Young company revolutionizes CDs

Young company revolutionizes CDs

Rolling Stones, Disney amongst clients to experiment with new
mulitmedia format

By Jason Packman

Daily Bruin Contributor

Imagine buying the new Pearl Jam CD. In addition to having Eddie
Vedder’s new music on your Discman, it has the group’s new music
video, not shown on MTV. Plus, it allows direct access to an
internet site that bypasses Ticketmaster and sells tickets for
Pearl Jam’s new fall tour.

That is what Mark Waldrep of AIX Entertainment is hoping will be
the future of CDs. Waldrep has developed a new technique to store
multimedia software on the average audio CD.

"Every (CD) that gets put out contains some number of megabytes
less than the maximum available, so you are throwing away space on
a CD. Why not fill it up with pictures, graphics, lyrics,
multimedia or internet connection software?" says Waldrep, who
received his Ph.D. from UCLA’s music department in 1986 and is a
pioneer in the world of enhanced CDs. He taught at various
universities, including UCLA, and some of his students landed jobs
at Warner’s new media division.

The idea of placing nonaudio software on audio CDs is fairly
new.

"They (enhanced CDs) began in the early ’90s as an experiment of
putting classical pieces of music, as well as a hypercard stack, on
the same disc. In those days there wasn’t any Quicktime video, and
it was in black and white, and things were pretty clunky," he says,
"But the idea was planted that it would be pretty cool to augment a
traditional audio CD with some kind of multimedia," Waldrep
said.

This "pretty cool" idea grew into what is now AIX, a company
that has already produced over 40 enhanced CDs in its short year
and a half of existence, and is currently working with Disney for a
"The Lion King" spin-off CD.

AIX’s proudest moment, however, came when it was asked to do the
new Rolling Stones album, "Stripped," in an I-trax format.

"We met with those folks (at Virgin Records) and they said,
‘Well, if you can get something in our hands, you know, maybe
tomorrow, we’ll ship it off to see if the Rolling Stones like it.’
They saw it and liked it and opted to have us do the full-on
production."

The "Stripped" I-trax CD came out of nine photographs and a
videotape, and, within a two-week span, AIX created enough software
to fill 20 percent of the CD’s memory.

"There isn’t a lot of opportunity to luxuriate in the time
aspect. So, there were couriers picking stuff up (from AIX in Los
Angeles) and flying to London (where the Rolling Stones were),"
says Waldrep. "Then we’d get on the phone the next day, and they
(the Rolling Stones) would say ‘Change this and change that,’ but
essentially all of the creativity and the production of (the
enhanced CD) took place in our studio, and they more or less
approved it at the end of the process."

In addition to the Rolling Stones CD, AIX has worked on several
other projects, most firsts in the field of enhanced CDs.

"We have the first Grammy nominated enhanced CD, the Kitaro
project (entitled "An Enchanted Evening"), which we did for Domo
Records. We did the first country album with Kate Wallace. We did
the first jazz album with Danny Jiosa," Waldrep said.

While AIX continues to produce a number of enhanced CDs, the
major record companies, such as Sony and Phillips, and computer
companies, such as Microsoft and Apple, continue their attempts to
create an industry standard. Called CD Plus, it utilizes a
different format than I-trax.

"There are a fair number of steps that we’ve done as a small
company that the large companies have been unwilling to make (even
though they’ve been capable of making them) because they are hung
on, ‘Gee, we have to make sure that we have 100 percent compliance
on every CD-ROM drive,’" he says.

Waldrep is not concerned at the moment with total compatibility
because of the price he charges for the extra software on the CD,
which is zero, as opposed to higher prices that the bigger
companies would like to charge for their enhanced CDs.

"If they can get $22.98 from people, great, but I think that is
a mistake. And I don’t think the record-buying consumers are
willing to pay the $5 more unless they are initiated in this stuff
and two years from now there is a huge demand. For now, it’s fairly
unusual for someone to even know about enhanced CDs," he says.

What matters to Waldrep is that the public becomes aware of the
concept of enhanced CDs so that the format will become accepted,
rather than allow technical pricing or dreams of an quick profit
destroy its chances.

"It will take time to develop into a really great art form, but
it will never get the chance if people are required to pay $5 more
for each (enhanced CD)," he says.

MUSIC: For more info on I-trax CDs log on to the WWW site at
http://www.itrax.com.Comments to [email protected]