[Robboman]

www.discrevolt.com

From the site:
"DiscRevolt provides physical solutions for digital delivery of media. For artists, DiscRevolt is a way to sell downloads through artist-specific download cards. Artists upload songs to the DiscRevolt site and design artwork for a plastic download card. DiscRevolt prints the cards with a unique redemption code on the back, and artists then sell them to fans at live shows. Fans enter that access code on the DiscRevolt site and receive credits to download that artist's media."

Wondering what others think of this product offering.

Do you think this would work? As a supplement to the usual CD sales or to replace CD sales? Or is it too early for this idea to really take off?

 

[Guest]

In theory it seems good but that's a lot of overhead to manage. You'd have to be selling a heck of lot of them to make it work. Plus, anything that isn't iTunes based has got an uphill battle. Sad reality is if it isn't in iTunes it's not very visible in the download market.

Plus, when you're at a show and you like the band there's something so immediatly satisfying with buying the CD. It's yours. It's in your hand. You have it. You don't have to go home, turn on a computer, hope their DRM works with your player, that your connection doesn't drop out during the download, that someone ripped them at a suitable quality so there's no weird artifacts on the cymbals (a common gripe of mine with mass market rips).

In past bands I've used the services of CDBaby.com both to distribute the CDs and to handle credit card transactions for merchandise at shows. Very reasonable setup fees and low, low over head. Plus we got to sell whatever we wanted to sell so we could respond quickly to stuff that was in demand and make changes to our inventory.

 

[Geek]

CDBaby has been great to deal with, from a customer's point of view.

As a HiFi enthusiast, mp3 format is worthless. Gimme a CD or at least a .flac, but no mp3's please