I can confirm that Fargo Year 2 is a CDR in the US on Amazon and it is not listed anywhere on the site warning you of this fact. A customer just posted a comment in the reviews about it being a CDR on 5/28/2016.
Amazon UK doesn't have the on-demand feature that the US outfit has so I doubt anything sold through the UK store is a CD-R.
Not really. Here's an example: there's a bunch of classical recordings that were issued in the 90's by Marco Polo, the Naxos full price label (off-the beaten-path repertoire, mostly premier or sole recordings) that almost entirely were never re-issued on Naxos. They are prized , often with crazy prices, on the second market, but amazon still sells them. Well, if you buy them from Amazon (.com , .co.uk. .it .whatever) you get a CD-R. Sometimes it's stated, sometimes not.
Amazon UK doesn't have the on-demand feature that the US outfit has so I doubt anything sold through the UK store is a CD-R.
There's a difference between Amazon providing their own MOD facility, and other labels just supplying stock to Amazon to sell, which just happen to be CD-Rs.
With the latter, if those labels don't provide that information, then Amazon likely won't know what they're selling.
I would also suspect that a lot of casual purchasers may not be bothered, and only a small percentage would be returned to Amazon with a complaint. So unless Amazon pass feedback to the labels that they've received complaints about CD-Rs, the situation may not change and it becomes pot luck with these releases that are unlikely to sell in sufficient quantities.
I'd be interested to know the difference in costs. Presumably they still have to send them to a manufacturing plant to make batches of CDs, as we know from LLL's He-Man cock up where the manufacturer made a batch of CD-Rs by mistake. So it's obviously a larger-scale process than someone simply burning a disc on a PC and printing out booklets on a colour printer when a MOD title is requested.
Amazon should list that they are selling CD-Rs. But I'm glad there is some form of a lossless release. I don't really understand the prejudice against CD-Rs especially when there is no other lossless source. Now I prefer to buy a pressed disc if it's available, but if not a CD-R is ok. The last I looked it up Amazon was using some high quality Verbatim discs, and not the cheap never-heard-of-brand-name CD-Rs from China like everyone feared when they first started DOD 11-12 years ago. Also there is still the misconception that they are just burning MP3s to the disc. Which was never true. They use the sources straight from the labels. I haven't bought many but I've bought enough to make a fair judgement. In the beginning there was some issues with the artwork not being of great quality. I remember that The Bank Job artwork was blurry, and The Forbidden Kingdom arrived with the ink of the artwork not fully dried and actually caused the CD-R to have a chemical reaction that caused read issues. Amazon replaced that CD for me free of charge, and I didn't have to return the original. That replacement disc that I bought in 2008 along with Incredible Hulk the same year still look, and play perfectly 11 years later. But by 2012, their artwork was a lot more professionally done. Jack The Giant Slayer looks better quality than many of the pressed releases. But despite this the artwork non of the discs themselves have had any issues on my end.
