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Traditional Country Music

© Steven Lind

In early August, I had the opportunity to attend a Lorrie Morgan/Sammy Kershaw concert at the Sussex County (NJ) Farm & Horse Show. You could tell it would be a night of traditional Country Music; the pre-concert recorded music warming up the loudspeakers belted out some of the best known hits of Merle Haggard. Neither Lorrie nor Sammy disappointed the crowd. This month, we'll take a look at a site where you can order CDs customized to your own specifications. And we'll look at an "Essential Country" collection of CDs available at one of the best online music stores.

Musicmaker

Musicmaker offers shoppers the opportunity to purchase CDs containing music customized to the individual taste of the consumer. While there are many different genres of music available on the site, there's plenty of traditional Country Music available from a variety of artists. Most of the Country selections were recorded on either the Sun or Rounder record labels. But among the Country artists available are (numbers in parentheses following the artist's name represent the number of tracks available as of this writing): Mary-Chapin Carpenter (1), Johnny Cash (17), Patsy Cline (12), David Allan Coe (12), Jimmie Dale Gilmore (12), "Ranger Doug" Green (151), Merle Haggard (32), Roger Miller (12), Patti Page (21), Charlie Rich (9), Riders In The Sky (151), Jeannie C. Riley (9), Randy Travis (1), Conway Twitty (20), and Keith Whitley (14). You can search the music library by genre to get the list of all Country artists, or you can search by catalog (e.g., holiday), artist, or title.

The basic purchase gives you 5 tracks, each up to 5 minutes in length. This basic minimum costs $9.99 ($12.95 outside of the U.S. or Canada). Each additional track (under 5 minutes in length) selected above the first 5 tracks cost $1 each. Any track over five minutes costs an additional $.20 per minute over the five minutes. Shipping and handling costs $2.95 ($5.95 outside the U.S. and Canada; rush mailing costs an additional $2.00. One disc can contain up to 20 tracks or up to 70 minutes worth of music.

The process is as easy as choose, personalize, and place order. As you choose your selections you can play RealAudio clips of individual songs or a whole collection (e.g., artist's catalog). Listening to a collection of songs, one can select a song as it is played. As you select tracks to be included on your CD, the site keeps track of the number of songs chosen and the time remaining for that CD. You can rearrange the order of the songs, play samples from the chosen tracks, get advice from the "Music Adviser," personalize the package (back cover and side panels of the CD jewel case) and the surface of the CD with a title or message and graphic art.

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