Record Label Thrives Selling CDRs

n3hat writes "'The major music companies may fret over falling revenue, but one label saw its business jump 33 percent last year -- thanks in part to the recordable compact discs that the industry says are hurting its sales. The label, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, is using recordable CD's, or CD-R's, to ensure that each release in its extensive catalog is always available'."

jumped 33% eh?

Smithsonian Folkways Recordings saw a 33% increase in sales...

Woohoo, they are up to 9 customers!

Down to 8 now...

...I just installed Kazaa.

Re:jumped 33% eh?

Folk Songs of the Canadian North Woods

OK, now I know this article is a scam, as if Canadians have advanced to the point that they not only have music, but also learned to record it? C'mon people, this is Canada we're talking about.

Re:jumped 33% eh?

The 0.766917 is the guy who burns the CD's- he gets a staff discount.

DMCA bair

I think the RIAA is going to sue them for violating the DMCA.

Frickin' ridiculous...

I just want someone to go point out all these inconsistencies with the RIAA's case... It's amazing what powerful lobbying groups can get away with in the United States.

Re:Frickin' ridiculous...

I'm not sure this example can be generalized to higher volume businesses. You really can't compare, say, WB to Folkways.

A more relevant problem is that RIAA labels hold up the copyrights on old material, keeping it inaccessible to small labels who could do a bustling business in one-off discs like this. Honestly, if the business opportunity isn't great enough for them, why don't they let go and let people get the music they want?

Oh, wait... Those Conch shell recordings compete for the same consumer dollars as the latest from Korn. Riiiigght...

Yeah

And how exactly is this a measure of how it would affect EMI/Sony etc who don't have a problem with running out of cds? For whom writing a CDR is considered more expensive than pressing 1000 too many?

Re:Yeah

They are refering to old, out of press albums. Setting up to press a CD is very expensive. Pulling the tracks out of a digital archive wanted by a customer and burning one CD is cheap (they're selling for $19.95 remember) compared to setting up a press.

Here's how

And how exactly is this a measure of how it would affect EMI/Sony etc who don't have a problem with running out of cds? For whom writing a CDR is considered more expensive than pressing 1000 too many?

I would like to purchase the Clash album _Return to Brixton_ and will gladly pay the copyright holder a reasonable fee for it. Unfortunately, it's out of print. The record company is unwilling to sell me this CD *at any price*

Yet if I download it they claim I've stolen something.

If they had half a brain, they'd burn it on a CD-R for me and sell it for around $9.

Re:Here's how

Same thing with me... only it was a Disney video.

My daughter was at the right age, but Disney had not re-released "The Little Mermaid" on VHS. I wanted to buy a copy (packaging, coupons, not to mention "doing the right thing"), but couldn't. So I got a copy made from a friends laserdisc (remember those?).

By the time they did put it back on the market, my kids were too old for me to consider buying it.

Re:Here's how

Disney is a completely different ball of wax. They have been stuck in the model of artificial scarcity for god knows how long. Basically, since they control the exact distribution of each of their movies, all they have to do is take it out of print for a while, sit back until the next generation needs copies, release them, grab all the profits that their pockets can hold, and shut down shop on that video for several years.

Of course in the modern age, this may come back to bite them. Back with VHS, it wasn't quite as bad, because you can't really dilute the market with copies of copies of copies. Now, once something is released on DVD, it's only a matter of time before a DivX version finds its way out there...ESPECIALLY for harder to find releases. As broadband kicks up and video compression algorithms get more streamlined/refined, it's only a matter of time before the entire DivX Disney library can be had with just a quick click of [insert your favorite p2p client here]. And of course each of these copies can have the same or near the same quality as the original.

That's the sad part. Most of the people I know who like Disney cartoons would happily buy a collection for themselves or for their kids, IF they were all available. But if you can't get your hands on Robin Hood, or Peter Pan, well, it doesn't leave much choice except to either pirate it or wait until your kid is a freshman in college, and Disney decides it's time to line its pockets again.

