Rant about Enhanced CDs
Published January 06, 2003
I had a fabulous weekend. Lots of fun and fun people.
Sunday was the day I caught up on all my errands and chores. While I was out grocery shopping, I decided to give myself a treat and go to Eastside Records. It's a great record shop near where I live. My co-worker had recommended it. She said that poeple who work in the industry sold their extras there, and they were cheap.
Cheap is good! They had a lot of different things for sale: CDs, Vinyl, VHS and DVDs. There was not very much organization; they are really set up to browse. They only have the mediums organized into general categories, such as rock & pop, COuntry & Folk, etc. No other order is imposed on the stacks. But there is a lot of room, and things are cheap.
I was thrilled to pick up the latest Alanis Morrissette CD and the latest Counting Crows. I'm gonna get pissed and depressed really good!
Anyway, I didn' t have a chance to listen to them at home, so I brought the CDs to work. I have a huge set of headphones plugged into my computer.
My boss jokes that I look like I'm landing planes. I tell him that at least no one will talk to me and THINK I'm hearing them when I'm really listening to music.
Whatever. I'm not buying new headphones to please him.
So I pop in the Alanis CD into my CD rom, all set to be pissed.
No Dice.
I pop in Hard Candy, ready to be depressed if I can't be pissed.
No luck.
KNOW WHY? The stupid record execs, who had made these two enhanced CDs, have forgotten to put a listening link on the menu of choices available.
Didn't they realize that people who would use the enhanced CD technology would be the same people who use their computers to listen to the CD?
Yes, thank you very much, I can access the "secret website" from the CD, i'm thrilled, yadda yadda.
HOWEVER, I cannot listen to the CDs I paid for.
Sheesh. Get a clue.
- Rant about Enhanced CDs
- Published: January 06, 2003
- Type:
- Section: Music
- Filed Under: Music: Alternative Rock, Music: Pop, Music: Rock
- Writer: Murphy
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Comments on this articleComments
It sounds like you are using Windows of some sort, just start up windows media player add go to CD Audio with the disc in the drive - you should then be able to add these items to your playlist and listen to your heart's content. I have several other CDs (not these two in particular) that suffer from the same affliction to which you refer and am able to play them on a win2k box this way. Good luck.
Sure it's not one of those "security" measures designed not to let you play them on your computer?
I hate to say this, but my iMac handles those types of albums perfectly and easily. I stuck in the disc and it automatically loaded up the music tracks in iTunes and displayed two different icons on my desktop. One contained the CDDA music tracks (properly labeled with track # and title courtesy of CDDB), and the other contained the data files. It worked with Faith Hill's latest, at least. Hey - it was my wife's Christmas present, okay?
But at work, I had a little more trouble. I was eventually able to manually load Winamp and navigate to the disc to load the CDDA tracks. but it was considerably more difficult. It took some time, but it worked! I hate auto-play!
Thanks guys...I did finally figure it out. It WAS one of those security measures, Bill, designed by my company to keep it from being easy to enjoy my job.
I had to put in another cd, select a track to start the Media player, then eject the CD (still leaving the Media player on the desktop) and put in the enhanced CD. The Enhanced CD still froze my computer (crashed it a couple times through this whole process), but I got to the point where I could quit out of the cutesy intro. Then I could hit play on the media player and finally hear my song.
I'm glad I haven't been too busy here with REAL work.
I _still_ think that the Enhanced CD interface should make it easier to hear the music.
M, You got all of that advice because now they know you are a girl type.
She's a girl type? I guess 'Murphy' can go either way. Er, the name, not the girl. Or guy. Whichever.
I guess all I'm saying is, "I didn't know she was a girl type."
I was googling to find an answer to how to play said enhanced CDs in winamp and found this. Oh How true it is...
boy this is old.
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M, You achieved your goals of getting pissed and depressed - just for the wrong reasons. More label foolishness.