A cover song is defined as a new recording that was previously written, recorded and released by another artist. No matter how different and unique your recording is, the original creator legally owns the song and is therefore entitled to royalties from it.

If you’re planning to sell your CDs for profit then a licence is required, no matter the order quantity.

Physical discs still continue to dominate market share over digital sales, and although overall entertainment sales figures are down on 2011, digital sales have broken the £1bn threshold in 2012.

Recent UK entertainment sales figures for 2012 confirm that, although physical sales are slowing, the market overwhelmingly still enjoys buying music, film and video games in the physical form of a CD, DVD and Blu-ray, contributing to over 75% of market sales.

Optical disc is the generic term when referring to a CD, DVD, Blu-ray or other storage medium which requires light to read or write data to. Optical discs come with a plethora of acronyms and abbreviations associated with each type of disc.

Below, we’ll look at what these terms mean, and decipher the jargon, to offer you a straightforward guide. By the end of this guide, you’ll be able to identify any type of optical disc, and know its main uses.

Historically, printed flyers were used as a sure fire way of promoting a nightclub and attracting a big crowd to your event. After a night spent in central London, it is possible to come back home with literally tens of different club flyers promoting all sorts of nightlife, to cater for all tastes.

Most flyers, however, end up on the road or pavement a few yards from the person handing them out. The majority of people consider it a piece of junk marketing, often directly placed in your hand by its distributor. This is why flyers are distributed en-mass, as the returns are minimal. A return of 1 in 100 flyers is considered a good return.

However, because flyer distribution used to work so well, everyone uses this means to promote an event, to the point where no single event particularly tends to stand out any more.

How can event flyer promotion be taken to the next level, to ensure not only that your event is promoted and remembered in the mind of your potential guests, but to also create a status quo where you have a queue of people wanting a free flyer, rather than it being forced on them?

A more recent trend has been to use a CD as a means of promotion, known as CD flyers.

A CD flyer is a novel idea and takes the conventional printed flyer to the next level, and by its very nature it encourages product interaction with your target audience.

Often, a printed flyer does not depict the style of music on offer too well, and so a CD flyer offers your guests a chance to sample your club event, and to listen to the type of music on offer on the evening of the event.

If it’s a live event, then the artists featured that evening could have snippets of their songs on the CD. The artists could create a custom recording to introduce the event on the CD, or even record an impromptu song for the purposes of CD flyer promotion.

If the club event is more DJ-based, then the headline DJs could all feature a mini mix on the CD, letting listeners sample the kind of music they can expect on the club night.

An event with 6 different DJs could all feature on the CD, with quick 10 minute mix samples exhibiting the skills and tastes of each DJ.

When searching for a CD or DVD drive, there are several factors to consider, and the disc loading mechanism is an important consideration.

The loading mechanism is the mechanical component that is responsible for loading the optical disc into the reading / writing drive.

There are three loading mechanisms available in the market, they are; tray, slot and the caddy.

Because you come into contact with the loading system every time, during the loading and unloading of a disc, it is important to choose the most suitable one for you.

Let’s have a closer look at each of the three.

If there is one thing that all computing experts agree upon it’s that software backups are probably the most critically important task that a company needs to carry out on its data to protect its intellectual property. This also applies to individuals who have large collections of music albums, videos or data stored on CD, DVD or Blu-ray discs.

When writable CDs and DVDs came onto the market in the 90s, they instantly became the most favoured choice for data transfer and back up, ranging from computer files to audio music. Right up to today, optical discs still hold the pole position of market share compared to other storage media and the introduction of Blu-ray discs, capable of much higher storage capacity, indicate that optical discs will still be around for many years to come.

A major issue with CDs and DVDs is that the integrity of the data stored on them can be easily compromised from a simple tiny scratch on the disc surface leading to a partial or complete loss of the stored data. The best way to circumvent this inherent issue of the disc, is to back up the contents of a CD, DVD or Blu-ray as an image file. A disc image is a single file containing the complete contents and structure as the actual physical disc.