Re:Here's how

Agreed. I actually had that album in with my collection of vinyl that was destroyed a number of years ago along with a bunch of other punk including Stiff Little Fingers, Black Flag etc... and an awful lot of bluegrass music that will never see a CD printing by the music companies. There could be a huge business in selling this music along with lots of other world music and smaller artists this way. The costs of setting up a CD recording business cannot be that great, but the problem would be getting all of the copyright permissions.

I would certainly spend lots of $$$'s to get back my collection.

Re:Yeah

There's another big advantage to this sort of just-in-time manufacturing. There was a Supreme Court decision in 1979 that changed the publishing industry, known as Thor Power Tools [sfwa.org]. In brief, it makes it more expensive (taxwise) for publishers to keep books (or CDs) in a warehouse. So they are motivated to pulp them much sooner than was the case before Thor.

So print-on-demand schemes like this are probably the future of publishing, and it'll likely happen quicker with music than with books, because the traditional CD is a less-entrenched cultural artifact than the traditional book.

Also, other economies are possible. It would be much cheaper to send the files out to music stores and burn the CDs at the store. Much more efficient shipping model.

Reg. Free link

Link [nytimes.com]

Correction

from the rip-mix-burn-???-profit!! dept.

How to buy from Smithsonian Folkways

Smithsonian Folkways Recordings ordering information [si.edu]

Link without Authentication

I don't need the karma, but people might find this useful, which is why I'm leaving the bonus on.

Smithsonian Folkways Dusts Off Titles With New Technology [nytimes.com]

Good example

This is a good example of just in time manufacturing. However, as was pointed out, it's fairly meaningless for the giants who never run out. Then again, if they could ONLY burn what they are going to sell, then Sony wouldn't be left with 10 million extra copies of Michael Jackson's latest CD after selling only 2 million. That alone would boost margins by eliminating waste.

Cost effective for Folkway

It is more cost effective to burn those music on CD-R's than pressing them on regular CD's.

Usually you have to press lots of CD's so the cost would be minimal.
I am guessing that the demand for the music that Smithsonian Folkways Recordings is selling pretty low.

Thus CD-R would be economically feasible and more cost effective.

Pressing CD & DVD Discs

Pressing CD & DVD Discs
Stampers are used to create replicas by moulding, but there is a lot more to making CDs and DVDs than just moulding.

CD and DVD discs are made by first moulding using stampers produced during mastering and then metallising and lacquering (CD) or bonding (DVD). The steps are:

* Injection moulding of the clear polycarbonate discs using a hydraulic moulding machine
* Metallising to create an aluminium reflective surface
* Lacquering to protect the reflective surface of CDs ready for printing
* Bonding of 2 substrates to produce a DVD disc
* Printing of the disc label on top of the lacquer.

for more info, try this Google Search [google.com]

Re:Why?

People are talking about the economy-of-scale, and that's valid. I think you also have to consider the cost of holding an inventory. If MegaLabel presses 100,000 CDs but only 100 sell, then (a) they've overpaid on the pressing and (b) they have to pay to store the extras, on the chance someone will want them later. Of course they don't store all 99,900 of them. They only keep a "reasonable" supply -- which is earning them negative money, until someone buys it.

This article makes clear what has been true for a while now: With digital copying, there is no need for any such beast as "out of print".

In the olden days, you'd have to pay to store copies, and you'd have to guess at future demand. Then, if you were way under, you would have to reassemble the master (or original galleys or what have you) and start up a new printing -- with all the associated costs of initial runs. Now, though, you can print/press on demand and there's no reason to keep a large inventory. Heck, for that matter, the company could offer MP3 downloads and not have to burn the CD-R, either.

What's keeping us from this utopia? Greed -- on the part of download-hounds who gleefully trade songs they haven't bought and on the part of the Content Cartel, who feel threatened by the new technology and don't want to get their heads around new possibilities.

Old titles not available...

