zircon Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/04/02itunes.html Speaks for itself. All I have to say is... BRAVO! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katsurugi Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 There was a bit of a foreshadowing of this when Apple spoke to the New York Times about DRM in general. Ultimately, their sentiment was that it was unfair to the end-user that all of the songs purchased could only be used on Apple products. But to see that they actually did something about it in a fairly short period of time is nothing but a good thing. =) (I still use a CD player myself. ; Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JJT Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 smart move. also: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mustin Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 Good to see, good to see. This is why I've preferred eMusic and SnoCap, myself. I want .MP3s! But more importantly, I don't want restrictions crap on the music that I bought! And the higher quality is nice, though it's not going to do much for me. I never listen to music on my good speakers - just Benwin laptop computer speakers and my truck, which is the worst. So 128 is cool. Still, great news. The $.30 more is stupid though. It should be the same price with the two different options. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
analoq Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 i just listened to the broadcast of this announcement. bravo, indeed. i frequently buy music from the iTunes store. i've never owned an iPod (or any music player) so the DRM hasn't been an issue for me -- but this announcement is very exciting regardless. i hope they get Warner Bros. to change their minds on DRM -- i'd love to upgrade my Cibo Matto albums. cheers. The $.30 more is stupid though. It should be the same price with the two different options. the higher-quality DRM-free albums are the same price, at least. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kanthos Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 Not sure how much of the music I've bought from iTunes is on EMI, plus I have an iPod, but I'll likely upgrade whatever I can whenever this initiative makes its way to Canada. Good job Apple! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PassivePretentiousness Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 They're just using this as an opportunity to cave into the studios, who have been pushing for an increase in price for years. Plus, can't you get around the DRM issues by burning it to a CD and ripping it as an MP3? Sure you're going to some sound quality, but that doesn't apply to none-audiophiles like myself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kanthos Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 But it doesn't necessarily boost revenue for the record labels since consumers still have the option of the lower-cost, lower-bitrate DRM files. Paying $1.29 per track for better quality is still cheaper than buying the CD from a record store in most cases, so whichever version you go with, it's still a good deal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PassivePretentiousness Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 But it doesn't necessarily boost revenue for the record labels since consumers still have the option of the lower-cost, lower-bitrate DRM files. Paying $1.29 per track for better quality is still cheaper than buying the CD from a record store in most cases, so whichever version you go with, it's still a good deal. it's a step towards fazing it out. if it catches on at all, they'll dump the $.99 option inside of two years. Also, um, can you make your sig smaller? I'm on a laptop and it stretches my screen horizontally. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Citan Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 I've been watching the conflict between Apple and the RIAA for a while, so I kind of figured something was going to change eventually... This was long overdue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Murmeli Walan Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 They're just using this as an opportunity to cave into the studios, who have been pushing for an increase in price for years. I see this as a compromise between Apple and EMI. EMI gets higher prices for it's music, and Apple gets the restriction-free higher quality music. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
analoq Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 They're just using this as an opportunity to cave into the studios, who have been pushing for an increase in price for years. your theory kinda falls apart when you consider they're selling the hi-fi DRM-free album at the same price. what the labels wanted was to be able to sell certain songs at mandatory higher prices than others -- and the labels still don't have that. what the customers now have is a choice to get their songs in a premium format. everyone benefits. it's a step towards fazing it out. if it catches on at all, they'll dump the $.99 option inside of two years. can't say it won't happen, but Jobs was pretty adamant in the Q&A session about not wanting to take away the .99 price-point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kanthos Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 it's a step towards fazing it out. if it catches on at all, they'll dump the $.99 option inside of two years.Also, um, can you make your sig smaller? I'm on a laptop and it stretches my screen horizontally. Sig change is done. It wasn't exactly my fault; Last.FM, for whatever reason, tends to display a ton of text for classical songs. Most of the time, my sig is small, but since it updates dynamically based on the last 10 songs I've listened to, it stretches once in a while. Since the site has a Last.FM user field in the control panel, I put the information in there instead of in my sig. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmr Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 I don't use iTunes, but I have to agree that this is step in the right direction. Now, if they offered completely lossless files, I'd be more willing to purchase online music. Until then, I'll stick to the CD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zircon Posted April 2, 2007 Author Share Posted April 2, 2007 Completely lossless is a little too much to ask for right now. If you're talking WAV and AIF, bandwidth usage would shoot up by a factor of 5 - at least. Even FLAC etc would cause 2-3x or more increases in bandwidth costs. It wouldn't be worth it for Apple unless they charged people proportionally, in which case it would be far cheaper to just buy the CD. Maybe 10-20 years down the road. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katsurugi Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 It really depends on what you expect out of your music. If you want CD quality, then you should just buy the CD. It's almost usually the case to purchase your songs piece-wise but still, not always. 99 cents a song is good because you get to pick and choose and it's more flexible where you spend your money. But if you care about quality, then the additional cash might not even worth it. I find that more songs are being put onto albums now then they did before. In a sense, you are getting a better deal than before on CDs and you are assured of CD quality. I guess it's a case by case basis. But I've never really been a fan of buying songs through iTunes or similar programs. Most of my music is in CD form. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
analoq Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 yeah, a lossless option might be nice but it doesn't make much sense. if you want lossless so you can convert your music into other lossy formats (Ogg Vorbis / mp3) without cross-encoding, that's reasonable but niche. that would benefit very very few people. now, if you want lossless because you think it sounds better than 256kb AAC then you're wrong -- you can't tell the difference. if anybody says they can, they're wrong too. 256kb AAC is like 320kb mp3; at that point only a machine can tell the difference. research has proven this. cheers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmr Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 I agree that there is no noticeable difference between a properly encoded MP3 / AAC file and a lossless encoding. I just dislike purchasing what I consider to be an 'inferior product', even if the difference is minimal. Plus, I'd rather own a physical version of an album, with all the artwork and all that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Villainelle Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 if you want lossless so you can convert your music into other lossy formats (Ogg Vorbis / mp3) without cross-encoding, that's reasonable but niche. that would benefit very very few people. I disagree that it's of limited benefit, and it's only niche due to consumer ignorance. That's the whole draw of buying lossless hard copies (aside from the weirdos who enjoy the packaging)--you can encode to whatever format and bitrate you want, however many times you want, and you never have to buy it again (assuming of course you treat it well and/or make sufficient backups; also ignoring SACDs and DVD audio etc. for the sake of argument--we can argue about repurchasing when everyone has a multi-terabyte iPod and is listening to surround mixes at 192kHz and whatnot; CD has been standard for some time and isn't dead yet). Music repurchase has been a huge scam every time music media format has had a sea change; we've all read the articles, I'm sure. You even mentioned repurchasing Cibo Matto albums! Robbery. Anyway, lossless is about half the size of WAV. 40-odd MB per 4-ish minute song IIRC? That's about the size of a high-quality movie trailer, and there's been no shortage of bandwidth sacrificed for free for those, so... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bahamut Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 Lossless still takes up too much space - I have over 300 GB of music, and roughly 55 GB is lossless, for what is comparably a lot less music. Lossless does have the benefit of preserving the sound of bootlegs or poor recordings of live performances, but that's as far as all I've really seen it beneficial for - the sound quality benefits is otherwise negligible for how much space it takes up, even formats like FLAC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
analoq Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 I disagree that it's of limited benefit, and it's only niche due to consumer ignorance. That's the whole draw of buying lossless hard copies (aside from the weirdos who enjoy the packaging)--you can encode to whatever format and bitrate you want, however many times you want, and you never have to buy it again 256kbps AAC is good enough for archival purposes. the primary reason you'd want to degrade the quality is so you can cram more music onto your portables.. in which case you're after quantity, not quality -- so cross-encoding would suit this purpose fine. even so, with the cost of flash/HD storage is going down that probably won't even be worthwhile for most. i maintain that lossless downloads are of limited benefit. Music repurchase has been a huge scam every time music media format has had a sea change; we've all read the articles, I'm sure. You even mentioned repurchasing Cibo Matto albums! Robbery. no, i did not speak of repurchasing music, i spoke of upgrading. iTunes will allow you to upgrade your music for $0.30 each to the hi-fi non-DRM format. that's pretty far from robbery. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Citris Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 Yeah, I just read this in an e-mail from DBD. HUZZAH!! This makes me far more tempted to get an iPod now. All I need now is $500... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steffan Andrews Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 Good. Now if only we could get rid of iLok. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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