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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."
I love these opinion-free stories!
:) Interesting contrast to the mainstream press which usually tries to appear impartial.
Not that I disagree with the submitter's bias, and he/she is very up-front about it.
I don't think it's a matter of technology, but rather the ethics behind doing what the people want.
--Manufactured Sex Gateway
Sex - Find It
...to download everything off of Kazaa and burn it to CDR myself. Much cheaper than a plane ticket to Japan, too. ;)
http://www.mykaraokecdg.com/xcart/customer/
Soundchoice has been offering custom CDG karaoke cd's for about 1.5 years now. Go online, select your tracks, plop in a credit card number and a magical CD comes to your house from this magical guy named the fed ex man.
... if I could gert *any* music track I wanted... even out of print stuff. I would gladly pay, say, $1 per song and pay $15 for a CD filled with stuff I *like* - that may be no longer "officially" available - and not have one or two tracks I like and 13 crappy tracks....
RickTheWizKid
So will the CD-R's be "protected" by Label Gate?
sulli
RTFJ.
Note: I don't read Japanese, so my question might actually be answered somewhere on the page.
Why is it necessary to burn a copy of an album on demand? Are the customers requesting out-of-print albums? What would they be buying that the stores wouldn't have in stock, or be able to order a regular pressed copy?
That said, this is pretty cool. There are CDs that I bought years ago and scratched into unplayability that I would still listen to, but can't find another copy to buy.
Yep. That's babble, all right. (I'm sure I'm not the first with that comment.) So far these free online translation services have been worth every penny. You should see what they do with idiom.
... they probably have someone who speaks better English than most all of us do Japanese. Actually, they probably have people who speak English better than we do, too. :)
What do I know, perhaps the Japanese actually talk this way? I only studied boring European languages (3 of them if English counts). Perhaps they think English-speakers have weird syntax.
Send them an English inquiry
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.
Japanese as a first language comes in handy..
The about/FAQ page of the site:
Product Specification
- This product contains audio reproduced from the original CD source to a CD-R, and as a result, the quality remains identical.
- The labels on the product are newly designed for the R-Ban series.
- The instruction manuals (covers, liner notes, etc) have been newly designed, based on scanned copies of the originals.
- The instruction manuals, as a result of the scanning process, may be difficult to read due to errors in font size, printing, etc.
Warnings
[usual warnings, same as CD]
- It is recommended that you use a regular CD Player when playing the R-Ban. Certain models of car stereos and DVD-players may have trouble playing back the media.
(Copy protection? Meh..)
FAQ
1. Regarding purchase
Q: Can I purchase R-Bans of other titles not available in the catalog?
A: Not at this time.
Q: Where can I purchase R-Bans?
A: Through specialty Internet merchants and music stores that support the R-Ban series.
Q: How long will it take to receive the media after ordering?
A: They are created after the order, so it may take up to 2-3 weeks, in addition to other delays.
2. Regarding sound quality
Q: Is there any difference from the original CD?
A: Since the R-Bans are duplicated from the original CD source, there is no difference.
3. Regarding the instruction manual
Q: Are the designs the same from the original?
A: The covers, liner notes, labels, etc. have been newly designed for the R-Ban series, respecting the original design.
4. Regarding playback
Q: Is special equipment needed for playback?
A: It is recommended that you use a regular CD Player when playing the R-Ban. Certain models of car stereos and DVD-players may have trouble playing back the media.
Q: Are there any precautions for playback?
[usual CD warnings]
Go ask Hilary Rosen or Jack Valentini and they will tell you that hollywood will go bankrupt thanks to the freedom to code whatever we want! Someone please think about our children.
http://saveie6.com/
Let's examine the submission, shall we?
--Well, as far as embracing/rejecting technology, record labels HAVE disagreed with a lot of technological developments in the past and have not changed their business/technical model drastically in 10 years. That's a fact. This is radically different from the previous method of distribution. That's a fact.
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),
--I can't vouch for the veracity of this statement, but it seems like it isn't an opinion, but a fact.
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.
--I would say that this is very slightly an opinion, but I don't think you could find anyone that thinks it's NOT an encouraging solution to the control of out-of-print recordings. Maybe if you were a business that specialized in rare records. Anyway, there is NOT bias obvious in this text either.