Yeah, this is one thing that cheeses me off against the record industry. There are TONS of songs I'd love to get digital versions of...everything from old tunes from the 50's to one hit wonders from the 70's-80's...but, cannot find due to being out of print. Heck, I've got stuff on vinyl that I need to someday try to convert to digital...because they will NEVER be released by the music industry on a CD. Why don't they open up their catalogs....especially stuff they just have locked up with no intention of re-issuing?

How do you suppose the Smithsonian

came to own the rights to the Folkways catalog?

Moses Asche gave it to them. It was a donation.

This could stand as a good model for titles that have been removed from the catalog.

Plus, you could even turn a profit. The Smithsonian is a *non profit*, donations are tax deductable.

Art collectors take advantage of this fact all the time. Why shouldn't the music industry?

KFG

Old news for frequently changing apps

Mentor Graphics and Synopsys have been shipping me programs on CDR for a pretty long time now. Their programs are updated so often that its cheaper for them to burn it then get disks pressed. These programs are NOT cheap either. One faculty member told me that the licenses we have would cost over $1M US per seat if we were to buy it outright. Expensive CDRs hua :)

This is however the first time I have heard of this for audio distribution. Pretty good idea if ya ask me (which nobody has)

for anyone who is interested:
www.mentor.com
www.synopsys.com
I don't feel like making them links, so :P on you.

Clearly labeled?

It is hard for some to ignore the irony that as Smithsonian Folkways uses CD-R's to further its business, much of the industry hopes to limit the technology's use.

I hope that it is clearly labeled on the CD that it is a CD-R. I wouldn't want people to buy the CD-R, bring it home, and then find that it doesn't work on all of their CD-players. Before you know it, some numbskull is going to try to sue someone because they can't get their folk music working on their 1989 CD-player.

Another thing, how long will these CD-R's last? It seems ironic that the Smithsonian Institution is selling media that will likely not last very long.

--sex [slashdot.org]

RIAA/MPAA miss the boat, as always

There are two important conclusions to be made from this article:

1) As always, the very technologies that RIAA/MPAA complain about are often the source of their next, great revenue stream (like VHS).

and

2) What is so wrong about people being able to purchase otherwise out of print recordings? The argument is always that it is too expensive for them to fire up the huge CD presses (that are designed to crank CDs out by the thousands) to simply sell a handful of CDs. Why not take 1 master and burn it to 1 CDR and then charge an extra dollar or so?

It is amazing how the RIAA in particular seems to have this "sacred cow" of wanting to horde older music and make it unavailable even to PAYING customers.

Re:RIAA/MPAA miss the boat, as always

Labor intensive.

When you're dealing with onsey-twoseys, it's not a big deal, especially with these new high speed 52x replicators (of which I have one). But, imagine:
Hire a bunch of people, at $11/hour (and then add benefits, insurance, etc etc).
They have to process requests, and even at optimum efficiency probably only produce anywhere from 10-20 discs/hour (gotta verify contents, etc). Then pack those discs up and get them mailed out. That starts to become pricey and then they're charging $20/disc to make it "worth their time" (believe it or not, not everyone gives away their time or goods).
A second scenario is the whole kiosk idea, where you go to someplace like Tower and burn-on-demand. What kind of storage would a device need?? Could you imagine one store with every CD in existance on-hand to burn for your convenience. (Yeah, you could compress with MP3, but frankly, if I'm going to buy a CD I don't want a compressed format). And then the monthly or weekly "update" data for the hundreds of CD's released every week. Then you'd have to "secure" the data (don't need anyone walking off with the raw images.. it's one thing (copyright infringement) to distribute the CD images you ripped, but now imagine ripping the "authorized" image (really no difference, except in concept).

I think it actually needs to be done like Kinko's. YOu put in your request, the "print service" fills it (by requesting/downloading the appropriate image in a secure fashion from a central server somewhere, then presses/burns the CD), and then you pick it up a day or two later.

I'm not saying the idea is stupid or far-fetched, it just needs tweaking and some more thought put into it than "what's wrong with just burning a CDR of old stuff?".

