podcasts are not an option for the main source of distribution because you can not play it everywhere. Such as in your car or someone who does not have high speed internet.
"wpr" wrote:
To be fair, a lot of people have MP3 players which they can take everywhere, a lot more people have them than portable CD players. Although I'm assuming you're not dealing with a demographic that is tech-heavy.
I was just looking for a simple way to record a cd and then distribute it to others. It seems to me that there should be a way to do this.
If the only practical option is CD, your two options are multiple audio CDs for longer services, or MP3 CDs (but accepting that some people will not be able to play them)... iTunes should work wonderfully for both of these options. There is no third option - no magic way to get an MP3 CD to work in a normal CD player, higher capacity CDs, or way to shove more audio onto the CD.
The only other thing I think you might be able to do is find some double-sided CD-Rs, that way if you need to give someone more than 80 minutes of audio on a standard audio CD, they don't have to keep track of two discs, just flip it over (as will you during the burning process). You might need to buy these online, I don't recall seeing these in many retail outlets.
Keep in mind that the CD was created around the same time as the 3 1/2" floppy disc, albeit for a completely different purpose. Nowadays, the Blu-Ray holds 70+ times the data, and by 2019 we're supposed to have the HVD, which is supposed to hold a Terabyte, or over 1400 times the data of a CD... Although this is kind of irrelevant as far as audio goes.
The highest capacity MP3 players these days can hold roughly two months of audio at average compression, although I have no clue who would need that much for just audio. The only reason CDs still exist is because of how wildly successful they've been, and there is still plenty of demand for real, physical copies of music rather than just digital ones... Although expect that to change too.