Print On Demand CD Box Set

Ambient electronic musician Robert Rich has released a massive 10-CD collection of his live concert recordings, and he's using an interesting option to do it.

Rich says that as soon as he announced his gargantuan Live Archive as a purely digital release, people started asking for CDs, instead. The cost of manufacturing 10-CD sets, though, is prohibitive to all but a few artists. 

Net label Magnatune offered a solution to Rich's problem:

Magnatune is a digital download site that also allows you to order one-off CDs, a physical disk that gets mailed directly to your doorstep. Magnatune has now released all 7 concerts in Live Archive and lets you buy any of the 10 CDs individually. You can decide how much you want to pay, and you can even listen to the entire set online before buying.

The biggest downside of Magnatune's on-demand solution is the generic look of the CDs. No sexy box set packaging for Robert Rich fans!

Do you think there's a future for on-demand CD box sets like this? Or are physical releases becoming a thing of the past?

James Lewin
Twitter @podcasting_news

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