Friday, November 13, 2009

You can rent cds

You can rent a newly released cd for two days.

...and the price ranges from 1 to 3 dollars.

Anime Dance cd. All the song of this album are remixed anime songs, such as a remixed opening song of Lucky Star.

A Haruhi cd from the first season.

These days people don't buy cds, but they download songs off the Internet. You know, when it comes to owning songs, the Internet enables this for free, and I sometimes do it. But if we really want all the songs off an album, downloading and compiling the songs might be pain in the neck.

Those who splurge on music might not mind buying cds, but in Japan we can rent a cd for about a few dollars. Usually a rental cd/dvd shop charges you about 3 dollars a cd, but there is a bargain day at least once a week. On such a day people can rent a cd for a dollar, and they would think downloading doesn't add up after all, because if we rent a cd we can also look at or copy the booklet and the sound quality of the cd is of course very good.

But the problem with the rental cd shops in Japan is they never let people rent a foreign cd before 1 year passes after the release. If I want to rent anime cds, I can rely on such shops, but I have to wait for a year to rent a new Bon Jovi cd. And I don't wait for the latter.