Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

It’s cool to see that vinyl still exists today, let alone the fact that bands are still putting out new music on the classic format. So in an attempt to reach out to both analog and digital music fans at the same time, a German company has created a new format called VinylDisc with a CD on one side, and a vinyl recording on the other.

While the CD side can hold the typical 70 minutes of music, due to the size limits of the compact disc the vinyl side can only hold around 3 minutes. A rock band called Fightstar will actually be releasing its next single on the VinylDisc format, though to be honest its record company (Gut) admits the limited run of 3,000 copies is more of a gimmick than anything.

However Guy Holmes, the chairman of Gut, says that if VinylDisc actually proves popular they’ll gladly try it out with other bands as well. I particularly like his quote in regards to the new format.

“The music business desperately, desperately needs to invent new formats; the CD is an antique, it’s 20 years old.”

So let me get this straight. To revitalize a 20 year old ‘antique’ format you’re going to sandwich it with an even older and less popular format? Clearly the real solution is to somehow combine a CD with Thomas Edison’s extremely popular phonograph cylinders. I’d buy that for sure! And in addition to printed liner notes they should also include a cave painting on a chunk of slate, and a set of hieroglyphs on a piece of papyrus.

[ Guardian Unlimited - Half vinyl, half CD, all new format ] VIA [ Ubergizmo ]