That's weird. Probably around half of the cds I have have an outer ring similar to that. The outer ring is just the area on the disc that has no data on it, varying in sizes depending on how long the album is, for instance I have a 10 minute long cd that has an outer ring 4 times or more larger sized then the inner ring. I assume your cd player doesn't detect that there is no data there and tries to read the outer edge because it thinks there is data on it, causing the cds to skip. Probably should get a newer cd player.
