I installed an optical drive in my computer recently, and I was playing with my old CDs, and found that Poodle Hat has a data partition, or whatever the hell you call them on CDs. On which is a 6 minute .mov file that takes up about an 8th of the disc’s space, in which Al thanks the owner of the disc for buying the album “instead of downloading it like some HOOLIGAN!” And then proceeds to joke over some of his own home movies.
It’s kind of funny looking back on albums like that, and the bonus content they would add. It was common early on to write the ToC in such a way that it skipped over a track, so Track 1 would be some ways into the disc, but there was data before “track 1” you could get to by rewinding past 0:00. Later, smarter CD players and especially computer CD-ROM drives wouldn’t do that, so that practice started decreasing. But with computers, it was already commonplace for a video game to take up a small fraction of a CD, and then fill the rest with the soundtrack as red book audio, and CD players could still play the music. So they did that for awhile.
There was a brief moment in the mid-2000s where the record labels were feeling the threat of iTunes, so they tried adding value. I have a 2005 copy of Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet which doesn’t have the Compact Disc Digital Audio mark anywhere on it, because it’s a DualDisc. It’s a CD with half a DVD on its back; so it’s slightly thicker than a standard CD and thus non-conforming to the red book standard, and . The CD side is an otherwise conforming red book audio copy of the album, but the DVD side features a very high quality stereo recording, a “made 20 years after the album was mastered so it’s slightly janky” Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound version with added length, and the four music videos they recorded for the album in glorious “80’s BetaCAM transferred to DVD” 480whatever.
Remember when companies tried to compete on benefits and features?
If it was done in the way where the data track didn’t show up for an audio player, it was probably an Enhanced CD/CD plus. If anyone is backing up old CDs it’s worth checking for this kind of stuff and saving it too. Given most people only ever rip the audio, loads of that stuff is going to end up as lost media before long
I installed an optical drive in my computer recently, and I was playing with my old CDs, and found that Poodle Hat has a data partition, or whatever the hell you call them on CDs. On which is a 6 minute .mov file that takes up about an 8th of the disc’s space, in which Al thanks the owner of the disc for buying the album “instead of downloading it like some HOOLIGAN!” And then proceeds to joke over some of his own home movies.
One of the Foo Fighter CDs (I think There Is Nothing Left to Lose in '99) had a clipped version of this video on it. (*NSFW Language)
It’s kind of funny looking back on albums like that, and the bonus content they would add. It was common early on to write the ToC in such a way that it skipped over a track, so Track 1 would be some ways into the disc, but there was data before “track 1” you could get to by rewinding past 0:00. Later, smarter CD players and especially computer CD-ROM drives wouldn’t do that, so that practice started decreasing. But with computers, it was already commonplace for a video game to take up a small fraction of a CD, and then fill the rest with the soundtrack as red book audio, and CD players could still play the music. So they did that for awhile.
There was a brief moment in the mid-2000s where the record labels were feeling the threat of iTunes, so they tried adding value. I have a 2005 copy of Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet which doesn’t have the Compact Disc Digital Audio mark anywhere on it, because it’s a DualDisc. It’s a CD with half a DVD on its back; so it’s slightly thicker than a standard CD and thus non-conforming to the red book standard, and . The CD side is an otherwise conforming red book audio copy of the album, but the DVD side features a very high quality stereo recording, a “made 20 years after the album was mastered so it’s slightly janky” Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound version with added length, and the four music videos they recorded for the album in glorious “80’s BetaCAM transferred to DVD” 480whatever.
Remember when companies tried to compete on benefits and features?
Data track/session is the term
If it was done in the way where the data track didn’t show up for an audio player, it was probably an Enhanced CD/CD plus. If anyone is backing up old CDs it’s worth checking for this kind of stuff and saving it too. Given most people only ever rip the audio, loads of that stuff is going to end up as lost media before long