US Fulfillment for Independent Record Labels

Shipping your orders
shouldn't cost you your
time or your margin.

We help independent labels — US and international — build a professional US physical operation without the overhead. Manufacturing, warehousing, and fulfillment. One partner. Everything physical.

Ship Like a Real Label See How It Works
$14 Storage / pallet / month
$5.50 Domestic shipping from
24h Order fulfillment
0 Minimums. Ever.
The Problem

Generic warehouses weren't
built for records.

Whether you're self-fulfilling from your living room or paying a generic 3PL that doesn't know a gatefold from a mailer — you're losing time, margin, or both. It doesn't have to be this way.

What you're dealing with now

  • DIY logistics eating your time — or overpriced generic 3PLs eating your margin
  • Warehouse minimums that lock out smaller and emerging labels
  • Shipping costs so high your US buyers think twice
  • Records arriving damaged — seam splits, corner dings, surface scratches
  • Hidden fees for fuel surcharges, tape, and high-season labor
  • No real-time sync with Bandcamp, Discogs, or Shopify
  • International labels invisible in the largest vinyl market in the world

What Black River Music gives you

  • Professional US operations that scale with your label — without the overhead
  • No minimums — built for independent labels at every stage
  • Domestic US shipping from $5.50 per shipment
  • Zero-damage commitment with audiophile-trained staff and premium mailers
  • 100% transparent pricing — you only pay for what you use
  • Live inventory sync with Shopify, Bandcamp, Discogs, eBay, Big Cartel and more
  • Your US back-end — whether you're in Nashville or Buenos Aires
Our Services

One partner.
Everything physical.

From pressing plant to your fan's doorstep — we handle every step of your physical music operation in the US. Pick what you need, or hand it all off.

🏭

Manufacturing

Vinyl, CD, cassette, and merch — pressed and produced at top US plants. You brief us on what you need. We handle production, coordinate with pressing plants, and receive your inventory directly into our warehouse. No middlemen. No freight to coordinate.

🌡

Warehousing

Climate-controlled US storage at 68°F / 45% RH with specialist racking built for physical media. No minimums, no setup fees, no hidden costs. Your catalog is preserved, accessible, and ready to ship — from $14 per pallet per month.

📦

Fulfillment

Orders received and shipped within 24 hours. Real-time inventory sync with Shopify, Bandcamp, Discogs, eBay, Big Cartel and more. Premium mailers with reinforced crush zones. You sell. We ship. You never touch a mailer again.

Who We Are

Built from inside
the industry.

"We know the difference between a first pressing and a repress. We know how to pack a gatefold so it arrives perfect. We get it."

Black River Music is not a generic warehouse that happens to ship records. We are a US-based 3PL built exclusively for the music industry — operated by people with deep roots in independent label management, physical distribution, and direct-to-fan commerce.


From our climate-controlled US warehouse, we serve labels of all sizes — from emerging independents to established catalogs — with no minimums, transparent pricing, and free return processing. Whether you're based in Berlin or Brooklyn, we are your US physical operation.

100% Physical media specialists — exclusively music industry
24h Order fulfillment turnaround, guaranteed
68°F Climate-controlled storage at 45% relative humidity
$0 Setup fees, minimums, or hidden costs. Ever.
How It Works

Three steps to a
professional US operation.

Most labels are operational within a week. No long-term commitment, no minimum inventory requirement, no learning curve.

01

Get your rate sheet

Email us your catalog size, formats, and estimated monthly orders. We'll send a custom quote within 24 hours — no obligation, no sales pressure.

02

Send us your inventory

Ship your existing releases to our US warehouse — or let us press them here and receive them directly from the plant. We handle receiving, inspection, and storage.

03

You sell. We ship.

Connect your store. Every order triggers automatic fulfillment — picked, packed in a premium mailer, and shipped within 24 hours. You and your fan both get a tracking number. You never touch a mailer again.

Ship Like a Real Label
What's at Stake

The difference between
staying stuck and scaling.

