Music downloading

[Feek]

Music sharing always seems to be a hot topic in the press these days, most recently with Lily Allen saying her bit about it.

I have a big problem nowadays and that's convenience and quality. I want both. I know that there's practically no easily audible difference between an MP3 at 320kbps (or even 256kbps) and a lossless format but I'm a bit of a snob about audio and if I can get it lossless then I'd much rather go that way. The fact that I don't really have the audio hardware to tell the difference is really unimportant, I'm taking future upgrades into account.

If I want an album, I generally want it straight away. I don't mind waiting half an hour or so, but now means now. Not tomorrow, not next week but now.

This is what happened yesterday evening.

I wanted the new Muse album. I looked on iTunes and it's there but iTunes is a 256kbps download and I strongly feel that if I'm paying for music, I want it in a format where I get to decide how I store it, this means that the original format I download must be lossless.

Amazon is the same. It's not a lossless download.

So what options do I have? I can wait until today and buy it in the high street but that means I have to wait until I get home before I can listen to it, or I can order it online which will take a few days to arrive. I'm impatient, I want it now.

If iTunes or Amazon were to give me a lossless download, I'd buy it straight away but they don't so it's off to the less savoury parts of the internet to try and find it. I quickly found a FLAC version which downloaded in little over twenty minutes, I converted it to .wav, threw it into iTunes, converted to Apple Lossless, added album art, sorted out the tags and job's done in less than half an hour. Convenience and quality, I have both. I'm satisfied.

The issue now is that because I've got the album (it was convenient and the quality is superb), I don't feel the need to go and buy the physical media. I know I should, but there is no direct benefit to me to do so.

What's the solution to this? Well in my case it's not blocking illegal downloads but making full exact duplicates of the original source available to buy online. Five years ago it made sense to compress music downloads because bandwidth was limited but in these days of fast internet connections there is no reason not to sell music at the best quality setting.

[divine]

Well, there is a reason - bandwidth cost.

A CD at 192k is what, 90MB? 320k, 150MB? FLAC, 450MB?

The difference that would make to bandwidth costs if everyone wanted the highest quality would be huge and so prices would probably be higher to compensate. Bandwidth is not an issue to the end user, for the source though, the effect is huge. Trouble is, too high and then people just decide its too expensive and pirate it because it isn't 'value for money' any more. They could try and use torrents but some ISPs block torrent traffic outright now.

The trouble with music piracy is that it can provide the best product for absolutely zero cost to anyone pretty much. A business can't compete with this in a way that pleases everyone. Some want best quality and will pay for it, some want the cheapest possible even if its 128k MP3. Catering for everyone just makes things more expensive again.

[Flibster]

There are places that do sell lossless tracks - but not many.

I buy a lot of CD's - I generally get 2-3 a week... They then get ripped and stored on the server and the originals are stuck on the shelf.

Due to the inability of the record industry to get it through their thick skulls that people want the lossless and the ability to downconvert if necessary I'm feeling no sympathy when they whine. Actually, I've felt no sympathy for them for a long time now.

I can really recommend www.livedownloads.com - excellent quality and prices are reasonable. It's mainly live shows, but there are some albums on there too.
I got the complete Crowded House set off them a year and a bit ago - still have them on the playlist.

I would happily switch to a company that supplies FLAC files, good quality artwork and the complete booklet as images or PDF - and would cost less than the CD - but they don't - so I can't.

[Del Lardo]

Originally Posted by divine

Well, there is a reason - bandwidth cost.

A CD at 192k is what, 90MB? 320k, 150MB? FLAC, 450MB?

The difference that would make to bandwidth costs if everyone wanted the highest quality would be huge and so prices would probably be higher to compensate. Bandwidth is not an issue to the end user, for the source though, the effect is huge. Trouble is, too high and then people just decide its too expensive and pirate it because it isn't 'value for money' any more. They could try and use torrents but some ISPs block torrent traffic outright now.

The trouble with music piracy is that it can provide the best product for absolutely zero cost to anyone pretty much. A business can't compete with this in a way that pleases everyone. Some want best quality and will pay for it, some want the cheapest possible even if its 128k MP3. Catering for everyone just makes things more expensive again.

I really can't see how bandwidth costs come into it. So only source I have for bandwidth pricing is Astraweb so if someone in the know wants to rework my figures then go ahead.

So Astraweb will give you 180GB of bandwidth for $25 (lets ignore the fact that they give me ~500GB/month for $11 on their unlimited DSL package) and assuming that a FLAC album is 500MB, 192K is 90MB and 320KB is 150MB that gives us the following costs for bandwidth....

FLAC - $0.07
192k - $0.01
320KB - $0.02

Now obviously there is a high %age cost difference but if a service charged an extra $0.05 to get FLAC instead of mp3 I doubt that many users would be too bothered.

[Mark]

Given that Apple is still the dominant player, that their players don't support FLAC (though they do support Apple Lossless, obviously), and that most MP3 players sold are still in the single digits GB, and you probably have your answer.

Add to the fact that the people who want FLAC/Apple Lossless are a very small (yet vocal) minority and you have another answer.

Oh, and if you want another, there's the ISP customers with their 1GB, 5GB, and 10GB packages, Vigrin Media M customers, and so forth. How many FLAC albums would they get a month? Not many.

I've recently joined the FLAC brigade, but not for quality reasons. I got fed up re-ripping everything every time I wanted to make a format change (what is flavour of the month now for me might not be in a month). For example, normally I use MP3, but iPods/iPhones prefer AAC, so instead of re-ripping I can just re-encode the FLAC files. In the process, I discovered I'd made a goof-up with the track number tags. Last time I'd probably have had to re-rip. This time, I wrote a script in half an hour which corrected the tags for every album in my library.

[Glaucus]

I'm the same. If I could get flac then i would buy mp3's at he moment though. I'm just using Spotify and my old collection for on eh move. When flac or other lossless format is available I will be spending hundreds getting an entirely new collection.

[Joe 90]

I'm all about convenience - especially when a it comes to 2.5Mb/s coming through my optical pipe

got a couple of new albums yesterday, mp3 format. 15 seconds each - hell yes!

[Mondo]

I have just "discovered" Spotify and I must say, it is a revelation.

What I think I would do now is listen to the music on Spotify, and if i REALLY like it, then i buy the CD and then rip it to the IPOD. Simple, cheap (instead of buying blind) and best quality.

[Erekosë]

Originally Posted by Mondo

I have just "discovered" Spotify and I must say, it is a revelation.

What I think I would do now is listen to the music on Spotify, and if i REALLY like it, then i buy the CD and then rip it to the IPOD. Simple, cheap (instead of buying blind) and best quality.

I'm much the same - I do like to buy them eventually, although I resent some of the digital prices I've seen - especially since the UK prices are often higher than elsewhere

I'd prefer lossless too, but unfortunately being saddled with an archaic telephone infrastructure it's a bit painful! So, MP3 it is.

[semi-pro waster]

I might be going way off at a tangent here but I rather thought that due to many modern tracks being produced via autotune and with comparatively poor mastering that the difference between CDs and a lower bitrate mp3 was becoming less all the time?

It's not a solution to your quandry in any sense, I'm just wondering if the above information is correct and if it is then the argument for buying new CDs to rip becomes somewhat limited on quality grounds over mp3s.