Lossless online music store

[KRaEzTaIuRmED]

I was just wondering would Borknagar ever think of putting their albums up an online music store that offers albums in lossloess formats like .flac and .wav?

I don't know if it's the same for everyone here, but personally the biggest reason I don't buy digitial versions of albums other then there's no sleeve is the quality of your purchase. You're paying X amount of money for a crappy mp3 when you should be getting something of equal quality to the CD.

 

[Erik Tiwaz]

Hmm, can you really hear the difference between a 256 kbps mp3 and a wav? I thought I did, until I did a blind test.

 

[AnTz0r]

It's not just the average bitrate, it's also about the quality of the encoder. This quality is quite different from 10 years ago A 192kbps mp3 now sounds better than a 192kbps mp3 encoded 10 years ago. I don't really hear the difference either.

 

[KRaEzTaIuRmED]

Hmm, can you really hear the difference between a 256 kbps mp3 and a wav? I thought I did, until I did a blind test.

It's alot more then just the bitrate. Mp3 are a lossy format so they're degrate every time you transfer them across computers.

So say you buy an album online that's Mp3, after a few years of switching it across computers the quality is so bad you can't even use it anymore. The only reason I think you should be offered lossless is because atleast they you're getting something of equal quality to the disc that won't degrate from tansferring it across machines.

I think it's pretty crazy that people pay like 99c for a digital song that's not even of equal quality to the cd they could have bought instead.

 

[Oceana]

It's alot more then just the bitrate. Mp3 are a lossy format so they're degrate every time you transfer them across computers.

So say you buy an album online that's Mp3, after a few years of switching it across computers the quality is so bad you can't even use it anymore. The only reason I think you should be offered lossless is because atleast they you're getting something of equal quality to the disc that won't degrate from tansferring it across machines.

I think it's pretty crazy that people pay like 99c for a digital song that's not even of equal quality to the cd they could have bought instead.

i won't enter into the mp3 vs Looseless debate. I use both, there's no problem if the mp3 is well encoded.

The thing i don't understand is the part where you say that mp3 degrade just for switching it across computers wich is not true. There's no encoding at all when you pass the mp3 through computers or ipods or whatever, only when you rip it from the cd or reencode it to a different bitrate (which is stupid by the way)

 

[AnTz0r]

the whole benefit of mp3 file sharing vs cassette tape trading is that cassettes degrade over each copy and mp3s don't...

 

[Ond]

Mp3 are a lossy format so they're degrate every time you transfer them across computers.

So say you buy an album online that's Mp3, after a few years of switching it across computers the quality is so bad you can't even use it anymore.

That doesn't make any sense at all.
For me the difference between regular mp3 and lossless formats is in the amount of free space I get on my hard drive.

 

[Erik Tiwaz]

People love free stuff, especially good quality free stuff. If they can get their hands on that for free, then it makes no financial sense for them to spend money on a hard copy.
What I mean, is that making wav's available will create even bigger file sharing problems for the artists. Sure, there will be a few people that will pay for the wav's, but they are also likely to share those very files in a file sharing community.
So, it's a definate No from me, unless the wav would be watermarked.

 

[KRaEzTaIuRmED]

My bad

 

[Azzor1911]

Where did you get the crazy idea that the quality of an mp3 file decays when copied from one medium to the other anyway?

 

[Kerros]

People love free stuff, especially good quality free stuff. If they can get their hands on that for free, then it makes no financial sense for them to spend money on a hard copy.
What I mean, is that making wav's available will create even bigger file sharing problems for the artists. Sure, there will be a few people that will pay for the wav's, but they are also likely to share those very files in a file sharing community.
So, it's a definate No from me, unless the wav would be watermarked.

Dunno if it would make that big of a difference to be honest. Lots of people will buy CDs and rip them to FLAC to share with others. The lossless audio files are going to come from someone who buys the CD if they're not available for online purchase. I personally find the idea of purchasing mp3s or even a lossless audio file absurd, but I won't get into that here. Lots of people who are big on file sharing though are also big CD collectors too (at least in the metal scene), so it kind of evens out to an extent. Of course it would be impossible for a person to buy every album they download if they're avidly searching for new music. Alright now I'm just rambling so I'll stop here.

 

[Tantemøkken]

People love free stuff, especially good quality free stuff. If they can get their hands on that for free, then it makes no financial sense for them to spend money on a hard copy.
What I mean, is that making wav's available will create even bigger file sharing problems for the artists. Sure, there will be a few people that will pay for the wav's, but they are also likely to share those very files in a file sharing community.
So, it's a definate No from me, unless the wav would be watermarked.

As far as I remember, I've ripped wav to wav on my computer...
But I'm definitively not a fan of filesharing of music or movies, I've done it a few times, but that was mainly out of curiosity on how torrents works, and there exists legal stuff to download over torrents, linux distros particularly.

 

[Vampyrian]

Where did you get the crazy idea that the quality of an mp3 file decays when copied from one medium to the other anyway?

IMO 2.=D That's got to be some of the silliest shit I've read in a long while. It makes no sense whatsoever.

People love free stuff, especially good quality free stuff. If they can get their hands on that for free, then it makes no financial sense for them to spend money on a hard copy.
What I mean, is that making wav's available will create even bigger file sharing problems for the artists. Sure, there will be a few people that will pay for the wav's, but they are also likely to share those very files in a file sharing community.
So, it's a definate No from me, unless the wav would be watermarked.

This is a bit (well quite actually) silly as well as another poster already pointed out and not that it wouldn't make that big of a difference, it wouldn't make ANY difference at all. You can get quality free stuff already, whatever you want, but the point is that some people would definitely prefer to BUY said good quality stuff as well. And that's what that guy was asking about I guess.
And what's wrong with buying mp3s, not every album is worth buying. I have a ton of crap on my shelves, some albums just have 1 or 2 quality songs unfortunately. But I can't do much about it, we don't have the iTunes store here.=(

 

[Undefined]

And what's wrong with buying mp3s, not every album is worth buying. I have a ton of crap on my shelves, some albums just have 1 or 2 quality songs unfortunately. But I can't do much about it, we don't have the iTunes store here.=(

Then move.