Word: cds
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...occurring with only grudging acceptance from the people who produce and sell the music. "The music industry is still much closer to its artists than to its customers," says Paco Underhill of Envirosell Inc., a consumer-behavior research firm in New York City. Record companies, he observes, sell CDs exactly the same way they sold LPs: as one-size-fits-all package deals. Meanwhile, consumers with shrinking leisure hours and attention spans are demanding that their music be portable and personalized or at least varied. Movie sound tracks like the one from Titanic, for example, are scoring big, while such...
Music CD recorders are the most familiar of the lot. They look like standard CD players and can play standard CDs. But they also have the circuitry and lasers to burn music data onto blank CDs known as CD-Recordable or CD-ReWritable discs. (CD-Rs can be recorded on only once; CD-RWs are erasable and can be used again and again.) The resulting CDs sound as good as the originals and, in the case of CD-R discs, will play in any CD player; CD-RW discs require new players...
...catch? Blank music CDs are still expensive. CD-R music discs cost $6 to $10 apiece, CD-RW discs a whopping $18 to $25. That's thanks in part to a royalty agreement with the recording industry, which also requires that a special "copyright flag," or signal, be embedded on blank discs and that CD recorders accept only these flagged discs. That has kept the price of recordable CDs for music artificially high; virtually identical recordable CDs for computers by contrast are relatively cheap...
MiniDisc recorders, which have been big hits in Japan and parts of Europe, may be catching on in the U.S. There's relatively little prerecorded music available in the MiniDisc format, but Sony and others are pushing the MiniDisc for its ability to make recordings of existing CDs and its potential for replacing analog cassettes in portable or car audio systems. MiniDiscs are durable, easily erasable and fit into a shirt pocket. Blank discs cost $4 to $6 each...
...MiniDisc format makes compromises in audio quality, using a data-compression method that renders it less accurate than CDs. At $300 to $500, MiniDisc recorders are less costly than full-size CD recorders but far pricier than the portable players they aim to displace...