And finally, my band will not be distributing music via website, but will instead create a "permanent" kazaa user and share that way. That way our bandwidth isn't killed (as if anyone would download it anyway), but it also helps ensure that our "official" stuff is out there to be had.

Maybe I'll report back if this ever does happen and let everyone know how it goes..

....seriously folks....

"Music From Western Samoa: From Conch Shell to Disco"

Is this a report to take seriously?

see?

33% .. hello, RIAA .. 33%! .. if i could always
get the music i wanted, i'd pay for it .. as it
stands, you really Need tools like Kazaa to find
some of the more scarce tracks out there .. what
would be choice would be the option to order a
CD with only the tracks you want on it (of course,
this won't happen Here, but i understand this is
in place in japan?)

i don't Want to be a thief, but i want the music
i want, and i don't want the cruft ;)

Slowly but surely

Some folks seem to be "getting it". This is a great way to make older material available without running a huge batch of CD's and liners. There was also a recent story (can't find a link!) about concert venues making burned CD's of live performances available while people are on their way out, which is a fantastic idea.

I guess it's true

I guess it's true what they say about recording acts these days not needing a whole lot of pre-production, if you can just sell blank CDs and call yourself a record label.

Smithsonian Folkways

SF provides one of the most valuable services in the US; they preserve recordings of US and international music that would never be released by a major label. After reading this article I counted the records and CDs I own that are released by SF; surprisingly (because I am not what I would call a folk-music fan), it's 1/8 of my 2000 title collection.

I imagine that every so often they see sales jump due to a fad (like when the soundtrack to "Oh Brother Where Art Thou?" spurred a new interest in traditional Southern country music), so I am glad to see them adopt a just-in-time manufaturing method to deal with the ups and downs of their markets. I am not sure if this is their official mandate or not, but their goal is to see that all titles are always available.

One problem I forsee, what is the shelf life of the dyes used in CD-Rs? I think that the gold ones are projected to last 100 years before they break down. Am I right, or did I remember it wrong?

On another point, I do not believe the RIAA's argument that "more blank than prerecorded CDs were sold last year." At my job, we go through 100 CDs a week archiving data, and at another job we went through 3000 per quarter releasing software updates for our customers. I have also worked for a large university which licenses software from the big companies; the internal distributions are done via CD-R (thousands of employees).

As usual, the RIAA presents a number without any proof of what it means. This is like their whole "falling sales" argument; labels' sales fell less than the number of new titles they didn't release during the same years. But then again, the RIAA represents what must be the single largest population of cocaine, crack, and heroin users in the world (and I am not talking about musicians), so cogent argument is not what I'd expect from them.

On-Demand Publishing

I recently ordered a book that was originally published about 20 years ago by Artech House Publishers [artech-house.com]. When I received the book, I was surprised to see that it had been printed on-demand, as part of the publisher's "In-Print Forever" program. The quality of the printing and binding was not noticably different than that of a mass-produced book.

Careless reading

When I briefly scanned the headline I had originally thought it read "Record Label Thieves Selling CDs."

My Fuzzy Math

This may not apply to the m&m (sic), or Britney Spears types that sell millions of copies. But what is stopping the "marginal" acts that are considered "failures" on major or midsize labels because they only move 5 - 30 thousand CD's in the US -- from going to more of a "homebrew" and online distribution strategy. We are a diverse enough culture where you can have a cult following of 15-30 thousand purchasing fans -- yet bands and labels both lose money because the bands only see pennies for each CD sold, and labels don't break even unless they sell a certain amount of CD's.

I would say if a band went the "homebrew"/online distribution route, they could produce the CD's and packaging for about $1.50. If they were able to move 15,000-20,000 to there "cult" followers then everyone is happy.

Let the labels handle the heavy hitters -- let the other bands swallow their pride and realize that even though they may never go gold or platinum that they can still make a pretty good living peddling their wares to their fans.

