EMI Says ITMS DRM-Free Music Selling Well 239
An anonymous reader writes "'The initial results of DRM-free music are good' says Lauren Berkowitz, a senior vice president of EMI, at a music industry conference in New York. Berkowitz went on to say that the early results from iTunes indicate that DRM-free offerings may boost revenue from digital albums as well as individual songs."
Shock! (Score:5, Funny)
Amazing!
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Re:Shock! (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever encoding e-mail addresses should be called, DRM it is not. It doesn't limit you in any way.
Let's not confuse the meaning of terms like this, that's not helpful.
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Re:Shock! (Score:5, Informative)
You may not like it, but please don't confuse the issue by calling it DRM. It's metadata, even potentially useful metadata, that discourages copyright infringement while not in any way restricting fair use. You can copy those files to any device, or even transcode them into any other format, easily stripping all metadata in the process. Totally different than DRM, where you have to actually break encryption or suffer quality loss in order to do that.
If we're gonna love someone for providing DRM free tracks, remember Amazon is providing actual unencoded MP3s.
Except that they haven't opened their store yet. So don't go lauding them when you don't even know that they're not going to include the user id of the person who downloaded the song in the metadata.
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Well, if we're making up definitions these days, I'm calling your post a monkey made out of dragon feces.
Re:Shock! (Score:5, Informative)
Watermarking is not DRM. It's watermarking. DRM controls when and how you are allowed to use the content, and watermarking does not. It only provides a [potential] trail of culpability. If you are modded down, it will be at least half because you are simply wrong - although I have been hit hard by fanboys as well, Apple and otherwise. Right now it's the OSI fanboys modding me down for pointing out that Perens' claim to invent the idea of "open" source is false and that "open" meant something before he opened his mouth on the subject. I suspect you suffer for the same reason I do; some people mod me down any chance they get to make a plausible-looking negative moderation, simply because they recognize me and disapprove of that for which I stand.
Er, anyway, back on topic: Watermarking is, by definition, not DRM.
Re:Shock! (Score:5, Informative)
And this isn't watermarking. Digital watermarking changes content to encode some kind of message. When you buy DRM-free tunes from iTunes, the actual content, the AAC stream, contains no watermark. If you buy the same DRM-free song from five different accounts, all the AAC streams will be bit-for-bit identical. All that's included is a tag, in plaintext, which contains your info. You can read it, you can edit it, you can remove it. Not DRM, not a watermark.
Spiltting hairs (Score:2)
You have to call it something, and to my mind watermark is an acceptable term even if it's a variant of the core meaning.
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How about a 'metadata tag' or even just 'tag'?
Maybe, if you interpret the core meaning of a "watermark" as simply a "mark". But then why have this separate word 'watermark'?
This iTunes thing is the same as the serial number on the bottom of your laptop, or the service tag stored in bios (if you have a dell or whatever). Actually, the iTunes thing is even MORE transparent -- its your bloody
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That does not imply a unique value per file the way the term "Watermarking" does automatically.
Maybe, if you interpret the core meaning of a "watermark" as simply a "mark". But then why have this separate word 'watermark'?
Those are pretty interchangeable terms though, watermark being more a specialized term for a technique of marking paper... but I would still argue in the shift to the digital domain the meaning is more of uniqueness than ability to remove (I wo
Re:Spiltting hairs (Score:4, Informative)
Watermarking means no such thing.
Watermarks were used in drafts, demos, and other such things, partly to identify them as such and partly to prevent someone from stealing it. e.g. if you hired a design firm to create a poster for you they might send you a watermarked draft so that you could see the finished result, but if you decided not to pay for it, the poster was still useless because it had a giant watermark through the middle that said 'draft copy - property of design company'. Once you'd approved and paid, they'd send you an un-watermarked version for you to reproduce.
Watermwarks were also used in coporate letterhead, cheques, and other docuements to help prevent forgery and authenticate that they were genuine. For the most part this was just used to help foil attacks. The same way most banks.
