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Columbia Japan Music On Demand, On CD-R
jwlidtnet writes "It seems as if Columbia Records Japan has instituted a series of 'albums on demand' -- written on CDR media (warning: page in Japanese). Granted, most of the items currently offered are Japanese in origin, but this is indicative of a record label that realizes how to embrace *some* aspect of the technological revolution! Various industry types have been espousing this method for years as an antidote to artificial concepts of media supply and demand (e.g. that Big Record Label cannot support small acts as it must press x copies of the album), and as Columbia seems to be offering mostly old catalogue items, this is an encouraging solution to the problem of the control of out-of-print recordings. One final note: of course, a system like this is only as useful as its retailer support, and it appears as if both Tower Records Japan and HMV Japan carry these CDR releases."
--Manufactured Sex Gateway
Sex - Find It
So will the CD-R's be "protected" by Label Gate?
sulli
RTFJ.
The biggest difference is that the Japanese market has really taken to the concept of singles rather than entire albums. It is not uncommon to see unknown artists having their latest single showcased at the music store. It is cheaper for the recording companies to buy off a couple of songs and put it out than to sign the groups to full album contracts and the marketing that goes along with it.
Once a group becomes popular that their singles are flying off the shelf, they usually get signed to an album deal and their first album is a best-of based on their single releases.
This CD-R thing is nothing more than a logical outgrowth of that mentality and business style.
Why the U.S. and the U.K. have such ass-backwards album-first styles makes no sense to those of us in more forward thinking countries like Japan.
Back in the 80's the Japanese had a kiosk system that you could buy a game for the 8-bit Nintendo Famicom. It was like $5.00/game (depending on game)... The games were copied to yellow 3.5" floppy disks. The disk drive attached the the "belly-button" expansion slot on the bottom of the unit.... And it was red in color.
A friend of mine bought his copy of Dragon Warrior (known there as Dragon Quest) on a floppy disk. The game-pak based game save had not yet been invented, and so you had to write down a bunch of wierd heiroglyphic symbols in order to resume from where you left off....
-mike bell
www.wickedallstars.com
cec.wustl.edu/~mwb1/
I read this article and was immediately reminded of a company I bought 2 mix-yer-own CDs from a few years back: CDuctive.com.
... too bad they're not around anymore.
Can't connect to their site now. And a look at their whois record seems to indicate that they were bought out by EMusic, which kinda sucks.
IIRC, CDuctive charged $0.99 per track, or $1.99 for the 10-minute-plus songs. Over all, my CDs cost around $20 and were full of goodness by folks like DJ Food, 9 Lazy 9, Coldcut, LTJ Sound Machine and others (they had several Ninja Tune artists, I believe).
Anyway
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
Actually Pizza Hut did it, I have 2 of the CDs right now. I also remember you could go into Sam Goody and picking single songs from this big fat book and get up to 90 minutes of only songs you wanted to hear on a cassette. I don't remember if you could get a CD from it or not, but it only went on for a few months, then was discontinued.
Eventually, I do think the time will come when anything more than 5-10 years old that you want on CD will be recorded right there in the store, and only new CDs will be pressed, with all the accompanying liner notes and art. It will become just too cost-prohibitive to have backlogs of CDs sitting in a warehouse waiting to be shipped.
It sure would be much easier to have the tracks sitting on a CD-R burning machine and just picking individual songs from the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s that you like being put on a CD. Even at $.50 - $.75 a song, the burned CDs would fly off the shelves. There would still be people downloading off the Internet, but I think most people, if given the choice, would rather get tracks they know are complete and high quality, already on a CD. Of course, the record companies would find a way to screw it up by adding encryption, or some such other crap to each CD.
Maybe someday they will learn; just not today.
Why "warning?" Is Japanese dangerous to
your health?
How about "note: page in Japanese"
next time?
IT musta hav been 3-5 years ago in New Orleans, I had a girlfriend who worked at the Virgin Record store. I remember going to see her(and check out her coworkers) and that had this machine that ypu picked your tracks from a list and it burned you a cd. It took awhile, you got a recept and picked it up from the staff in like 20-30 minutes. IT was like a buck a track. I remember thinking that it would be a cool idea, but hell I had a burner and didn't pay it any mind. I guess I wrote it off like I did video jukeboxes in 84(remember those? Morris Day and the Time, Michael Jackson, Scandal).
I would also like to see more traditional bands promoting downloads on the net. By traditional I mean guitars, drums. Maybe even a singer. Not techno,trance mixes from stolen samples and loops. Most of us can do that. I dabbled and dee-jayed but never considered myself a musician. Give me some high quality acoustic guitar playing, clean vocals. Just cause it is on the computer dont need to sound like it was made on one.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
When I was in Japan I saw similar kiosks in a variety of places, except that they recorded to MD rather than CD (minidisc is much more popular there than, say, the US). Another odd (I thought) thing that is common in Japan is CD rental. You can take it home for a couple hundred yen and copy it at your leisure. The stores even thoughtfully put the blank MD displays right next to the rental counter!