Offtopic but hopefully informative

I get pissed at links to NYT articles, 'cos I just don't like having to register to read the news. Anyway, if you strip the leading junk from the url and replace 'www' with 'archive', you get a working, no registration required link (usually).

For example:

http://www.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://www.n ytimes.com/2003/02/17/business/media/17FOLK.html

becomes:

http://archive.nytimes.com/2003/02/17/business/med ia/17FOLK.html

Alternatively, click here [nytimes.com]

No need to register ... Full text here

[starbucks.com]
February 17, 2003 Smithsonian Folkways Dusts Off Titles With New Technology By CHRIS NELSON

he major music companies may fret over falling revenue, but one label saw its business jump 33 percent last year -- thanks in part to the recordable compact discs that the industry says are hurting its sales.

The label, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, is using recordable CD's, or CD-R's, to ensure that each release in its extensive catalog is always available. And in doing so, the label best known for dusty recordings by Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly is taking initial steps toward creating a 21st-century "celestial jukebox," where nothing recorded ever goes out of print.

The Folkways inventory includes 2,168 titles dating to 1948. Some of those are collections by familiar troubadours like Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs. But many more are obscurities like "Music From Western Samoa: From Conch Shell to Disco" (1984) and "Folk Songs of the Canadian North Woods" (1955).

Most recording companies, if they would ever release titles like that to begin with, would let the master tapes languish once a first pressing was sold out and initial interest had waned.

The notion of any recording falling into history's dust bin was said to gall Moses Asch, founder of Folkways Records. Dan Sheehy, director of Smithsonian Folkways, recalled that Mr. Asch used to ask if Q would be dropped from the alphabet just because it wasn't used as much as the rest of the letters.

When the Smithsonian Institution bought Folkways from the Asch estate in 1987, the museum agreed to keep every title in print. Initially, requests for rare, out-of-stock albums were fulfilled with dubbed cassettes.

Now, music fans hankering for "Burmese Folk and Traditional Music" from 1953 can pay $19.95 and receive a CD-R "burned" with the original album, along with a standard cardboard slipcase that includes a folded photocopy of the original liner notes.

The Recording Industry Association of America, a trade group representing the major music corporations, worries that CD-R technology aids music piracy. Rather than buy new CD's, the theory goes, people will burn downloaded music onto CD-R's or burn a copy of a friend's CD.

In 2002, 681 million CD's were sold, down from 763 million the year before, according to Nielsen SoundScan. But Smithsonian Folkways Recordings has been using the CD-R technology since 1996 to sell its obscure titles, essentially creating a just-in-time delivery model for record companies. Every time an order comes in, a Folkways employee burns five copies, one for the customer, and four for future requests.

Last year, the company sold 13,467 CD-R's, accounting for 6 percent of its CD sales, said Richard Burgess, director of marketing. Over all, Smithsonian Folkways had net album sales of almost $2.9 million in 2002, up 33 percent from 2001, despite its cutting its advertising budget more than 50 percent.

Interest in Smithsonian Folkways has jumped since the bluegrass-flavored soundtrack to "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" (2001), from Universal, won a Grammy for Album of the Year and went platinum six times over.

But it is not just rustic American music that Smithsonian Folkways is selling.

A 2002 double-CD set of Middle Eastern and Asian songs called "The Silk Road: A Musical Caravan" has sold 7,800 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Though that is just a fraction of the sales for Eminem in a single week, it is a respectable figure for a museum label that makes no videos, places few ads and deals primarily in music recorded by artists long dead, or in foreign languages, or from locales most Americans will never visit.

"Getting rid of inventory, which is what this custom on-demand stuff is about, is a huge step in the right direction toward making even low-selling albums into a business," said Josh Bernoff, principal analyst at Forrester Research [slashdot.org].

Industry analysts say it is also a step toward making all music forever available, one the record business has yet to take successfully.

In 1999, Alliance Entertainment's [slashdot.org] RedDotNet subsidiary unveiled kiosks that would burn discs in retail outlets while customers waited. But that program failed, in part because the company was not able to secure licensing agreements with major labels, according to Eric Weisman, president and chief executive of Alliance.