If nothing changes

  • US fans continue hitting a wall — high shipping, long waits, damaged records
  • You keep spending 5–10 hours a week on packing and logistics
  • Margin disappears into generic 3PL fees built for Amazon, not labels
  • International labels remain invisible in the largest vinyl market in the world
  • Your operation stays amateur while your catalog grows more serious
  • Burnout — from doing warehouse work instead of building your label

With Black River Music

  • US fans receive their records in 2–3 days — not 6 weeks
  • Your operation looks and runs professionally from day one
  • Time reclaimed from fulfillment goes back into A&R, marketing, and growth
  • US revenue becomes a real, growing line item — not an afterthought
  • You scale without warehouse staff, long-term contracts, or upfront investment
  • You focus on the music. We handle the rest.
Transparent Pricing

No surprises.
No hidden fees. Ever.

You only pay for what you use. No monthly minimums, no setup fees, no seasonal surcharges. This is what we charge — and that's all we charge.

Service Black River Music Typical Generic 3PL
Monthly Storage (per pallet) $14.00 / mo ~$20–$30
Pick & Pack $2.20 ~$3.00+
Each Additional Item $0.20 ~$0.50+
Premium Mailer Packaging $1.20 ~$2.00+
Pallet In / Out $7.00 ~$15.00
Domestic Shipping (single vinyl) from $5.50 ~$7.00+
Return Processing Labor FREE $3.00+ per return
Setup Fees $0 $100–500+

💡 Selling a single vinyl record covers more than a full month of storage. One sale. One month. Done.

FAQ

Your questions,
answered honestly.

No fluff, no sales spin. Just straight answers to what labels actually ask us before signing on.

