I was just curious how common this is.
I've been ripping my CD collection for a while, and just for the fun of it decided to view the Data Track (enhanced CD) portion of the album I was on last night. Lo and behold, I discovered four MP3s embedded in that data track which were not represented amongs the 13 audio tracks of the CD.
How often does this happen? I'm tempted to go back through my collection and see if any of my other enhanced CDs had additional music like this.
Usually the data file is extra stuff to be played back on a pc like videos or links to extra content from a website. Im really interested as to the nature of the mp3s you found. What are they?
Usually the data file is extra stuff to be played back on a pc like videos or links to extra content from a website. Im really interested as to the nature of the mp3s you found. What are they?
They were four extra songs written and performed by the band but not available in the audio tracks. (Three were remixes while one was a totally original piece.) They were not encoded as well as I'd hoped - two at 160kbps and two at 192kbps - but I was still surprised (and pleased) to find them.
It was on the Waterdeep - Everyone's Beautiful album. The bonus 4 brought the total tracks on the album up to 17.
I've come across something like it once, on an Ooberman album, Hey! Petrunko (2003), and it wasn't the band themselves, but a 'grainy' 22kHz 56kbps MP3 encode (possibly Xing (old) according to encspot, but possible no short blocks anyway) of a classical piece that inpired part of the album.
At that stage I was a little suspicious of letting CDs autorun (what with the whole Sony trojan thing) and I only found it by navigating the folders to the intriguingly named:
X:\CDPLUS\code\stop!!\
The
Read This!.txt file says
Welcome to a secret corner of Hey Petrunko.
In this folder I've put a grainy MP3 version of a track that I fell in love with at the start of the album project, which led me down the path of listening to music from Eastern Europe and beyond.
It's 'Lullaby' from the Ballet Gayane, by Aram Il'yich Khachaturian.
I don't know how far that influence has spread to the album, except of course the French Horn in Petrunka's Dream...[much deleted]
Most of Ooberman's albums included videos for a few tracks, including this one.
Wow, it doesn't look like this happens very often. What a coincidence that the one I decided to explore further happened to be the one with additional songs.
I've had a few CD's which had some 'key' on it with which you could download a few tracks which weren't on the album. The idea behind it is that the key can only be used by one person, so buying them second hand is less attractive.
I posted here about a bonus track on Collective Soul's album Dosage. It's just 22.1kHz PCM with some nonsense header, ultimately.
Lagwagon - Live In A Dive album has an mpeg-1 video that has a song (Mr Coffee) that everyone probably expected to be on the regular CD tracks but were not since is it a classic Lagwagon song. A real shame but the mpeg-1 had a "truer" drum sound, not triggered like it sounds of the other regular CD tracks. I need to listen to the album and enjoy!
The only CD I had with a data portion on it had a music video, but no original music. Granted, it was a single and the music video was a 10-minute ordeal that really added a lot to the music... so I'm glad it was there.
I routinely copy the data tracks portion into a .zip in the same folder as the audio. I have found a few, but not many. One of my CDs of Jason Becker (the guitarist with the paralyzing Lou Gehrig's disease) had a data section with some demos in mp3 format.