The Cutting Edge: COMPUTERS / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : It’s Truly Techno Pop : ‘Enhanced CD’ Provides More Than Music

It could be a boon for techno-savvy musicians and their PC-equipped fans, offering a versatile artistic palette for everything from splashy videos to interviews to original paintings and photos. It could be an important new marketing tool for the record industry and give a further fillip to the already booming multimedia personal computer business. And it could, in the end, be something that adds nothing but an extra few dollars to the price tag of a compact disc.

It’s a new technology known as “enhanced CD,” and it’s now coming to a record store near you.

Enhanced CDs are new hybrid discs that offer both a full serving of music for your home stereo and a special treat for your PC. After listening to your favorite band, pop the CD into a PC CD-ROM drive and check out videos or photos or even guitar tablature--whatever kind of digital information the band and the record company might provide.

Although enhanced CDs are fraught with artistic pitfalls--and an all-too-predictable battle over technical standards is still being resolved--record labels are nonetheless swarming over the concept. Smaller labels, which see a way to set their acts apart from the pack, are first out of the blocks: Just hitting the shelves are an enhanced CD from “jangle/crunch guitar” band Techno-Squid Eats Parliament and a psychedelic pop offering called “Worm” from 2 Minutes Hate.

But better-known artists, including Alice in Chains, Mariah Carey, Crash Test Dummies, Aerosmith, the Cranberries and Ali Farka Toure, are batting around similar enhanced CD projects that could be in music stores by the end of the year. The hybrid discs are expected to cost under $20 and to work on both the Macintosh and Windows operating systems.

“If we do it right, we’ve got a really exciting breakthrough on our hands,” said Liz Heller, senior vice president of new media at Capitol Records, which plans to release as many as half a dozen enhanced CDs this year.

Underscoring that commitment--and leading cynics to smell a conspiracy aimed at raising CD prices--is the fact that record labels do not plan to release separate “enhanced” and “regular” albums. “This is not promotional or a boutique item--these are the albums,” said Michael Kushner, senior vice president at Philips Media, the multimedia publishing arm of Philips Electronics.

The hybrid CD concept has been around for several years, and a few adventurous independent labels such as Ion, Heyday and Nettwerk released enhanced CDs last year. But the initial design placed the computer data on the first track of the CD, and listeners had to skip over it when playing discs on their stereos. Forget to skip and you’d be treated to either a loud hiss or a sustained screech as the audio player tried to decipher the computer data.

“That is simply unacceptable,” said Normal Beil, head of new media for Geffen Records. “It’s too confusing to consumers who are used to just popping a CD in and having it play.”

A new generation of technology should solve that problem by placing visual data on areas of the disc that audio CD players ignore. There are several variations on the design, but one of them--CD Plus, initially developed by Kodak for CD-based photo storage--has drawn the support of key record labels such as Atlantic and Geffen and also from computer companies such as Apple and Microsoft.

But enhanced CD still faces other obstacles. For one, the discs do not work on older single-speed CD drives, and Windows users must install a special software driver to run the discs--or wait for the arrival of Windows 95. Music retailers still need to be convinced that enhanced CDs aren’t computer products. And artists must give fans a good reason for disrupting their normal listening habits to put a CD into their PC.

Some of the early efforts offer reasons for optimism on the artistic front, though. The eerie grooves of the Residents’ “Gingerbread Man,” for instance, are enhanced with creepy animated video clips that further the adventures of the flour-based hero. “The Freedom Sessions” from Sarah McLachlan offers behind-the-scenes rehearsal footage, and Penal Colony’s “5 Man Job” includes communications software that can be used to dial into its Cyberden electronic bulletin board and download demo versions of the five songs on the disc.

The funky acid jazz band Emergency Broadcast Network’s new album, “Telecommunication Breakdown,” allows you to create a do-it-yourself music video on your PC by tapping on your keyboard as the music plays. One key triggers footage of O.J. Simpson tap-dancing in a surreal outtake from a “Police Academy” movie; another offers a clip of Ronald Reagan slapping a woman in an early film.

“You can almost do a psychological study by watching what keys people tap,” said designer Greg Deocampo, who helped create the visual blitzkrieg for U2’s Zoo TV tour. “The violent ones keep pounding on the Reagan key.”

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But even if enhanced CD proves artistically interesting, the pricing issue remains a tricky one. The smaller labels, viewing the technology as a cheap way of helping lesser artists get noticed, have thus far kept the price of enhanced CDs at around $14.99.

Heyday Records President Ron Gompertz says the cost of adding the multimedia window dressing to electric folkie Chris von Sneidern’s interactive “Big White Lies” was less than $6,000, “or what it would have cost to produce a video that would be ignored by MTV and VH1.” For the major labels, however, the calculation is very different. Their hybrid discs are expected to cost $18.99 or more--and since only one type of CD will be offered, that would create an across-the-board CD price increase. The still-large majority of people who cannot even utilize the enhanced CD’s capabilities are not likely to view such a move kindly.

Beil said the labels are aware of the potential for consumer backlash and will adjust pricing if necessary. But few seem overly concerned about the problem, seeing instead enhanced CD as the next hit for an already immensely profitable industry.

“This is big,” said a beaming Steve Yanovski, manager of special projects at Atlantic Records. “Audio-only CDs are going to be the eight-track of the future.”