for a long time i wanted to write something about these german "drama cds", since they where mentioned in the music database.
I hunted down all 9 CD´s of these Dragonball Z Drama CDs, and some of the overall 12 Dragonball Drama Cds.
Since i dont know about the history of drama cds/cassettes in the states, let me tell you something about the case in germany:
All of the stated dragonball dramas were produced as audio cassettes and audio cds, in germany audio dramas or in german "Hörspiele" were very popluar in the 80s and 90s, especially drama cassettes (not cds) from tv series, like ALF, Knight Rider, Turtles, but there were original audio dramas, for example benhamin the elephant, aswell.
Audio dramas based on a tv series were produced with the sound track of the original tv episodes, with slightly added comments of an narrator at the opening, or in situations of the story, were a description of the situation was in need.
Just like in the Dragonball, also Z, audio dramas.
But, the narrator of the dragonball audio dramas is the german voice actor of kid goku, Corinna Dorenkamp.
For Z, the narrator changes after Disc 6, Vol. 1 - 6 features Eric Brodka as the narrator, and for the last ones Wolf Frass.
its a fact that Brodka dubbed german trailers for the z tv series back then, when it aired for the first time on the german channel RTL II. On a disc are 2 audio episodes, so a disc contains 2 audio files, which have the episode titles of the associated anime episodes, again after disc 6 something was changed, they sliced these separation of two episodes, 2 audio tracks, into 6 audio tracks that you could navigate better through the story. The Dragonball Audio Dramas didnt have these ongoing scheme, they skip episodes.
So, the Z Audio Drama covered 18 Episodes of the Anime.
The Lenght of each Episode (One Track, or 3 sliced Tracks) ranged from 13 to 19 Minutes.
As i told, Audio Dramas were very popluar till the middle of the nineties in germany, kids used to listen to them before going to sleep, or while playing/building with lego and stuff. Koch Records or Spacy Tracy in some way wanted to revive (and monetize) this phenomenon again, but this project rapidly unlit.
In 2003 was the cinema debut of "Dragonball Z - Der Film" (The Movie) which was movie 12 and 13 stringed together, with this release another company "Top Sound" (Shutted down in 2010) released 2 separate audio drama cds (and cassettes), based on both movies called "Drachenfaust" ("Dragonfist") and "Fusion", i dont own this two.
besides this two last ones mentioned, the artwork of the other releases are often inappropriate ...
like volume 3 of the Dragonball Audio Drama which features artwork from dbz movie 11, or volume 6 with artwork from Dragonball Movie 2. Vol. 4 of the DBZ Audio Drama features Artwork from Son Goten within Boo, but the disc is about Radditz.
The Lable situation of the Dragonball Z audio dramas is a bit confusing too,
the first 6 Cds/Cassettes where produced by the media production company "discovery entertainment", and released/distributed by KOCH Records, from 2001 - 2002. The last three CDs/Tapes where produced by another media production called "Fährhaus Ton" which also produced the first 9 Dragonball AUdio Dramas also. The Z Productions of Fährhaus Ton where produced for "Spacy Tracy", an Universal Music Sublable, or Universal Family Entertainment.
Spacy Tracy released also Dragonball, One Piece, Beyblade and other Audio Dramas ten years ago, but the company is closed now.
... if you have any questions, feel free to ask