Green Day CDRs
In a fascinating marketing move, Green Day is offering custom CDRs with the artwork of their albums on the discs. For $7.99 you can order:
A 5-pack of custom printed blank recordable CD-Rs featuring the color artwork of Green Day. A coordinated color slimline case is included with each CD-R. The five CD-Rs feature classic artwork from Green Day albums Dookie, Nimrod, Warning and the new album American idiot, as well as a rare photo of the band.
Here’s what they look like:
It’s seems like a pretty interesting move for Green Day’s label Warner Brothers to make. It is certainly an implicit acceptance of file sharing by giving people legitimate looking CDRs to burn their music. While the website quotes, “Burn responsibly. Download music legally and burn your own Green Day compilations,” it’s hard to believe that Warner Brothers would be that naive. It seems incredibly hypocritical of the company to be fighting against all these downloaders while at the same time selling a product with the kind of underlying implications that these CDRs have. I have to admit that when I first saw this I thought it was incredibly cool that the label would choose to do this, but as I write and think more about this it’s starting to upset me. Warner Brothers is a major player in the music business and it seems as though they’re trying to have their cake and eat it too. While I’m impressed with the company’s vision and forward thinking on this as a marketing move, I have to question the mixed message here.