No — never. We serve labels of all sizes, from single-release independent artists to established mid-size catalogs. You only pay for the storage space and orders you actually use. Nothing else.
Vinyl (all sizes and weights), CD, cassette, and merch bundles. Our staff is trained exclusively in physical media — your product is always handled by people who actually understand what it is.
Shopify, Bandcamp, Discogs, eBay, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Big Cartel — and more. Inventory is synced live across all of them simultaneously. No manual updates, no overselling, no reconciliation headaches.
Every order is fulfilled within 24 hours of being placed. Domestic US shipping starts at $5.50. We use premium mailers with reinforced crush zones — your customers receive their records in perfect condition, every time.
None. No fuel surcharges, tape fees, high-season labor rates, or setup costs. You pay for storage used and orders fulfilled — and that's it. What you see in the pricing table is what you pay.
We operate under a zero-damage commitment. Our warehouse is climate-controlled at 68°F / 45% RH with specialist racking. Every shipment uses premium mailers with reinforced crush zones. If damage occurs on our end, we make it right — full stop.
Click any "Ship Like a Real Label" button on this page and fill out the short form. We'll send you a custom quote within 24 hours based on your catalog size, estimated monthly orders, and formats. Onboarding is simple — no long-term commitment, no setup fees, and most labels are operational within a week.
No long-term contract required. We want you to stay because the service is good, not because you're locked in. You notify us, we prep your inventory for outbound, and ship it wherever you tell us. You cover the outbound freight and a standard pallet-out fee ($7/pallet). No exit penalties, no inventory hostage situations.
The moment a customer places an order on your Shopify, Bandcamp, Discogs, or Big Cartel — our system picks it up automatically. No action needed from you. The order is picked, packed in a premium mailer, and shipped within 24 hours. You and your customer both get a tracking number. You don't touch a thing.
Our Shipment Protection Program covers you. For just $0.99 per order, every shipment is fully protected — carrier damage, lost package, wrong item. If anything goes wrong, we reimburse double the order value and send a replacement via free expedited shipping. No claims process, no arguing with UPS. Many labels pass this cost to their customers as an optional $1.49–$1.99 fee at checkout — 90% of customers opt in.
We handle pressing too — vinyl, CD, cassette, and merch. We have direct partnerships with top US pressing plants. You brief us, we handle production, and when your records come off the press they ship straight to our warehouse. No middlemen, no freight to coordinate. This is the all-in-one path chosen by 97% of our clients. If you already have a pressing plant you love, that works too — we handle it both ways.
No setup fees. No onboarding fees. No monthly minimums. You pay for what you use. If you have a quiet month and nobody orders anything, you pay storage for the pallets you have sitting there — and that's it. We're not going to charge you $500/month just to be a client.
Sooner than you think. Most people compare 3PL costs to packaging materials — but forget to count their own time. If you're spending 10+ hours a week packing and shipping, that's time you could spend on A&R, marketing, or simply not burning out. At even $30/hour of your own value, that's $300 a week on warehouse work. Our storage starts at $14/month per pallet. Run that math.
"Fine" usually means: acceptable damage rate, acceptable error rate, acceptable hidden fees. With us, you get a zero-damage commitment from staff who actually understand what a record is. Transparent pricing with no seasonal surprises. Platform sync that works with Bandcamp, Discogs, Big Cartel, and eBay — not just Shopify. And a team that knows what you mean when you say "seam split" or "180g pressing." The difference between fine and great isn't obvious until something goes wrong. At that point, it matters a lot.
Because it's the largest vinyl market in the world — and right now, most independent labels outside the US are either invisible in it or giving their margin away through someone else's storefront. A fan in Chicago discovers your label, loves the music, goes looking for the record — and hits a wall: inflated distributor pricing, or your Bandcamp with $30 shipping and a six-week wait. You lose the sale. Not because the demand wasn't there — because the infrastructure wasn't. The US vinyl market has grown for 17 consecutive years. The barrier between a fan who wants your record and your label is now optional.
It feels that way until you run the actual numbers. Say you ship 300 records from Europe — you're probably looking at $400–700 in inbound freight. Now the other side: 300 records at $28 average selling price, sold direct-to-fan, is $8,400 in gross revenue at margins you control. Your inbound freight is less than 8% of that — a one-time cost, not recurring. And if inbound freight feels like too much of a barrier: we press here. Vinyl, CD, cassette manufactured at top US pressing plants, shipped directly to our warehouse. You never pay international freight at all.
No — and this is genuinely good news. Vinyl records, CDs, and cassettes are classified by US Customs and Border Protection as "informational materials," which means they enter the US at a 0% duty rate and are explicitly exempt from the new import tariffs hitting hundreds of other product categories. This is a formal CBP classification, not a gray area. One nuance: bundles that include non-music merchandise — t-shirts, accessories — can be subject to duties around 10%. Pure music formats are clean.
Streaming gets your music heard. It does almost nothing else for you financially. You need roughly 250 streams to earn $0.75. A fan who streams your album ten times has generated about $0.03 for your label. That same fan buying your record direct generates $20–30 at margins you control. Physical music sold direct-to-fan is one of the last genuinely profitable revenue streams in independent music. Streaming builds awareness. Physical sales build community and revenue. You need both — and right now you're only doing one of them in the US.
No. You don't need a US business entity or a US bank account. You contract with us as your label entity — whatever legal structure you operate under in your home country. Payment is processed in USD via wire transfer or credit card. We've worked with labels from Europe, LATAM, and beyond without any of them needing to set up a US company first.
You ship your records to our warehouse using your freight forwarder or an international courier (DHL, FedEx International, UPS Worldwide). Your forwarder handles customs clearance on the US side. The key detail: use the description "Phonograph (vinyl) record – informational material" — it's the language CBP recognizes and avoids classification errors at the border. Once your shipment clears and arrives at our warehouse, we take it from there. We can recommend forwarders with physical music experience if you need a starting point.
A distributor sits between you and the market — they take 20–35% of every sale, control where your records go, and you give up margin for their network. A 3PL like Black River Music stores your inventory and ships orders on your behalf. We don't take a cut of your sales, we don't control your pricing, and we don't own your customer relationships. You sell, we ship; you only pay what you use. Your Bandcamp stays yours. Your Discogs listings stay yours. Think of us as the invisible back end of your US operation.
Your US sales are small right now partly because of the friction you're creating for US customers — high international shipping, long waits, customs delays. That suppresses demand. It doesn't mean the demand isn't there. The moment you offer domestic US shipping at $5.50 with a 2–3 day delivery window, you become a different proposition to American fans. We've seen international labels go from marginal US revenue to 25–30% of total sales after switching to domestic fulfillment — not because their music got better, but because buying became easy. Storage starts at $14/month. One vinyl sale covers more than a full month of storage.
Ship Like a Real Label
Get Started

Ready to ship
like a serious label?

Tell us where you are. We'll tell you exactly what it costs and how fast we can have you operational.

US Label

Stop fulfilling from home. Professionalize your operation from $14/month.

Ship Like a Real Label

International Label

Your music is global. Your US shipping should be too. Reach American fans like a local.

Ship Like a Real Label