You may not have noticed it, but there are a couple of new recording formats that are sneaking into record stores across the country even while you read these words. Sure, these new discs may look like a mundane, garden-variety compact disc but they’re really…according to the labels…they’re really so much more!

Disney’s Hollywood Records brags of their new CDVU+ format. The CDVU+ (CD View Plus) is, by any standard, a traditional compact disc with additional interactive content that can be accessed over the Internet with your computer. Developed internally by the “mouse house,” the CDVU+ features fully-recyclable packaging (a welcome industry change) instead of the normal jewel case. Bonus content for the discs will be fresh and original, produced specifically for each release (rather than merely throwing on a few studio outtakes or live tracks). The first titles that Hollywood has announced in the CDVU+ format include releases from the Jonas Brothers, the Cheetah Girls and Atreyu.

Hollywood’s recently-released Jonas Brothers CDVU+, for instance, lists at the same old $18.98 suggested retail and apart from the music, the disc includes content like ten music videos featuring the teen heartthrobs, a whopping 75 “printable” photos (suitable for wallpapering your daughter’s bedroom), a “personalized autographed poster creator” and “hidden links,” presumably not to Internet porn sites. Released in August, the Jonas Brothers haven’t exactly burned up the sales charts. The Hits Daily Double chart puts the disc at #44 last week, with slightly under 19k in sales, while the Billboard Top 200 places the album at #45, sandwiched in between two other Disney acts, Hollywood’s new Cheetah Girls CDVU+ and Lyric Street’s old Rascal Flatts album. Not bad, but not a sales savior that you can depend on to save the industry.

On the other hand, the clowns over at Warner Music Group, which is hemmoraging sales faster than an inner-city ER treats patients, has come up with its own new, “improved” format called the MVI (Music Video Interactive). Essentially a juiced-up DVD (or a CD on steroids?), the MVI plays in DVD players, computers and some gaming consoles, but it will not play in regular CD players (i.e. you can’t play it in your car, your Walkman or on your home stereo). The disc will provide interactive digital content, video features, and digital song files that will be “compatible” with all existing personal listening devices. Developed by the media solutions company ScribeStorm, Warner Music is attempting to convince other labels to adopt the new MVI disc as well.

Warner Music Group chairman and CEO Edgar Bronfman, Jr. has stated that the retail price of the MVI will only be around $1 more than a regular CD (that is, it will also be overpriced for the market) and that profit margins for the MVI are around the same as the regular retail compact disc. The introductory roll-out of the MVI will pair the new disc format with a regular CD in a two-disc package; Linkin Park’s Minutes To Midnight album was the first to be made available with the MVI disc. The “special edition,” MVI version of the Linkin Park album sold around 60,000 copies during the album’s debut week, or about 10% of overall sales, with a $27.98 suggested retail price as compared with the regular CD’s still too-damn-high $18.98 list.

The Reverend has conflicting views on these moves by Disney and Warner Music. On the one hand, I recommended that the labels add “bonus” content like you’ll find on both the CDVU+ and the MVI over four years ago. At the time, I felt that the way for the music biz to set itself apart from the fledgling downloading revolution was to give the music-loving consumer more bang for their buck, something that you couldn’t get from a downloaded mp3. Better than four years later, some of them are finally listening to my words of wisdom.

However, on the other hand, the Reverend thinks that this is a bone-headed move for Warner Music – slightly less so for Disney – in this day and age. I say “slightly less” for Disney ‘cause so much of their market is made up of kids and young teens that the added photos, posters and other ephemera they stick on a CDVU+ will prove to be attractive to that demographic of consumer. No so much for the few rock albums that Hollywood Records releases.

As for Warner, did those mud-for-brains in Burbank not learn anything from the DVD-Audio fiasco? Consumers want formats that will play freely across all of the electronic devices that they own. Although this move won’t require that MVI buyers run out and put down money on a specialized, dedicated music machine (like the DVD-Audio), neither does it fulfill the needs of many consumers. Personally, I won’t spend money on any music disc that won’t play on both my home and car stereos and my computer. There’s no upside to such a format.

Even more importantly, retail price points on music should be moving downward, not getting more expensive. Consumer polls over the last few years have consistently named price as one of the most important factors in convincing somebody to buy a CD, and music lovers seem to flock to $9.99 CDs like ducks to water. Yet here are Warner and Disney, trying to lead the industry out of the digital doldrums and into the promised land with the same $18.98 (and $19.98 if we’re to believe Bronfman’s comments on the MVI) suggested retail pricing that consumers rejected years ago. Are these people really this dense, or are they just not listening?