Missing Blanks

Blank CD-RsI had one of those moments of consumer rage this morning, when I realized that it’s now virtually impossible to buy blank CD-Rs with nothing on the label side, meaning that if you want to buy some CD-Rs to back up your data or record some music, they will almost certainly feature branding from TDK, Memorex, Sony, Maxxel or some other company. You used to be able to find the kind of discs I’m looking for — you could call them generic CD-Rs — virtually anywhere, but after searching J & R, Circuit City, Best Buy, Staples, DataVision and even a few shady camera/electronics boutiques along Fifth Avenue, I came up with nothing. My guess is that the bigger CD-R manufacturers have shoved the smaller players from the store shelves, or there might be something going on with the RIAA here — maybe it’s easier to prevent the illegal copying of music CDs when the supply of generic CD-Rs is less plentiful? Who knows, but I’m tired of everything being branded when it simply isn’t necessary.

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4 Comments

  1. Last year I had the same problem when my band was looking to do a small run of about 50 demo CD’s for a show we played. We went looking for these generic CD’s and after about two hours of driving around, found them at MicroCenter. The downside was that they were of a pretty crappy quality and thus 1/4 of the time they wouldn’t burn right. However, we’ve used some writable surface CD-R’s, that come blank which work pretty nice since they have this matte finish to them.

  2. Probably looked at this one already, but 5inch.com has what you’re looking for. A bit on the pricey side, that’s capitalism for you.

  3. I hadn’t checked out 5inch.com before — what a great tip, thanks a lot. I had actually ordered some generic CD-Rs from Neato.com, who aren’t as cool as 5inch.com apparently, but they shipped very quickly and were very nice.

  4. That’s what I’m talking about. I thought I was the only one having this problem. I wanted non-branded 3″ CD-R’s but didn’t have any luck. I’ll check out 5inch.com. Maybe 5inch.com/3inch?? (Just joking. A geeky joke, at that.)

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