Echo, a new consortium of retailers including Best Buy [slashdot.org], Tower and Wherehouse, is considering development of in-store stations that would allow customers to download music onto portable digital music players like Apple's iPod.

While the Smithsonian Folkways CD-R operation allows the company to fulfill its obligation to keep everything in print, it is a labor-intensive solution that would be inefficient for the higher-demand catalogs of the major labels.

But Smithsonian Folkways is also venturing into just-in-time delivery for more popular titles. Last fall, the company enlisted the print-on-demand company Americ Disc to manufacture CD's, which are expected to sell significantly more copies than typical CD-R's, but fewer than full-blown retail releases. These Collector's Series discs come with full-color booklets and are identical in quality to commercial releases, but are sold only through the Smithsonian Folkways Web site (www.si.edu/folkways [si.edu]).

The first CD in the series, "Bells & Winter Festivals of Greek Macedonia" proved so popular through mail order that the company quickly made it a regular retail release.

It is hard for some to ignore the irony that as Smithsonian Folkways uses CD-R's to further its business, much of the industry hopes to limit the technology's use.

"It's almost like a little bootlegger's operation going on," said Dean Blackwood, owner of Revenant Records, an esoteric Americana label.

Copyright 2003 [slashdot.org] The New York Times Company [nytco.com] | Privacy Policy [slashdot.org]

$20 a pop

If the goal is to disseminate this music to people who want to hear it, $20 a pop seems like a lot to me. I don't reckon the Smithsonian makes much money from these sales (bar the odd runaway success?).

I imagine that is to cover the costs of a human being touching every copy they sell, going down the hall to photocopy the liner notes and such. But how about freeing this stuff to Project Gutenberg or sticking it on ibiblio? Much wider access, no human touch required (you could pdf the liner notes) and Moses Asch's mission would be that much closer to home.

And with that much listenable music out on the web, I'd probably never buy another CD again!

Thanks to presumption of guilt...

...as long as your burn is to Music CD-R instead of normal data CD-R, you should be safe legally. By paying more for Music CD-R, you're buying a license from the RIAA to burn as much music as can be burned onto a disc, which (they say) will be distributed back to the artists.

Of course, the label in this story owns the copyrights to the music in their catalogue, so they can burn to CD-R themselves without repercussions; it is their right to copy that they're exercising, be it to pressed disks, burned disks, cassette tapes, or even etched onto drums designed to be played on old wire recorders.

CDRs won't help...

This works for the Smithsonian because they're selling music with some staying power.

The archival value of a random track of Brittany Spears's is zero.
In general, her discography's value goes to zero as her age approaches 50. See also Tiffany.

Generalizations of this Law Of Bulging Middles to other pop stars is left as an exercise to the /. reader.
(hint: analysis of Madonna or Michael Jackson requires taking into account of relativistic effects.)

Interesting...

In Canada they'd have to pay a tax for their CD-Rs. Taxing your own productions, isn't that a strange form of masochism. :-)

It doesn't have to be labor intensive.

The article complains that burning CD-Rs on-demand is labor intensive. I don't think it needs to be, given a small amount of capital investment. The company I work for shipped its own software on CD-R (got tired of shredding pallets of CDs every time we made a dot release). At first, we used a typical Young Minds burner which was quite labor intensive. Currently we have a much more automated machine that takes spools of 100 CD-Rs, burns them and automatically prints a label on the disk using ink-jet technology.

I can imagine easily setting up a system that takes web orders, burns a CD-R with printed label-side, concurrently prints liner notes (rather than photocopy), sleeve graphics, and a mailing label. The labor consists of assembling the liner notes, sleeve, disc and packaging for shipment.

This model faces many of the same hurdles and benefits that the on-demand print model does for book publishing. No book need be out of print and revisions would be [relatively] painless. Unfortunately, most of the on-demand print companies have gone bust in the last couple of years before the consumer even had a chance to sample the product.

