Wait – I can rent CDs?

Aren’t they worried people might copy them?


Everybody’s familiar with renting movies. Hell, if you’ve got a DVD player or VCR, there’s nearly a 100% chance you’ve rented a movie at some point. But with as many people as have CD players, why can’t you rent CDs?But isn’t that a great idea? If the album sucks, you’re only out a few bucks instead of $15 or so. Who wouldn’t love to have a deal like this?

Probably the RIAA.

If you can listen to an album before paying full price and then find out it sucks, why on earth would you buy it?

You wouldn’t.

Which is why you can’t rent CDs in the US.

Thankfully, I don’t live in the US.

Here in Japan, most every video store also rents CDs. They almost have to since CDs can cost more than double what they do in the US. If it weren’t for renting CDs, a lot of music (unless it’s super-popular) might not reach as broad an audience as it should. But don’t they worry that people might just rent CDs and copy them?

Worried? Hell, they’re planning on you copying them.

Not only that, the shops go out of their way to help you copy them. Really, they do. Every shop I’ve been in that rents CDs also sells blank tapes, blank CD-Rs and blank Mini-Discs. Some even sell memory cards that would fit rather nicely in certain MP3 players.

Even better, they tell you how much space you’ll need to copy the album you’re renting.

Let’s take one of today’s rentals as an example:

RUN-DMC’s “Together Forever” greatest hits compilation. (Gotta love the classics! ^.^)

Hey! What’s that right below the barcode?

Yup. It’s the running time of the CD.

Now, what possible reason could they have for including that besides helping out folks who want to copy the CD?

None.

Is that cool or what?

^.^