A system for selecting and recording data, comprising: a local storage unit for storing a subset of media content items and other content; a content selection unit to display a catalog of the media content items and other content, to allow a customer to browse, search, and select a media content item and other content from the catalog of media content items and other content, to retrieve the selected media content item and other content from the local storage unit if the selected media content item and other content is found in the subset, and otherwise to retrieve the selected media content item from a remote storage unit, the content selection unit configured to cache the retrieved media content item and other content in the local storage unit for a period of time based on the popularity of the retrieved media content item; a financial transaction unit to determine the cost of the retrieved media content item and other content and display the cost for review and payment by the customer; and an authoring system configured to format, encode, encrypt, and write the media content item and other content onto an article of media when the customer makes the payment.