Never to uniquely identify individual documents.
but I would still argue in the shift to the digital domain the meaning is more of uniqueness than ability to remove
Again not true. With the digital transition, the primary motivation for watermarks was, as before, to 'damage' files so that people could see images but not steal them due to the watermark. (or more precisely, they could steal the watermarked image, but because the mark was hard to remove it wasn't worth it, and you couldn't leave the mark on for obvious reasons.)
Watermarks have been used for a long time on sites hosting high res photos or other digital art to prevent people from just downloading the image and using it. In order to get an image with the WATERMARK removed, you had to pay for the picture. Because the watermarks were translucent and applied over of the picture they are relatively difficult to simply remove.
Only very recently has watermarking technology been applied like a serial number, to uniquely identifying documents or files.
** Quite Simply there is no 'automatic' association with unique identifiers and watermarks. **
Aha, but that is external to the device, visible and alterable (potentially) by the user. The iTunes mark is not.
The itunes meta tag is not part of the song data, although it is in the same file.
It is visible in the sense that *any* program that can view the meta tags can see it -- and iTunes software itself will show you this information if you tell it to show info about the song. And the itunes tag is EASILY removed and or altered which is the antithesis of a watermark.
The iTunes tag is as much a 'watermark', as putting your email address in the filename.
And a watermark is just as identifiable if a record of which marks were sent to who is kept.
This whole 'invisible digital watermark serial number thats hard to remove' thing is pretty new, and really isn't entirely in keeping with the historical meaning or use of watermarks. Moreover, the apple meta tag is really none of those things. Its not invisible, not hard to remove.
If you didn't like the analagy of the laptop serial number because it was visible and alterable. Consider that at least half a dozen parts inside the laptop are also serialized. And that even if you scratch off the laptop serial number, if someone found the laptop they could not only infer what that number was, but potentially also who bought it.
Point is: laptops aren't 'watermarked' despite having serial numbers. And neither are iTunes files.
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Really, nitpicking about something that was never given a formal definition in the first place is just silly.
Re:No, no splitting hairs (Score:5, Insightful)
The defining feature of a digital watermark is that it cannot be removed given only the watermarked data. That is its point. A digital photograph emblazoned with a watermark cannot readily be transformed into the original. A digital video file with an invisible-to-the-human-eye-digiatl-watermark inserted to allow the owners of the video's copyright to see who has leaked a copy if it to p2p is useful only because the altered bits cannot be reset to their original state.
So you see, the idea of calling this a watermark isn't just fudging the concept slightly. It's nonsense. It is completely trivial to remove the identifying information, so it is innapropriate to call it a watermark because it neither performs the function nor attempts to perform the function of a watermark.
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That may be the ultimate goal, but I have yet to see it be included as a requirement in any formal definition in any fairly standard reference. It's a bit like "encryption". The term encryption implies some notion of security, but it's not really a requirement at all, the Caesar Cipher is a form of encryption even though it's trivial to break. And so we formalize notions such as semantic security and
Again, to the user... (Score:2)
Then to the user, it is a watermark, as it's metadata embedded in the file that cannot be removed by consumer tools.
You can hack other digital watermarks to degrade or destroy them, how is it any different that you can "hack" the file to remove or replace the email address contained?
More and more, it seems a grey area to me to consider any metadata in the same file as data to be off-limits as far as usin
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But with watermarking, I consider it to be something that distorts the original content to apply a notice, and which can't be removed without reconstruction of the content it replaced.
As such, any "normal" reproduction would contain the mark.
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I agree with the grandparent that tag info is
If it is, is including your email in the filename a watermark too? Is placing a (separate) file with your email on a CD with aac files a watermark? Is just printing your name on the CD? Is printing it on a jewel case? All we're doing is playing around (deliberately to the absurd in my example) with what we consider the black box we wish to consider "the content in question". Is it the jewelcase
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Can you prove there is NO steganography? (Score:2)
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It only provides a [potential] trail of culpability.
