The Revolution Starts Now

[octothorpe]

The music revolution, anyway.

EMI music on iTunes -- now DRM free and higher quality

256kbit AAC files Without any DRM available on iTunes, starting in May!


256k AAC is what I'd call CD quality. You don't get *nearly* the crunching in the fringes of percussion as you do in lower bitrates, unless of course, your original was poorly recorded (which, sadly, is most modern masters)

Comments

[jeffinthebox.livejournal.com]

That's good news.

[fj.livejournal.com]

Would you opt in to this as a musician?

[jeffinthebox.livejournal.com]

Probably, yes. Threre's risk, but DRM is like putting a lock on your front gate...it only keeps the honest people out.

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

Indeed I hope this is the beginning of a trend; if so, we might get an unquestionably legal music site that offers the kind of customer choice in codec and encoding rate that AllOfMP3 does.

I like the idea that if I'm willing to pay a bit extra, I can get my files in a format like FLAC or perhaps Apple Lossless. If not - I like being able to choose between MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis (my favorite), WMA, and so on.

[theoctothorpe.livejournal.com]

But you're never going to get a choice at the iTunes Store, as that goes against their user experience guidelines. Having a single click to download lowers the barrier of entry for people. Most get confused when confronted with jargon. Alas, we're not "the mainstream". I too, would like to see a lossless DL, but for right now, a 256k AAC file is "good enough".

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

Oh, it wouldn't be iTunes, though in a post-DRM world I would find it very difficult to understand why they wouldn't find a way to offer Apple Lossless.

It just strikes me that there's a lot of people who are very particular about their music. Some of them (like me) have favorite audio codecs; while I honestly can't hear a difference between Vorbis and AAC - I prefer Vorbis because it's nonproprietary and unencumbered by patents. A site that caters to such people - by offering codec (including lossless options) and bitrate choice would appeal to such people.

I don't know if you've ever used AllOfMP3, but you set up your "favorite" codec/bitrate when you first join, and while you can choose something else for a particular song if you want to - most purchases are an easy click-through using that preference.

[theoctothorpe.livejournal.com]

Yes, I have used AoMP3 (and love it!), but again, most people don't understand the choices. We do, so we don't even think about it, but we're the 0.001%.

The only reason I don't use Vorbis is that it's not better enough for me to migrate from AAC. AAC is an open standard, but patented (and also not free-as-in-beer). I really don't care, as I own software that gives me a license to encode. Personally, I really don't have a philosophical reason for denying software, other than non-open standard file formats.