I must think I’m pretty smart.
What do you think?
Today I’m going to make some predictions.
This will help, as time goes by and my predictions become true, demonstrate my amazingness (he said while typing on a little computer in bed in his sweats).
First off, I predict Chloe Kohanski will win “The Voice.” Those of you who follow popular music probably think I’m cheating a little, since the competition was over last week, and Chloe actually did win … But I predicted it in November!
Already hard to keep up, huh?
In Chloe’s case, I didn’t actually call the winner, but I saw it comin’!
Now it’s time for some new predictions!
Flat out, clear, and no nonsense!
THE NEW WORLD ORDER CONTINUED
I predict compact discs will become obsolete someday … but not any time soon, as they represent the last vestige of good old fashioned hold-it-in-your-hands gift-giveable actual physical goods in an otherwise all-digital industry … but before they go obsolete, a company will come out with a way to make you one for a dollar. Faster than a cookie.
I have to confess, I cheated again.
I didn’t want this to sound like a commercial, but there’s a company, Kunaki, which started about 10 years-ago in New York, now operating out of Nevada, a CD making machine, churning out obsolescense on the order of dozens of units a minute (if you just go by assigned project numbers as you create multiple CDs).
During what will be a long farewell song, compact discs will shine on, suffering only one perfectly normal side effect of time – prices will drop.
If you, like me, love audio and recording and create audio CDs for the marketplace, you should be working your way into digital distribution, but that model is ridden with cheapness right from the beginning; the margins are tiny. If, essentially, CDs were cheap enough, you might make more money selling them to people who want something to hold in their hands; as a keepsake; to give as a gift. Recorded events that have historical significance bode well on a medium that can be kept in a desk drawer or safety deposit box, not vulnerable to being erased by a magnet. A CD!
Plus you can always sell them as coasters.
TOLL HOUSE CDS
I recently pondered doing one of two things … having a cookie … or making a professional-quality CD.
You may think the cookie is the way to go …
A cookie takes ten minutes to make. And you have to warm up the oven. Granted, you can make multiple cookies in one pass, and they’re more delicious than compact discs … but if you’re in a hurry, you might want to consider making the CD instead.
With CDs, there’s a lot of time and work in the preparation, but these days the creation of the CD is much easier than baking!
The revolutionary Kunaki machine allows you to create a single CD, on demand, so you don’t have to keep any in inventory. They drop ship to your customer. Once you have your content and artwork (the hard part), just upload and press the button. What happens is remarkable.
The costs for small batch duplication (as small as one) have dropped over Kunaki’s decade of mechanizing the swan song of optical media. Along with arrangements made with USPS and most recently the offering of CDs with no jewel cases to make it even cheaper, a single CD can be manufactured and the order fulfilled for less than what it would normally cost (without Kunaki) for shipping alone.
Kunaki provides no customer service, but its machine works well, and the more I tinker with quantities and destinations, the more I’m impressed that, and it may be almost entirely due to Kunaki, CDs are not becoming obsolete anytime soon.
Now I can continue to spread great messages of recovery from my catalog of ReXark self-help podium recordings, nearly a hundred titles I created over ten-years. The CD format is preferred by the shopper, who in this case is not intrinsically tech-savvy and a little old-fashioned (when I started recording these groups I had to insist I wasn’t going to make cassettes; I started making CDs pre-Kunaki with paper labels).
But they don’t want to pay too much.
BETTER THAN CHOCOLATE CHIPS!
I recently fulfilled a few orders and found the machine is improving. It’s so fast, after you upload your project files, when you press the button to create the CD, it’s complete in less than two minutes and available for retail sale. The Kunaki machine hasn’t even produced a single copy, but it ran the routines and got no errors, and you’re ready to go. That’s fast.
The next morning I woke up to a string of emails, telling me all the products were manufactured, boxed and shipped.
Yes, the cookies, by the next morning, would also not only be cooked but completely eaten, of course. Which would be ultimately fulfilling. But that’s some fine service from Kunaki’s Easy Bake Oven.
DELICIOUS AND FAST
You may be thinking “Can’t I have both? Can’t I have my cookies and CDs, too?” Well, yes, young entrepeneur … in fact, you can have a couple cookies with the money you’ll be making. You might even have enough to buy several entire boxes!
We don’t have to worry about getting rich or fat, but I can see the purpose of CDs being supported even by a cheap market, and with a reliable manufacturer with a light bulb in its oven to keep the market afloat, the world will enjoy both cookies and CDs for a very long time!
But the CDs will pop out faster!