On-demand reproduction technologies tend to shift the costs and responsibility for replication away from the publisher and closer to the consumer. The article gives the example of reproduction at retail-outlets (failed). The extreme case puts reproduction completely in the hands of the consumer. The publishers are lured be the desire to sell something without actually having to manufacture material goods, but horrified with the thought that the consumer may then reproduce the material in whatever manner/media the consumer sees fit: computer, CD player, portable music player, digital home music library, car audio, home video soundtrack, Braille, eBook, ... OMG!

who?

Smithsonian Folkways Recordings ?? If you are going to refer to record labels generically, you should make sure you are actually talking about a record label people have heard of. The big record labels don't have the time or money to sell cdr's with music on them, they can just as easily print too many cds and warehouse them for when they need to have extra on hand.

Maybe we need a new tack on protesting

We should all pick one OOP recording from an RIAA member. Then, we should all go to the RIAA headquarters and demand that they take our $10 for it.

Of course like all other protests, for this to actually turn any heads, about 10000 people or so would have to show up. When the news shows up, people tell them that the RIAA gets all these laws passed to protect their right to silence music, and the protest is because the musicians have the right to have their music heard for a fair price, however the RIAA companies are refusing to take our money.

Cassette cost versus CD-R cost.

I've ordered a couple custom items from the Folkways back-catalog. (I am a folk music fan and radio DJ).

Riddle me this: Most of the old Folkways recordings are approx $20 for a CD-R and $10 for a cassette. Why?

I don't expect they have some surplus of pre-recorded tapes around. I assume they're doing those Just-In-Time as well.

CD-R media is *much* cheaper than even basic grade cassette, particularly at the bulk they must use.

I *assume* much of this is in a digital vault and burned/taped on demand. By my reckoning, there is less labour involved in burning a CD than in setting up a tape to dub. If nothing else, you don't have to flip the CD halfway through.

If the vaults were reasonably set up, the duplicator could burn the CD-Rs at 8x or more. They *might* be using high-speed tape duplicators, but more likely it's at real-time.

So, why the difference? The old capitalism of "that's what they'll pay"? That's not the point, or the attitude I've ever gotten from the Folkways people. Cultural inherency? Perhaps. It's blessed dumb, that's all I know.

scale

Any record label that can save money by burning cds rather than having them pressed is small enough that a 33% increase in business could be attributed to, say, just one new artist or perhaps word of mouth.

Some small underground labels are using exclusivly

Some small underground labels are using exclusivly CDr formats and thriving because of it. You can spend $1000's of dollars to have a CD pressed, only to sell a handful and go bankrupt, or you can "burn on demand" and make a meager business out of it.

I [syncromesh.net] have, and there are a number of other small underground labels that are doing it too. It works best for those obscure genres, or smaller audiences for genres such as Power Noise, Dark Ambient, etc etc.

I have even begun considering doing a sort of Custom Compilation type business based off this idea, where someone can select the tracks they want, and I burn it for them. the artist gets paid per song burned, and the customer gets exactly what they want. Heh heh, now all I gotta do is find the time to write the code for the web interface, and billing system. one of these days.

But the CDr format has been a real boon to my genre of music, Industrial electronic style of music. It hasn't hurt us at all, just the big guys who are unwilling to change.

badger
Syncromesh Audio

Out of curiosity...

When do you think that the RIAA is going to clue in that the reason that CD sales have been dropping is because they're producing shit, calling it music and charging 400% markup on it?

Nahhhhhh. Must be piracy.

Dunno about Eminem, but as for MJ,,,

From the article:
" ... A 2002 double-CD set of Middle Eastern and Asian songs called "The Silk Road: A Musical Caravan" has sold 7,800 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Though that is just a fraction of the sales for Eminem in a single week ..."

The Globe & Mail reported on Saturday that the Michael Jackson documentary has piqued interest in his music. Quoting HMV, which has over 100 locations, they said sales of all of MJ CD's are about 40 a week nationwide.