It may be "watermarking" or not, but the Wikipedia article seems to think so, as quoted here:
"Another application is to protect digital media by fingerprinting each copy with the purchaser's information. If the purchaser makes illegitimate copies, these will contain his name. Fingerprints are an extension to watermarking principle and can be both visible and invisible."
As for whether it's DRM or not, IMHO, it IS. Whose benefit is the "trail of culpability" for? The customer, or the RIAA? Once again, IMHO, any technology that embeds information which ONLY benefits the recording industry should be considered DRM.
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And it's a good thing we don't come to you to give the final say on such matters. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. Your rights are not being managed--at all. You can do what you wish with the file. Another point: technically, when you strip DRM from normal iTunes songs, because it relies on an encryption mechanism, you're in theory, violating the DMCA. There's no encryption with the files being tagged as they are in the non-DRM version. Go to the console
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...but you do come across as the sort of whiny twat who will always find something to complain about when it comes to distribution of payed content, thereby 'justifying' your piracy habit.
Hate to play the part of Captain Obvious, but if you'd read my post, I'd made it pretty clear that I have NO intention of redistributing music. Let me rephrase my issue with the tagging, and I'll use your example:
Why would I need a metatag to tell me something's mine? I know it's mine. I was there when I bought it. Does Apple sticker your name and email address inside your iPod when you buy it? What about any of their computers? Any indication that the iPhone will have the user's information stored a
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Or maybe it's because half the time you're insightful and half the time you're talking out of your ass (or so I've noticed)--but they never have mod points at the right time.
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Perens claims to have invented the term "Open Source": in this comment [slashdot.org].
It is not the same thing as Free Software, even if he DOES claim that, and I don't think he does (at least, he doesn't seem to have here on slashdot today.) It's vaguely similar, but that's as close as you get
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The name you are looking for is Alexis de Tocqueville Institute.
Re:Shock! (Score:4, Informative)
The tags added by the iTunes store make it easy for you to prove that you purchased the tracks, should you need to. If you don't need to, and you think having your name stored on your hard drive is somehow an infringement of your civil liberties, then just remove them. They're stored in standard MPEG-4 atoms, and there are a number of tools for editing them.
Re:Shock! (Score:5, Insightful)
No! They allow you to prove precisely one thing, and that is the tracks contain a completable editable and non-authoratative item of metadata that describes certain data about you. They don't prove who owns the tracks, who bought the tracks, where the tracks have been, who's done what with them - they're a post-it note on a car saying "Dave bought this car". Anyone can put on a new post-it note saying something different, or remove the post-it note altogether.
The amount of FUD on this topic has been unbelievable.
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People like the grandparent, who water down the term 'DRM' to mean 'anything I have an irrational dislike for' are hugely damaging to the anti-DRM movement.
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If you make a one-off embedded controller for a particular purpose and you expect to sell 10 annually, reducing your price will definitely reduce your profits.
Isn't it ironic ... (Score:5, Interesting)
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That's because everything else is bullshit. If you don't care enough to alter your spending habits, then you don't care.
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how about 'nix (Score:2, Insightful)
to buy their 'tunes if you are NOT running M$.
We need an itunes for Linux.
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No, all we need is an iTMS web store that doesn't require iTunes, which would be platform-agnostic and probably require very little work on Apple's part. It would only allow you to download unprotected music (if you don't have iTunes, then the DRM is ineffective) but that's what most of us would want anyway.
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I respect the fact that you're sticking to your guns and avoiding a commercial operating system. That said, I don't think anyone is going to look down on you for, at the very least, virtualizing XP. Is the ideological battle really worth a hundred-something bucks and countless compatibility headaches?
