Amazon.com Inc, one of the Internet's largest retailers, has announced a new service on Tuesday that allows artists to sell compact-discs to customers without maintaining expensive inventories.

The service, offered in conjunction with Amazon's wholly owned subsidiary, CustomFlix Labs,

manufactures and ships CDs only when customers place orders, so no pre-built inventory is required. Dubbed CustomFlix CD on Demand, the service is particularly interesting to small or independent musicians, where mass production of CD's can be prohibitive.

With the launch of CustomFlix CD on Demand, we are once again changing the way independent distribution works, said Dana LoPiccolo-Giles, co-founder and managing director of CustomFlix.

The service derives from Amazons DVD on demand service.

We're pleased to extend our Disc on Demand service beyond video to meet the needs of the independent musician community as well as labels who want to provide as much of their catalogue as possible to Amazon customers, she adds.

Two weeks ago, Amazon unveiled another service called Ubox, offering movies and TV shows for downloaded to personal computers.

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