RECORDINGS ARE NOT FOR SALE!

Vining

There seems to be a perception that weeding is a 'quick & dirty' means of trading - that recordings are rapidly circulated to a large number of people in a format they can be immediately played on any computer or standalone CD player, but because it's CD Audio format, gaps, crackle and other digital flaws are to be expected as routine.

This is incorrect; careless or incompetent traders introduce flaws, not something inherent in CD Audio format.

Having said that, one means of avoiding this problem without resorting to compressed formats is to circulate recordings as a vine.

This proceeds in much the same way as a weed, with a couple of key differences:

• The recipient of a recording makes only one copy, rather than three.
• The recipient makes a copy and keeps the copy. The original discs are passed on to the next person, not the copies.

This way, if flaws are introduced, they are on the copy kept by the person making the errors, not the disc(s) passed on - later people don't suffer for the inadequacies of earlier people.

In order to avoid confusion (and excuses), it is usual for the seeder to label each disc, on the disc, identifying the recording and clearly stating that the original, labelled disc(s) should be passed on.

Some also prefer vines to weeds because it's cheaper for one copy (1-2 discs) and postage (of the original) to one person than the three copies (that's typically six discs) and postage to three people expected in weeding.

Note that vines have no place for the burnerless. Unless one is able to copy CD-Rs, it is impossible to participate, except perhaps at the very end of the vine, when one person gets to keep the well-travelled original.

Vining is also extremely vulnerable to defaulters. If the recipient of a weed fails to pass it on, that branch of the weed dies but other branches proceed. In a vine, there is only one branch (stem), so if someone defaults, that's it; no more vine.

Vining is usually 'open', whereby the first person responds to an online offer, makes his/her copy, then makes a fresh public offer to find the next recipient of the original discs.
However, some treat vines more like trees: many respond to one initial offer, and the seeder organises respondents into a sequence. Sign-ups are closed, and the original discs go to the first person on the list, then the next person, and so on. Those who missed the initial offer cannot join later. The advantages of this are unclear.

Though this has been made available as a 'service to the trading community', please remember it is copyrighted, not in the public domain nor freely usable by other publications without express permission.