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."
--This is also a fact.
So, show me the bias. I am not stating this as an end-all be-all, but you got modded up by claiming there's bias in the submission, but I don't see any. And if you were referring to the "from the slow-march-of-a-clue dept." part, then that's just asinine. That part of the site is nearly ALWAYS used to express an opinion about the story.
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
How quaint!
I already have plenty of coasters, though.
I rotated my CDs into coaster duty a while back.
The 3.5" floppies were moved from coaster duty to table-stabilization.
The 5.25" floppies were moved from table stabilization to roof patch.
The audio data cassettes went from roof patch to birdcage lining.
Thus, I was finally able to burn all those guano-soaked punchcards.
Looking ahead, I'm interested in any information on the permeability of MP3's.
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency. -A. Turing
Ah, the magic price point. I've been thinking about this.
... I'm pretty sure the a la carte price will have to be higher, partly because the disk is custom-made -- probably little labor, but a whole lot more than a mass-production run of 500,000 -- partly because you're cherry-picking but must help offset all the music that was produced but did not sell, plus overhead (significant), plus promotion (OK, I guess that's overhead), etc. In the beginning there will be start-up costs, plus the higher costs of low volume. Bleeding-edge products usually come at a price premium to early adopters. What I'm saying is that the actual costs of the service may be higher than they appear, though of course there will be significant cost savings, too, which may not be realized immediately.
... the price the market will bear.
:)
Under capitalism, the "optimum" price is what the market will bear, barring unprofitability. There may be multiple such prices -- raising the price will increase margin but decrease volume, and so on. Certain prices get people unusually excited, like 99. The market is more than just you, it's the aggregate of every potential customer.
Anyway
But ultimately, it's
I wonder what that price is? How about a flat rate to fill a disk however you choose? Americans in particular don't like being nickel-and-dimed. How about different prices for different classes of music, like platinum, gold, silver, and, ah, bronze (oldies)? What about a subscription basis - a disk a month, and if you're not sure what you want they can recommend compilations tied thematically?
Interesting puzzle, isn't it? And one I'll bet you, for all this copy-protection and DMCA hooey, the labels are talking about it right now behind closed doors. I think a lot of regular customers would like this, having all the fun of designing an album, then getting it delivered to your door. No computer, no hassles. Sure, maybe an extra $5.
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....
I rememebr a few years back pepsi did something like this, you could trade in 'pepsi points' for tracks on a custom cd, 20 pts for a 5 track cd, 50 for 15 or something. They had a listing of the tracks you could pick, and not all of it was super-mainstream stuff. I'm not sure of the format though, i never bothered to collect enough points.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
For example, I collect vinyl, and much of the vinyl I own there are very very limited copies of. Because of this they are worth something.
A vinyl record from the nth printing of an album will most likely still be worth something because it's from the nth printing. Example from comics: Even though MAD Magazine has reprinted its first 18 or so issues a few years ago, original copies of the first few issues still fetch a wad of dough.
I wonder how labels will go about structuring things to limit them for collectors.
Is it in a monopolist's interest to limit the production of a good at any level other than where marginal revenue equals marginal cost? No. That's the price that maximizes the bottom line.
Will I retire or break 10K?
About 9 years ago I went to Japan to do the final testing on a VMEbus OSI/MAP (TokenBus) card we were buying for some SGI workstations that were being used for Process COntrol in our steelworks in Australia. The company that we commissioned to do the work, CTC in Kanagawa prefecture in Tokyo, were also developing software to allow Karaoke bars to download music on demand via ISDN. Not sure if it was just a single 128K BRI line, but I guess this would not be quite enough for high quality recordings. (Near CD quality MP3 is 128Kbps so downloading 1 hour of music would take an hour).
Anyway I guess, as we all know, the technology of using digital comms to transfer music is not new. It's just the marketeers haven't quite got the guts to deploy it.
Looking at the catalogue page, I see the album Oh Taco , with the tantalaisingly katakana-ised sub-title Golden Cups, and other mentions of the E-Cup's.
Yeah, NA music sucks, but Japanese music sucks more.