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That's funny. I could have sworn I heard him talk about it in the WWDC 2007 keynote [edgesuite.net] and that there was a bar for it in the performance graph for Safari 3 [apple.com]
Of Course It Is..... (Score:2, Interesting)
Hmmm....this sounds a whole lot like Napster back in the day. Sheesh, it's only taken them six years to come up with a business model that works. Charging us for what we were doing on Napster anyway.
QueenB.
Sad (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know what that is important to this discussion, but if felt like sharing.
EMI Not Releasing Everything DRM-Free (Score:2)
I don't know why there hasn't been more noise about it, but iTunes is apparently making only a tiny fraction of the most popular EMI music available through iTunes plus. For example, Ferry Corsten is an EMI artist, and most of the stuff he's released has been through EMI. Go try to download a non-DRM version of anything he's released. It's just not there. Certain
DMCA is only reason DRM-Free is not music suicide (Score:4, Interesting)
My wife used to use Napster (pre-lawsuit), and Kazaa, but she switched to iTunes because iTunes was more convenient and not choked full of ads, and paying a $1 a song is not so bad. If you add the threat of RIAA letters, then, iTunes seems like a pretty good deal indeed. She also feels a need to support the artists.
But really, the value of iTunes is the convenience and cleanliness, and there's no reason someone could not make a similar, ad-free thing but for file sharing writ large. Really, DRM free on iTunes is predicated on the fact that the recording industry must feel like it is getting some sort of handle on musical file sharing - that is, RIAA lawsuits to music downloaders must actually be working. Were there REALLY no DMCA or copyright controls on music, though, someone would eventually make something with a really cool user interface, like iTunes, but where music would be genuinely free.
Then, musicians would starve.
Re:DMCA is only reason DRM-Free is not music suici (Score:3, Insightful)
I still think there might be a place so someone could show pictures of their work on the internet without having them stolen.
The internet is a system that allows you to download content to your computer. Assuming by "stolen" you mean "put on someones computer and used as they see fit without the copyright holders permission," well, the whole internet is kind of designed to facilitate stealing. Sorry, but that's the nature of the beast.
Were there REALLY no DMCA or copyright controls on music, though, someone would eventually make something with a really cool user interface, like iTunes, but where music would be genuinely free.
Sounds like bittorrent, limewire or any open source file sharing system. The reason that iTunes works is because people often want to do the right thing; it has nothing to do with the DMCA or copy
Re:DMCA is only reason DRM-Free is not music suici (Score:2)
But really, the value of iTunes is the convenience and cleanliness, and there's no reason someone could not make a similar, ad-free thing but for file sharing writ large.
No, there isn't, except for the fact that it would require a fairly large investment, it would meaning risking a lawsuit from the RIAA, and unless you fill it with ads there's no profit in it. Who's going to do that?
Personally, I think iTunes (DRM-less) is the exact right model for legal online music sales. The interface is clean, the s
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Re:DMCA is only reason DRM-Free is not music suici (Score:3, Insightful)
What would prevent them from making live shows? Like, you know, all musicians during the whole human history always did? Have they all starved, per any chance? Or what you actually mean is that current musicians would lose the ability (that their predecessors never had) to work once and, if lucky, profit forever? Because this is not what "work" is supposed to be, and it surely doesn't apply to most of humanity.
Give me a way to do my work once, doesn't matter what it is, and live
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In Soviet Russia...
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According to Google, 99.48% of musicians that have performed live shows are now dead. That's a pretty high mortality rate.
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But then he's making a living from his music. His music that he sells as DRM-less mp3s... that he releases under the Creative Commons license...
Strangely, despite it being perfectly legal for me to give his music away to the world, or for you to download it from whichever file sharing app you want... in other words... despite him making his music available for free... he's making a living.
Re:DMCA is only reason DRM-Free is not music suici (Score:3, Insightful)
Copying CDs has been pretty easy for a long time now... but musicians haven't starved.
Copying copyrighted music has always been illegal... the DMCA didn't make it "more illegal" or whatever.
