# Custome ordered CD's. Why aren't record comanies doing it? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 19, 2003, 11:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/custome-ordered-cds-why-arent-record-comanies-doing-it/214072 "2003-11-19T11:17:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2003, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/custome-ordered-cds-why-arent-record-comanies-doing-it/214072/21 "2003-11-20T11:09:41Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by rjk \* > \*\*No, the stores don’t need to keep 11 terabytes around all the time. They’d have a fast link to a repository somewhere, and download tracks as needed. With a decent cache to hold popular stuff locally, they wouldn’t even need to download current hits more than once. Uncommon requests would take a while to get, but I’d wait half an hour for my own compilation of favourites. \*\* OK, now we’re talking. So who here’s in a position to get this started? ---
**Author:** ![YoudNeverGuess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a587f6/32.png) [@YoudNeverGuess](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YoudNeverGuess)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2003, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/custome-ordered-cds-why-arent-record-comanies-doing-it/214072/22 "2003-11-20T11:36:08Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Crusoe \* > \*\* maybe the growth in home CD burning rendered it an unprofitable long-term vision. \*\* Yeah, except that a lot of ‘clever’ artists/ companies now put a protective mechanism on their CDs so that is you copy a file from the CD to your computer the CD will never play in that PC again (puts some anonymous file in some registry on your computer that the PC loos for before playing the CD or something). This is _very_ annoying when you want to make compilations - especially if you’ve bought the albums fair and square and just want to make a CD for walking/ travelling/ a party etc. I can only imagine that more and more record companies will start to do this making home burning of compilations more and more difficult. ---
**Author:** ![mtrahey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/43a26b/32.png) [@mtrahey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mtrahey)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2003, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/custome-ordered-cds-why-arent-record-comanies-doing-it/214072/23 "2003-11-20T20:52:08Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by rjk \* > \*\*No, the stores don’t need to keep 11 terabytes around all the time. They’d have a fast link to a repository somewhere, and download tracks as needed. With a decent cache to hold popular stuff locally, they wouldn’t even need to download current hits more than once. Uncommon requests would take a while to get, but I’d wait half an hour for my own compilation of favourites. \*\* The Cache things not a bad idea, but how well does it scale? How much is the monthly recurring charge for the rent on the repository space and the very high bandwidth line? We’re a fast food people. Used to things delivered hot, fresh(ish) and right now. What is the maximum amount of time we can expect a customer to wait for a song that we might not have in cache? How much bandwidth do we need at the store front? How much do we need to charge per song and how many songs do we have to sell per month per location to break even? How much will people pay? On the other side, can you get the record labels to sign on? How are the Artists going to feel about having the songs from their Albums sold a la carte? Don’t forget to track the royalties. ---
**Author:** ![voguevixen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5ac83/32.png) [@voguevixen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voguevixen)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2003, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/custome-ordered-cds-why-arent-record-comanies-doing-it/214072/24 "2003-11-21T01:05:45Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by YoudNeverGuess \* > \*\*Yeah, except that a lot of ‘clever’ artists/ companies now put a protective mechanism on their CDs so that is you copy a file from the CD to your computer the CD will never play in that PC again (puts some anonymous file in some registry on your computer that the PC loos for before playing the CD or something). > > \*\* Didn’t someone figure out a super-easy way to circumvent this? I think it was holding down the shift key or something. There was a thread about it about 6 months ago or something. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/custome-ordered-cds-why-arent-record-comanies-doing-it/214072.md?page=1)