Burn-a-Song has created a kiosk using touch screen technology to choose from various major and independent label tracks, download those tracks, make custom cover art, and receive personalized CDs in minutes, right at the station. The units will also offer ring tones, games, music videos, can download to MP3 devices and will soon offer DVDs. They also allow the patron to send a one minute video mail to a friend whilst he or she waits for the new album to finish. I can see this thing being popular in the local malls.
It all makes sense when you see that Burn-a-Song has teamed up with SynCast, as they are a company that supplies a powerful DRM based on Windows Media DRM. Interestingly, they are also a pay as you go Content Delivery Network and Infrastructure Service provider that can offer "managed storage", co-location and high-speed connectivity to support delivery of streaming or download content to end users throughout the world. You can read the list of supported formats by visiting this link. According to the company, they have multiple Petabytes of content utilizing clusters of servers distributed at locations with significant peers thus eliminating the need for thousands of servers distributed throughout the world. This in addition they feel offers an increased reliability.
| "Each content company has its own set of rules which are completely justified, but when you put them all together, it's quite complicated," says Burn a Song's President, Shervin Rashti.
"Music labels are recognizing the changing market conditions and opportunity for revenue in this untapped market segment. SyncCast's experience in integrating DRM with a kiosk application streamlines the approval process for the labels, and combined with their managed hosting and content delivery, offers Burn a Song an end-to-end turnkey solution," Rashti added |
Customers that swipe a credit or debit card thru the units slot, can create a playlist of high quality digital masters at "low threshold retail pricing" and with a claimed very low wait time to burn a finished product, this concept might have a chance in the market place, taking only a 2x2 foot of space. The kiosk will also accept cash and even promo codes which is pretty clever! Of course, a lot depends on what the restrictions are on the DRM used with this music. According to the SynCast site, they can make these tracks perform in any way the folks at Burn-a-Song or the labels want. You can read more about Burn-a-Song at their website.
Source: Music Industry News
