Idolator

Music buyers of a certain age may remember Personics, the record-store kiosks that allowed you to create customized mix tapes from licensed songs (one of your Idolators crafted one for the sole purpose of being able to hear XYZ's "Inside Out" on demand). While the idea wasn't long for the Record World, it may be elevated to "ahead of its time" status—because its current iteration, Mix & Burn, is being floated as an idea to help salvage the physical-goods business:

Just as people sit at home and buy songs from Apple Inc.'s iTunes for 99 cents a pop, several vendors have introduced a bricks-and-mortar version of that concept.

New machines, available from at least five different companies and now in operation in more than 150 record stores, Starbucks, book stores and big-box electronics stores across the country, allow consumers to pick 15 or so singles from various artists and burn them onto a CD.

George Daniels, who has run George's Music Room in Chicago for 38 years, installed one such machine, the Disc-Go Digital Studio, at his store.

"I love the idea of this machine because it puts me back in the singles business," said Daniels, who started his store with $100 and 100 45-rpm singles. "It will add something new to our store. A lot of people are willing to pay $1 or $2 for a song, but not $15 for a CD."

While it's too soon to say if the machine will help offset the "considerable downward trend" at George's Music Room, customers are interested. The store's phone had about 50 voice mails from customers the day after Daniels talked about the new technology on Herb Kent's radio show on WVAZ-FM 102.7. Retailer Dan Kealey has been using four Mix & Burn machines at his Replay Music, Movies and Games store in suburban Minneapolis since late 2005.

"We're bringing in new customers every week with this," Kealey said. "Once the customer uses it, they are hooked. They love creating their own compilations."

Our long-term devotion to all things mix-tape may make us biased, but we can see this doing well (once people get in the door), although its long-term success depends on the tracks available and the price. After all, while we do see a lot of "I will make custom mix CDs for you" fliers around our subway stop that have all of their contact-info stubs ripped off, we're guessing that those offerings are a bit more, shall we say, gray market.

Retail CDs get personal [Chicago Tribune via PopMatters]
Earlier: Record Labels Looking For New Way To Stop The Bleeding
[Photo via The Daily Ping]