More than 200 songs in MP3 format can fit on a CD. Until now, this has only been used privately. A punk label from New York wants to make money from this and also from downloads.
The New York punk record label Go-Kart Records is known for its unconventional approach. After having already made large parts of its music offerings available for legal download online at the beginning of October, the record company is now releasing the first CDs with songs in MP3 format. The double CD is set to contain over 300 songs from 150 artists, including the punk bands Anti-Flag, Bouncing Souls, and Sick of it all. Price of the record: $9.99.
The CD named Go-Kart MP300 Raceway is scheduled to be released in early November and, according to the label, is the first commercially available MP3 CD. It will also include a detailed description of how the MP3 files can be burned onto audio CDs.
At the same time, Go-Kart has written an open letter to the Recording Industry Association of America, distancing itself from the aggressive policy towards file-sharing. The current policy, which punishes 13-year-old teenagers, is not representative of the music industry, it stated. Go-Kart founder Greg Ross does not consider such file-sharing platforms illegal and believes that one can also make money with high-quality downloads. At the very least, as Greg Ross told MTV, his radical actions generate a lot of publicity. Within a second, the Go-Kart website recorded 80,000 hits, even though they had only informed a few punk sites and a relatively small email distribution list about the download.
And the idea also led to a significant increase in traffic to the pages of the previously completely unknown bands. "Until now, no one had heard of our six bands, which is exactly why we put them online for download," said Ross. In this way, thousands of people would get to know the music of these bands. While this does not automatically guarantee higher sales figures, it does bring more people to the concerts and generates word-of-mouth publicity.
Josh Bernoff from Forrester Research, which analyzes technology trends, formulates the problem this way: "The more famous an artist is, the more dangerous the internet is for them. For Madonna, file-sharing means lost sales; for the six bands, file-sharing makes people aware of them and boosts sales."
http://www.gokartrecords.com/index_flash.html
The New York punk record label Go-Kart Records is known for its unconventional approach. After having already made large parts of its music offerings available for legal download online at the beginning of October, the record company is now releasing the first CDs with songs in MP3 format. The double CD is set to contain over 300 songs from 150 artists, including the punk bands Anti-Flag, Bouncing Souls, and Sick of it all. Price of the record: $9.99.
The CD named Go-Kart MP300 Raceway is scheduled to be released in early November and, according to the label, is the first commercially available MP3 CD. It will also include a detailed description of how the MP3 files can be burned onto audio CDs.
At the same time, Go-Kart has written an open letter to the Recording Industry Association of America, distancing itself from the aggressive policy towards file-sharing. The current policy, which punishes 13-year-old teenagers, is not representative of the music industry, it stated. Go-Kart founder Greg Ross does not consider such file-sharing platforms illegal and believes that one can also make money with high-quality downloads. At the very least, as Greg Ross told MTV, his radical actions generate a lot of publicity. Within a second, the Go-Kart website recorded 80,000 hits, even though they had only informed a few punk sites and a relatively small email distribution list about the download.
And the idea also led to a significant increase in traffic to the pages of the previously completely unknown bands. "Until now, no one had heard of our six bands, which is exactly why we put them online for download," said Ross. In this way, thousands of people would get to know the music of these bands. While this does not automatically guarantee higher sales figures, it does bring more people to the concerts and generates word-of-mouth publicity.
Josh Bernoff from Forrester Research, which analyzes technology trends, formulates the problem this way: "The more famous an artist is, the more dangerous the internet is for them. For Madonna, file-sharing means lost sales; for the six bands, file-sharing makes people aware of them and boosts sales."
http://www.gokartrecords.com/index_flash.html