Some (I would argue most) people really do like to follow the law, even when it's easy not too... those people will always continue to buy the music they want to hear. Not too mention that some of us feel _good_ about buying cds because we like to support artists that we enjoy (even if most of the money doesn't
Re:DMCA is only reason DRM-Free is not music suici (Score:2, Informative)
Re:DMCA is only reason DRM-Free is not music suici (Score:2)
They already have. It's called Oink.
This is a mistake (Score:3, Funny)
I know, I know, I'm a bit of an audiophiliac. I don't want to sound too pretentious. But give it a try! You'll see. Music just sounds better with DRM.
yours truly,
David Massey
More Interesting Numbers Would Be... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmmmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Release DRM-laden, horrific quality tracks
2. Watch consumers buy tracks
3. Wait for consumers to grow angry and realize the restrictions placed on their media
4. Release DRM-free, slightly better tracks
5. Wait for the consumers to REBUY or 'upgrade' all their tracks
6. ???
7. Profit!!
THEN the second round
8. Release slightly better quality tracks...
9. Wait for the consumers to REBUY or 'upgrade' all their tracks...
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Or for Films where you have the DVD, the Unrated Edition DVD, the Directors Cut DVD, The "the microphone guy didn't like the way this scene looked so here is another copy of the DVD for you to buy" DVD, etc
Or even software for example.. Buy Vista home basic, Upgrade it online to Vista Home premium, then upgrade to Ultimate Edition (with a whole other path for business users to do the same!)
Money now or later (Score:2)
It what world is it more beneficial for EMI to get a partial payment now, and then HOPE that maybe they might get a little more later, instead of just collecting the same amount upfront?
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It costs them nothing more to produce.
They can charge extra because it is different. Who ever said that retail price was based on the cost to produce? A $20 widget doesn't cost $10 more to produce than a $10 widget with fewer features.
By now introducing DRM-less tracks, EMI have now made an extra £18 by providing something I should have got in the first place.
EMI doesn't make any more money unless you choose to buy. Why did you b
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To think it was a part of a master plan is to credit the music industry and EMI with way more intelligence than they seem to have exhibited, in terms of sales lost over the years through bad choices.
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Given iTunes sales previous sales figures, I think we're still waiting for this step to happen.
I wish (Score:4, Insightful)
(strictly speaking they'd have to offer it to the the aggregators like tunecore that people like me use)
They will (Score:3, Informative)
I didn't have any songs that were DRM free at launch of iTunes+, but just recently two came up as upgradeable.
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But the problem I have with giving it away is that I never find out if anyone actually likes it! Sure, they can say it's great, but then if they don't think it's worth paying 10 bucks for I've got to wonder how sincere they're being!
Slashdotters, please go buy something (Score:4, Insightful)
So please, find a Mac or Windows box if you have to, but go buy something from the iTunes music store. Even if it's just one album and you then shunt the AAC files back to Linux to listen to.
Personally, I recommend something from the Mute back-catalog.
(And yes, I've bought 2 albums so far, I plan to keep buying preferentially from iTMS at least until the other labels get the message.)
Re:With sales tax it's a buck-fifty !! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sell the songs in CD (or better) lossless format, with no DRM, and then I'll be a customer!!!
This first step, is a baby step...a good one but, a small one. Sell me online what I can buy in a store (quality) without DRM, and then, you've got it right. I'll be buying pretty much all my music online.
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in addition, i'd like them to ship me the liner notes, along with a physical copy of the music on some sort of portable media that's compatibile with my car stereo. and some kind of case to put the media in.
yeah, that'll never happen.
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My main point is that a compressed CD will end up well over 300MB and that's a much bigger bandwidth & storage bill for iTunes
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FLAC takes less CPU to decode than MP3, AAC, WavePak, or Vorbis.
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Have you actually given yourself a blind listening test? 256 kbps AAC is very, very good. I have never seen a study where anyone could tell the difference between 256 kbps files and uncompressed files a significant fraction of the time. Many people claim that they don't like the sound of MP3 or AAC compression, even at such a high bitrate, but they don't back it up with a real test to prove it.
