CDs vs Downloads in a Children’s Musical – 7 Reasons Downloads Win!

Not every school is luckyCD v Downloads in a Children's Musical enough to have musicians capable of playing along to an entire children’s musical production. That’s why Learn2soar Music provide professional backing music for each children’s musical we sell, so your cast can sing along karaoke style for a fantastic performance. But what format should you use for the backing music? A CD or a download? Every children’s musical we publish is available in both formats, but we believe downloads are always the best choice and easily win the ‘CDs vs Downloads’ battle. Here are 7 reasons why downloads save time, save money, save hassle and even help save the planet…

1. CDs Get Damaged Easily

Are you old enough to remember when the first CDs came out in the early 80s? Manufacturers boldly stated that scratches and dirt would make no difference to the playing quality! Today that claim is almost as laughable as early cigarette advertising which promised ‘amazing health benefits’!  How times change…

We’ve all shared the frustration of finding that our favourite disk is suddenly jumping through the best song and when we examine the disk surface, it’s usually the smallest of scuff marks that’s the problem. Let’s face it, a jumping CD is annoying. However, a jumping CD in the middle of a children’s musical performance is an absolute nightmare! Over the years we’ve sadly heard several horror stories of that very event occurring! Fortunately, digital downloads played through a computer, MP3 player or iPod don’t get dirty or scratched and always play perfectly well.

2. CDs Break

Have you heard the one about the nursery child, who painted the teacher’s nativity play CD and then broke it in two because she didn’t like the way her painting had turned out? We have and we’re not making it up! Over the last 12 years we’ve also heard of CDs breaking through being stood on, sat on and even broken in a car door. However, downloads don’t break.

Some of you may be saying that computers, MP3 players and iPods do break. Indeed, they do. But if you haven’t already got a back-up of your downloaded children’s musical on a different device (why not?) you can re-download from our website, for free, on the same day. If your 14 day download time limit has expired, don’t worry, just phone or email us and we’ll immediately reset your download link at no extra cost! No need to wait for a replacement CD to come in the post.

3. CDs Get Misplaced

Similarly, we’ve had a large number of calls over the years from customers who have misplaced their children’s musical CDs. We do allow you to make one copy of any full-priced CD purchased from us and we also sell low-priced back-up copies. Despite this though, we’ve actually had a case where a teacher who ordered 4 extra CDs managed to lose every single one of them! She then had to call us on the day before the dress-rehearsal, to beg us to urgently send replacements by express delivery! We were happy to help and all went well in the end, but the extra cost and hassle for the customer concerned could have easily been avoided, if downloads had been chosen instead of CDs in the first place.

4. Downloads Save Money

If you order any of our downloads instead of the CD version you will save money. Usually about £4 per product, but with our assembly special offer you could even save around £15.

All our downloads can easily be burnt to CD, which some customers choose to do. However, we recommend that you play the music straight from the download. This is more reliable and will also save you even more money, as well as saving precious time.

As stated in the above points, if you are unfortunate enough to lose or damage your CD, it will cost you money to replace it, whereas we will never charge you for re-downloading (unlike other children’s musical companies). Yet another way that Learn2soar Music downloads save money.

5. CD Players Can Be Unreliable

Over the last 25 years I must have gone though about 20 CD players in one form or another. One thing I’ve learnt is that they can be just us unreliable as CDs. CD trays can fail to open, laser’s can lose power, CDs get stuck, lenses can get dirty, etc… And on a few occasions these problems have occurred at the worst possible moment, in front of an audience! However, since I started playing all public music from a digital device like and iPod, tablet or laptop, I’ve never once had a problem.

6. Our Downloads Are Instant – No Waiting For Delivery

Unlike other Children’s Musical companies, our download products really are instant. With other companies you still have to wait for someone to authorise the sale and then manually email the product to you. But that’s not the case with Learn2soar Music. As soon as you complete our customer checkout, everything you have ordered is immediately available through a download link accessible in the ‘Your Account’ section of this website. Furthermore, it doesn’t make any difference if you pay by card, or order by school invoice, the download is still instantly available! No waiting at all.

7. Downloads Are Great For The Environment

Our CDs are already very environmentally friendly, in that they are ‘Enhanced CDs’… ie. we don’t do books! You can print off scripts, sheet music and more from the amazing Multipurpose CD. We estimate that over the last 12 years this has saved so much paper that the equivalent of a small woodland has been rescued through our efforts alone. CDs alone are also easier to post than weighty books, which gives us a small carbon footprint.

But the carbon footprint from using our downloads is even smaller! No plastic for the CDs or cases, no paper or ink for the CD sleeve, no electricity spent producing disks and no pollution from delivery vehicles. If every children’s musical customer in the world were to switch from the old-fashioned ‘CD & Book’, to using our all-in-one downloads instead. The environmental impact would be huge!

In conclusion… save money, save the planet, save time, save hassle and download your children’s musical now!!!