{"id":443,"date":"2002-02-21T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-02-21T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/2002\/02\/21\/ask-john-what-is-the-folded-paper-on-the-side-of-japanese-cds\/"},"modified":"2002-02-21T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2002-02-21T14:00:00","slug":"ask-john-what-is-the-folded-paper-on-the-side-of-japanese-cds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/ask-john-what-is-the-folded-paper-on-the-side-of-japanese-cds\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask John: What is the &#8220;Folded Paper&#8221; on the Side of Japanese CDs?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Question:<\/strong><br \/>\nI&#8217;ve been wondering what those folded papers that come with Japanese CDs are for. Is there anything printed there (aside from the portion of the cover sleeve\/picture) that&#8217;s important? Every Japanese CD I&#8217;ve purchased (soundtracks, J-rock, etc.) always had these things. I don&#8217;t know what to do with them but I don&#8217;t wanna throw them away, either. (Itty-bitty souvenir, y&#8217;know?)<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><strong>Answer:<\/strong><br \/>\nThe main point of these &#8220;spine cards,&#8221; as they are often called, is to carry the CD UPC code and suggested retail price.  It&#8217;s common for Japanese CDs and video games both to have these spine cards.  Japanese laserdiscs and some books have a similar paper band around them, sometimes referred to as an &#8220;obi,&#8221; a reference to the wide sash worn with a kimono. The &#8220;obi&#8221; serves the same purpose as a CD spine card or may carry additional advertising information such as pictures of other CDs or books by the same artist or related CDs or videos.<\/p>\n<p>Although there&#8217;s no practical purpose to keeping the spine card, it&#8217;s common for both Japanese and Western consumers to keep them anyway.  It&#8217;s not uncommon at all to find used laserdiscs, video games and audio CDs in Japanese second-hand stores that still have the spine card included. While the spine card or obi have no practical purpose once the CD or book has been purchased, keeping them provides a sense of completeness for collectors. A spine card can also often be used as a useful distinguishing point between legitimate, official Japanese CDs and bootleg Chinese copies. Chinese produced bootleg anime and J-pop CDs do not have a retail price printed directly on the CD packaging, thus usually no spine card.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Question: I&#8217;ve been wondering what those folded papers that come with Japanese CDs are for. Is there anything printed there (aside from the portion of the cover sleeve\/picture) that&#8217;s important? Every Japanese CD I&#8217;ve purchased (soundtracks, J-rock, etc.) always had these things. I don&#8217;t know what to do with them but I don&#8217;t wanna throw [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ask-john"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}