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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
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.
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/
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
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."
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/
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.
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
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.