SwingDJs

"Call for Help" recently received this email from Melvin, who writes:

There are blank CDs in stores labeled as data and music CDs. I've been told that data CDs can be used for music, photos, and data. Is this true?

Melvin, it's absolutely true. For all practical purposes, if you are using your PC to burn CDs, there really is no difference between music CD-Rs and data CD-Rs except for price. Using your PC's CD-R/RW drive you can burn music, images, and data to both data and music CD-Rs.

As Melvin may have discovered, audio CD-Rs are more expensive than data CD-Rs. What's the reason for this? Well, anything that's marketed as a music CD-R contains a royalty fee that is intended to compensate artists. Audio cassette tapes contain a similar fee. As you can imagine, CD-R manufacturers don't want to inflate the price of their CD-Rs so they market the same media under a different name.

Technically, music CD-Rs may have a special code that allows them to be used in stand-alone music recording devices. These stand-alone devices check for the code. If the CD-R doesn't contain the code, then the media can't be used in the device. This ensures you won't be able to use a data CD-R in devices that are marketed specifically for recording music.

Since PC drives don't check for this special code, you can use both data CD-Rs and music CD-Rs for any purpose. The bottom line is you'll save yourself some cash by using only data CD-Rs for burning CDs on your PC.

Technically, music CD-Rs may have a special code that allows them to be used in stand-alone music recording devices. These stand-alone devices check for the code. If the CD-R doesn't contain the code, then the media can't be used in the device. This ensures you won't be able to use a data CD-R in devices that are marketed specifically for recording music.