Assuming 10% of the copies of "The Silk Road" go to Canada (pretty standard sales figures for music), that makes 780 copies (or more, as a 2002 release it may not have been out for 12 months yet), compared to the "normal" sales of about 2,000 MJ CDs (all titles). Assuming not every MJ CD was the exact same album, you may well find Silk Road outsells his most popular album.

cd-rs aren't just for illegal music

I work for a CD Duplication company that pushes CD-Rs a lot for short run CDs for small bands because they're so much cheaper than pressing a CD out of a glass master, especially if you're doing fewer than 1,000 CDs. Of course, it's all totally legal because these small bands write and produce the music and want to sell copies to their friends. It's all cool. If the RIAA and others looked around a little, perhaps they would see this kind of legitimate usage and realize that we don't need 50% taxes on CD-Rs and that CD-Rs actually help get music out there.

Xbox Users...

We are going to come home with our CD's and try to rip them only to have the damn Xbox not read it because it is a CD-R. That would piss me off to all hell if that happened to me. Fortunately, it hasn't yet.

Hey, thats great but

The two issues have nothing in common. CDR are hurting many music companies because most people can make them. The CDR used by the folksong folks has nothing to do with the loss experienced by other music companies. Does this make sence, or am i just missing something?

This is not a new thing at all.

I'm suprised people are talking about a CDR label like its a new or unusual thing... CDR labels have been around for quite a while.

A little background: I run a small industrial record label, Cranial Fracture Recordings (www.fracture.ar.com.au). We do proper CDs, not CDRs, for various reasons. But a lot of people in industrial music do CDR releases (I mean real industrial music; power noise, experimental, dark ambient, field recordings, power electronics, etc, not bands like Nine Inch Nails, VNV Nation, etc).

Some industrial labels do only CDRs, like Flesh Made Word (who put out some outstandingly good music), or Zanftig Research. Some do both, CDs and CDRs, like Ad Noiseam or Frozen Empire Media. Oddly enough, these CDR releases are nearly all limited. If you ask them, its unlikely they'll burn a copy, even if you're prepared to pay. An excellent New York power noise/electronics artist Navicon Torture Technologies (for my money one of the best electronic musicians in the world today) put out a lot of self-released CDRs with print runs of 20 or 30 copies; they sell out in a matter of weeks or days. One of them, Power Romance, was of really exceptional quality and was re-released on proper CD format on my label. We tried to make it worthwhile for the lucky (very few) who had the CDR to buy it; it was remastered and had two bonus tracks.

Industrial music is obviously a niche genre. We don't get a lot of sales. The reason people would go for a CDR release is usually simple economies of scale. The minimum print run for CDs that a studio will offer you is 500. If you're only expecting to sell say 100 CDs, and you're not really planning on sending off lots of promo copies, these labels will go with the cheaper option of printing 100 CDRs. Now the cost per unit is actually higher for CDRs. In Australia, a print run of 500 CDs will cost you about $1000 (not including mastering, artwork printing, etc). A print run of 100 CDRs will cost you about $300. But as I said, if you're only going to sell 100, you're better of going CDR.

Now CDRs will never really be sold in a shop, but these underground (much as I hate that word, you know what I mean though) labels sell through their website, or through word of mouth, to friends, etc. Or do trades with other CDR labes. So that's no great loss.

I'm guessing there are similar CDR labels in other niche genres such as black metal, hardcore, etc, but I'm not entirely sure.

Buy one get another for the same price!

I skimmed through about half of the posts and none of you seem to note the fact that extra prints have to be made for retailers. You all talk about how 'I would buy X copies of Y item' but what about 'Joe Average' who would rather walk down to Tower Records and pick up a copy there rather than order it online?

They do

Sony owns Sony Electronics and Sony Music. Sony Electronics makes CD-R media. Sony Music is a major label.

Re:Why don't record companies...

Hmm. The place I work for has "Sony" branded CD-R's for sale. Or, at least, we used to, until the buyer realised they were pieces of junk compared to Fuji and Philips brands that we now carry.