Kiosk for Custom MD Creation
Try out set for Tokyo
From the March '99 issue of Trendy,
a Japanese culture and technology magazine
Translation courtesy Masako Johnson
``Music Press On Demand'' System
To use the Kiosk, a user provides their own recordable MiniDisc, and pays a fee for each
song to be included in the collection. The fee is anticipated to be
about 300-500 yen per song (about $2.50 to $4.20), which seems quite
expensive at first glance, but compares favorably with the price of full
CDs (about $30), and very favorably with the price of CD singles, which
are very popular in Japan. The available songs include pop music, TV and
movie themes, animation themes, etc. You can search through the song
database by song title, artist name (with picture!), pop charts, etc.
Once you've created a MiniDisc, the machine will print sticky labels for you
including collection title, artist and song list, etc. including pictures
of the artists if you want. It can also print out lyric cards for the
songs, which have a form factor and punch holes to fit the
standard little address books that are popular in Japan.
MD Recording Kiosk
MiniDiscs are recorded using an 8X writer; a 5 minute song would take
about 37 seconds to record. The song database is not in the machine
itself; it is centrally located and connected to the kiosks via a
fiber optic network, apparently using the same type of network ("Share
Link Service") as NTT's ATM bank machines. When a MiniDisc gets
recorded, the music gets streamed from the central database over the
network. According to the article, the decision to use a central song
database was apparently driven by the record companies, who felt that
such a database would be "safer." The machines are from a company
called V-SYNC, and will be "test marketed" in music shops in Tokyo.
