer DVDs.

TrepStar does not offer bluray either.  There is too much data.  Uploading, downloading and storing 25GB files is not something we find economically viable.

keywords: dual layer, single layer, DVD-5, DVD-9, bluray, blu-ray

Amazon MOD DVD/CD service closing

Several new and recent TrepStar publishers have confirmed that Amazon is closing down it's CD/DVD MOD (media on demand) service.   

TrepStar is actually a lower cost option.  Create a free CD/DVD project within your FREE TrepStar account.  Order copies of your product at low wholesale prices (we don't take a percentage of your retail price like Amazon).  

Create a FREE TrepStar CD/DVD/USB account here:

Read more about Amazon MOD CD/DVD service closing here

Value Added Tax (VAT) of 20% required for UK customers

Last update to this document: 11/9/21

TrepStar WILL ship to the UK.  Please provide your valid UK VAT ID# if you have one:

As of 11/9/21, we've learned that we can ship product to the UK without a VAD TAX ID# for publishers that sell below £85,000 worth of product each year to UK customers.   This means most (if not all) publishers do not need to provide the UK VAT TAX ID#.  If you have one, please use it (see how to configure it below). 

For sellers that sell more than £85,000 per year, you would be required to provide the UK VAT TAX ID# (see how to configure your TrepStar account below).

Starting early this year (2021), the UK government is now requiring a 20% value added tax (VAT) to be collected from the sender (not the recipient) before they will accept any packages from the USA.  This is part of the new BREXIT rules.  

In the past, the recipient would pay any VAT tax.  Now, the UK is requiring  the seller (you) to collect the VAT in advance, account for it, fill out Tax forms, and submit payments to the UK on a quarterly basis.  There is news that the EU will start doing this in July of 2021. 

The United Kingdom (UK) are countries in Great Britain: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. 

IF you have the UK VAT ID#, within your TrepStar Dashboard, choose the blue 'Account Settings' button. Scroll to the bottom to find a section where you can place a UK VAT TAX ID#

If you apply and receive your UK VAT TAX ID# save it within the Account Settings.  It may be possible some  merchant/shopping cart systems may provide their ID# to you, but we're not sure if this will work (or if this is true).

When orders for the UK come through, we will be able to print that VAT TAX ID# on the postage/customs forms.  We are not sure how this will work yet, but we will be monitoring the system. 

VAT and other countries:

2/1/21: Australia: 

If you have a code that shows tax was paid for your Australia customers, you can try placing it directly on the address.  For example, eBay collects the VAT for AU and your receipts may include this paid code.  Example:

John Smith
ABN#64653316681 Code:PAID
372 James Avenue
Hallam, VIC 3803
Australia

Additional Resources:

Here is a good article describing these UK VAT requirements from the Endicia.com/Stamps.com site

Are you frustrated by this type of government regulation and overstep? Read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.  It may change your life for the better.

Tracking Status Page on Order Notification Email

A link to the new tracking status page is now included in the TrepStar Order Notification Email sent to the customer.   When you submit an order with TrepStar, an optional order notification email is sent to the email address used during ordering (often to your customer).   It contains an order summary as well as a link to the new tracking status page.   

The link brings the user to a page like the following (a different customer in this example) which changes as tracking information changes. 

The customer will also receive a 2nd email with tracking when postage is printed (hours after the first order notification email).