Aol must be making money by sending out their cds, or i wouldn't get one every two weeks, right? Why not start a company that sends blank cds to teenagers, at the rate of one a week or so. the first track would be already burnt, being a 1 minute advertisement. all advertisers want to target teens, and this would provide a direct link into their cd players...immagine, every teen with a cd recorder could hear "Cool People Smoke Great American Tobacco" everytime they listen to their cd collection. you could also put ads on the top of the cd, with places to write on for labeling purposes, of course. is, it, just, me, or have, i, been over, using commas in, this last, paragraph? sorry.
-- cybercyph, Jan 25 2001

CD-Text http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/CD-Text
Similar Idea, but it would only work for finished CD's [barnzenen, Jan 25 2001, last modified Oct 04 2004]

I don't think having the first track pre-burned, since the "directory" of the CD can only be written once. What might work, though, would be for a company to sell blank CD's with print advertising on it. To prevent people from covering up the print ads, they could be printed on both sides (with the front-side adds printed using ink that's transparent to IR so as not to interfere with disk operation).
-- supercat, Jan 25 2001


In deference to Supercat, most burnable CDs and burners are capable of multisession burns which means that it could already have a 'prerecorded' track on the CD and the user could then add their content after the fact.

Perhaps it is an idea whose time has come. I recently saw a spindle of 100 CDRs being sold for $15.99. It wasn't all that long ago (at least in my memory) that these same disks were selling for $15.00 each! Ah, the price of progress.
-- RobGraham, Jan 25 2001


RobGraham: I'm aware that most data disk readers and writers support multi-session capability. Unfortunately, I have yet to observe this capability in a data CD (which is, I think, what's being discussed here). Even my portable CD player which advertises "CD/RW" compatibility will ignore any changes made to a disk after the first directory is written unless the entire disk is erased and rewritten.
-- supercat, Jun 27 2001


What if it was in the last track (or last min of the CD) or something? That shouldn't mess up the writing capabilites.
-- barnzenen, Jun 27 2001


Print ads might work, but soundtrack ads wouldn't because they'd be too easy to skip with the "next track" button
-- BertieWooster, Jul 17 2001


Vaguely related comment- I believe sigue sigue sputnik used to produce LPs littered with adverts in a deliberate attempt to sell out. Not really that relevant, but hilarious in its cynicality (is that a word?).
-- afroman, Oct 22 2001


Cynicism is the word you're looking for.
-- snarfyguy, Oct 22 2001


if you could sort out all the bugs like the ad not being able to play when other songs are recorded onto it etc, this would be a great promotional thing to do. But i don't think people would press the "next track" button every time they listen to their cd. They're gonna listen to it several time for sure.
-- consumer, Jun 19 2002


You can market the hack yourself.
-- postseti, Jul 07 2002


[Supercat] - Robgraham is right - I'm sorry but your talking rubbish. With multisession cd's it writes a new copy of the direcory structure each time.

What this would mean though is that hile the inital data/avert is there at the start it could simply be ignored later and not added to the new data structure. Don't know if this is good or bad.
-- CasaLoco, Jul 07 2002


is it possible to have 2 directories or 2 sections to the directory?
-- chud, Jul 07 2002


CasaLoco: I'm not quite sure what I meant to say--perhaps talking about music CD's? I do know that my portable CD player won't play anything beyond the first session on a multi-session disk. Beyond that, I use multi-session disks all the time for data storage, so I know those obviously work.
-- supercat, Jul 09 2002


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-- sharkhead, Jul 10 2002


You can't print (silkscreen) ads on both sides. The "shiny" side of the CD is where the data is stored. Incidentally, some DVD's have data stored on both sides which is why there is no printing on such disks.

This is a clever idea and probably would have worked in 1999; given the current weakness in the advertising market, it is difficult to say whether companies would be interested.
-- SolarCoaster, Jul 10 2002



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