Fucking geeks think everything from Japan is cool, when in fact Japanese consumer/popular culture is just an amped-up version of the worst aspects of *American* consumer/popular culture.
But whatevery trips your trigger.
-mike bell
www.wickedallstars.com
cec.wustl.edu/~mwb1/
Well said. This website can't demonstrate your point any better.
The funny thing is that Japanese people will wear clothing with English phrases and not know what they mean -- one girl wore a t-shirt that said, and I'm not kidding, "Miss Urine Tester." Worth a look.
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 $20 and were full of goodness by folks like DJ Food, 9 Lazy 9, Coldcut, LTJ Sound Machine and others (they had several Ninja Tune artists, I believe).
Anyway
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
Out of curiousity, how is this any worse than English-speaking people who wear t-shirts covered in Japanese or Chinese characters without a clue what they mean?
I've also seen things such as decals on cars, on merchandise in stores, and so forth. Might want to consider how funny the stuff on engrish.com looks next time you buy something with kanji on it.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
IT musta hav been 3-5 years ago in New Orleans, I had a girlfriend who worked at the Virgin Record store. I remember going to see her(and check out her coworkers) and that had this machine that ypu picked your tracks from a list and it burned you a cd. It took awhile, you got a recept and picked it up from the staff in like 20-30 minutes. IT was like a buck a track. I remember thinking that it would be a cool idea, but hell I had a burner and didn't pay it any mind. I guess I wrote it off like I did video jukeboxes in 84(remember those? Morris Day and the Time, Michael Jackson, Scandal).
I would also like to see more traditional bands promoting downloads on the net. By traditional I mean guitars, drums. Maybe even a singer. Not techno,trance mixes from stolen samples and loops. Most of us can do that. I dabbled and dee-jayed but never considered myself a musician. Give me some high quality acoustic guitar playing, clean vocals. Just cause it is on the computer dont need to sound like it was made on one.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
The big dumb publishers have finally gotten off their buts to do something, but do we really want it? The storyline, (e.g. that Big Record Label cannot support small acts as it must press x copies of the album), reminds me of my local cable operator. They would tell me, "We don't support that browser/OS/Whatever_non_M$," and I'd say, "Fine, my browser/OS/whatever_non_M$ works well without your support, what I need is your broken DNS/whatever fixed." Services those folks had were pathetic compared to running your own and in the end, that's what I'd do. Like the record companies, they tried to prevent me from running said sevices for myself - I don't give either them my money anymore.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...but in a slightly different form. Back when the Famicom Disk System was popular in Japan (basically an NES with a disk drive) there used to be machines where you would pop in a disk, pay a fee, and it would write, and out comes Zelda II or whatever your heart desires. Only thing is, it was pretty hard to copy these games in comparison to the CD-Rs that are used today.
"All art is quite useless." -- Oscar Wilde
You're right, I should have mentioned that. That's a very good point. Perhaps someone should come up with a website that examines English-speakers wearing clothes with Kanji on their clothing.
I don't own any articles of clothing or anything else with any Kanji on it. If I do decide to buy something with Kanji on it, I'll consult someone who can read it (i.e. a native Japanese speaker). I don't want to walk around with a shirt that says "I like to have sex with animals" in Japanese and not know it.
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!
Self-serve. This is an era of vending machines and ATMs. Why revert to old tech when we already have better? Sure, refill the machine and occasional maintenance, but let's be honest -- is it cheaper to have a Coke machine or a minimum-wage guy standing around selling Cokes?
May we never see th
Did anybody else have to read that title 3 or 4 times before it made any sense?
I find it interesting that Columbia Japan is the first to offer this service.
Columbia is notorious in Japan for being out of touch with modern music and really bad at promotion for decades. Someone new must be at the helm.
I also have to wonder how much money the artist will see. I have family who have hundreds of songs recorded with Columbia, mostly in the older catalogs. I will be very curious to hear if any money at all ever reaches them.
My father in law has around seven hundred recordings with Columbia Japan. If anyone will hear from them I expect him to.
My expectations are low however, I know Columbia was selling some tapes from the older catalog with my mother in law's works without ever contacting her.