Do you think that p
Re:With sales tax it's a buck-fifty !! (Score:4, Insightful)
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If your device supports CD, then you can burn your AAC songs to CD and have no loss. If your device supports MP3 or WMA but not AAC, it's a pretty shitty device.
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I've got a pretty decent home system. I can hear the difference of good vs bad recording on it...even with ears
Re:With sales tax it's a buck-fifty !! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sell the songs in CD (or better) lossless format, with no DRM, and then I'll be a customer!!!
You really think you can tell the difference between CD-quality and 256kbps AAC? Doubtful. I call BS. And even if you can tell the difference, and the difference is obvious enough to you that you care, you're one in a billion. For pretty much everyone, 256kbps is near enough to lossless that you could treat it as lossless (even transcode it to another format) and never be able to tell the difference.
And for that miniscule nearly-undetectable drop in quality, you're cutting your download time, increasing the amount of songs you can hold on your mp3 player, and maybe even increasing battery time.
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I don't care about download time. However, if I have a lossless original, I can encode a high bitrate copy for home listening, and a lower bitrate one for my iPod.
That's why I prefer lossless. However, as iPods get more capacious, the need for lower bitrate mobile versions of tunes is going away.
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I don't care about download time. However, if I have a lossless original, I can encode a high bitrate copy for home listening, and a lower bitrate one for my iPod.
Yeah, but what I'm saying is that "high bitrate copy for home listening" isn't going to need to be more than 256kbps, and if you wanted to transcode the 256kbps AAC to 128kbps AAC, it won't sound much different from encoding the 128 from lossless. Unless you're really going to process the sound a lot (like remastering and crap), the 256kbps AAC
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Bandwidth and disk space are cheap and becoming commodity things...not really the consideration or impediment they once were.
Besides, I wouldn't mind paying more for lossless than lossy. I can afford it easily. Even if they sold it at normal CD prices (like what, $11 $12 on sale at BB?)...I'd pay that much for online purchases. Just saving me a trip out to the box store to fight crowds, traffic and burn gas would make it
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Download times mean nothing to me....and not everyone ONLY listens to music on a portable player, or car stereo. Some people have nice stereo systems at home too....I like to have choice about the quality of the sound based on where and what I'm using to listen to it.
What do you have against more choice?
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I'm in favor of choice. I'm just tired of all the FUD from the anti-Apple crowd. "I need lossless!" and "I don't want to use Apple's proprietary format!" and "Apple is watermarking the audio! That's the same as DRM!"
I don't really care whether you buy shit from Apple, but right now Apple has the best possibility of convincing the rest of the big 4 to drop DRM. If Apple is successful, we're more likely to end up with more choice.
And honestly, seriously, do a blind test with the nicest stereo equipment
Havent you heard? (Score:2)
I figure they built there own bionic ear or something...or are delusional.
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Re:On AVERAGE 256 is okay, but it's not ALWAYS oka (Score:2)
All sound formats, including analog ones, are lossy. The question isn't whether compression artifacts will be present, but whether and to what degree they are noticeable.
Even for the "best possible" (with our current technology) you'd need a way higher bitrate than CD, and then you truly are talking about impractical file sizes for consumer use.
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I think the poster is referring from the original loss when encoding from the actual performance to a digital recording. (And whatever signal compression they use, etc).
Even following NyQuist, you put a limit on how much sampling you need to do in order to reproduce a certain amount of information... but there's likely more that you could get if you tried. (it just may not matter to most)
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... if true, it is more than compensated by the fact that the hard disk has to spin up much more often at lossless (700 kbps) bitrates than at 128-ish bitrates.
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Currently, that is what I'm forced to do....either that or 'back up' copies of songs from friends' CD's, much like we used to do as kids with albums and cassettes.
But, that puts me at a disadvantage. Some more modern stuff...I don't like but one or
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