So what the heck is an enhanced CD anyway?
Basically, it's a CD that contains a data portion as well as an audio portion.
When you put an E-CD in your regular audio CD player, it makes sounds. When you put it in your computer, it makes words, pictures, and sounds, and your audience can interact with it.
People that come to our shows and buy our CDs are easily directed to our website, where they can read my diary and see pictures of themselves (that I take from the stage) at our shows. So for Poster Children, E-CDs are an ideal way to promote all of our music and erudite philosophies, and sell stuff from our website.
Over the past few years, Napster and Napster clones have become super-popular, and some people now have the idea that paying for music is a thing of the past. Record companies and bands like Metallica, however, are crying and complaining that fans are stealing their money (though Metallica should have realized that it was its record company that was stealing its money).
Instead of crying and lashing out against new technology,
you try to adapt to the new environment. You decide that
if people are going to trade MP3s, then let's give them
something more than just music on the CD to make buying
it even more worth their while. It's a decision that lots
of other
bands have also made.
So if you are an artist or a writer or a Web developer looking to promote a project, E-CDs are a cheap, fun and effective way to reach out to your audience.
Costs
As with any tech project, the amount of money you spend will vary quite a bit depending on how fancy-pants you want to go. In the case of E-CDs, the only things you absolutely need is a CD burner, which will cost anywhere from $100 to $400 depending on how fast it operates, and whether it's an internal (less expensive) or external drive (more expensive). You also will need a software package like Roxio's Easy CD Creator or Toast (Mac), which cost about $100 each. To create the content for your project, there are plenty of freeware and shareware tools out there which can be used to build websites, create graphics, or digitize photos.
On the high end, if you want to include a digital movie and some interactive elements, you will need an application like Macromedia's Flash ($400) and/or Director ($1,200), Adobe's Premiere ($500), or Apple's QuickTime Pro ($30) or Final Cut Pro ($1000).
So once you decide what kind of budget you're going to work with, you can tailor
the content accordingly.
Making
Enhanced CDs