[78-L] fwd: The CD is dead

[Don Cox]

On 16/01/2011, Mark Bardenwerper wrote:

> On 1/16/2011 11:12, David Lennick wrote:
>> And other specialty companies like Dust-to-Digital and Archeophone
>> are turning out marvelous stuff. The King Cole Carnegie Hall concert
>> on Hep has been doing nicely as well, I'm told, but I wonder if it's
>> been swiped and put up on free sites (or maybe the question should be
>> "how many free sites").
>> 
>> dl
> Question:
> Are CD's completely manufactured, recorded and packaged in the same 
> place, or do small outfits bring in blank CD's and do the rest?
> Note:
> Most of us know that there is a distinct advantage to having the high 
> quality CD version rather than having the sifted MP3.
>
Proper CDs are molded, just like shellac or vinyl. A typical minimum
quantity would be 500 copies of a disc.

Companies that make discs will also offer a service to print booklets,
unless you want something very elaborate.

You are thinking of CD-R discs, which can be recorded in computers.
These use a completely different and less permanent technology to form
marks on the disc which look to the player the same as the pits on
molded discs. 

CD-R discs are occasionally used when only a few copies are needed -
maybe one or two now and then. A small record company can make them in
house, and print a booklet on an office inkjet or laser printer. 

This could make sense if you have sold all the 500 discs, and further
orders are coming in at a rate of one every couple of months.
 

The MP3 question is different. It is possible to sell a manufactured,
molded CD full of MP3 files, although this is not common. Conversely, it
is possible to provide for downloading a WAV or other file with full
16bit/41KHz audio quality, just like a CD - but as such files are around
650 Megs, they take a while to download even on broadband. 

And the booklet can be downloaded as a PDF file for the user to print
out - but few people have printers that print on both sides of the
paper.

Regards
-- 
Don Cox
doncox at enterprise.net