Roxio resurrects Napster: http://www.napster.com/

Thus far only for the USA, they offer over half a million music tracks for $0.99 each, and $9.95 an album. The songs are WMA files with 128 kbit/s and are apparently not DRM restricted.

Alternatively, for a monthly fee of $9.95, one gets free 96 kbit/s WMA streaming i.e. from commercial-free radio stations plus an unlimited number of downloads, but not from the whole catalogue. Furthermore, the files from a subscription account are DRM protected: Can't be burned, use on three PCs maximum, play licenses expire after unsubscription.

They are directly competing against Apple's iTunes, but it's clear to everyone that they will reach nowhere near the 60 million users Napster once had.

additionally to iTunes, they're competing with this site:
http://www.magnatune.com

The above site has a very limited amount of files, but contrary to iTunes and Napser, 50% goes to the artists, you can get your files as lossless FLAC or LAME-VBR and an album costs 5$ instead of 9.95$.


Additionally, Downhillbattle have set up a bogus site of the napster-revival, located here:
http://www.downhillbattle.org/napster/

Magnatunes is a very praisable way of doing things! It's like the Dell model: cut out the middleman and create a new businessmodel with more profits for the manufacturer (i.e. the artist) and more value for the consumer (lower prices).

Down with greedy record companies !

I'd rather give my money to the artists of Magnatunes then anyone else.

By the way Citay, where did u find all that info on Napster, do u have to install it first?

From several sources, but mostly from this heise (c't) news: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/anw-29.10.03-002/

And yes, you have to install it first if you want to see what they offer. The software is 6.5 MB.

WMA 128 kbit/s?

Who would pay 10 bucks for a 128 kbit/s album? As a preview thing maybe, but as a final product? Not me. Allready one cover and one CD short, don't need inferior quality as well.... but at least it's catching on

Yes, it's disappointing. I also wouldn't pay anything for those 128 kbit/s AAC files either. However, $0.99 for a lossless compressed file sounds fair to me. I mean, i bought several non-copyprotected audio CDs on eBay, for mostly 4 to 5 bucks including shipping! They can't beat that. I'm surprised iTunes has so many customers.

yeah, and - i may be wrong here, not sure - after reading their licence it seems that you are allowed to share their music on p2p for non-commercial use, after you bought it from them!

If this is true, than this is the first music-store i know of which allows this.

- Lyx

There seems to be some confusion on this point but iTunes (and I assume Napster 2.0) doesn't dictate the terms of the musicians' contracts with record labels.

You say Magnatunes gives 50% to the artist but iTunes only keeps a third, giving two thirds to the license holder, which is admittedly often a record label. But if an artist has signed a stupid deal that lets the record label keep the vast majority of licence revenues without providing services (advertising, management, distribution etc.) of equivalent value then that is the musician's own fault.

The independant labels selling music through iTunes however are free to redistribute this money in any way they see fit. CDBaby are offering a service for unsigned acts where they take only a 9% cut: 91% of 66% is by my reckoning better than 50%, and being listed on iTunes is also far better exposure as you are listed amongst acts from the big labels. (see http://www.cdbaby.net/dd for details)

A band such as Pearl Jam (who I am led to believe are no longer signed to a label) can sell their tracks directly through the iTunes Music store and keep the 66% for themselves. Again, why would they want to give up 16% of their income along with the many other benefits of being on a highly promoted and easy-to-use download site? (see http://www.pearljam.com/downloads/ for more, though note that most of the music they have released so far was originally, and continues to be, licensed by a major label)

You really are comparing apples and oranges as iTunes is a store, not a record label, so selling on iTunes has never had anything to do with losing the "rights to their music" and I could just as easily hire an unscrupulous middle-man to buy my musical output and then re-licence my songs to Magnatune with a contract that would allow him to keep the vast majority of the proceeds. Would that make Magnatunes 'bad'?

And if we're talking about giving up rights, how can Magnatunes unilaterally give away rights to other people's music if they are encouraging p2p distribution? Seems odd to me.

it also appears that windows 98 is not supported. only xp and 2000 and i don't think mac and linux users are supported either. soooo this thing appears to be yet another crappy music service that whores itself to microsoft. what a disgrace! and they wonder why p2p is so popular (w00t)

Magnatunes and iTunes may be technically and theoretically completelly different (since magnatunes is also a record-label, while iTunes isn't), but to be honest: i don't care.

I don't care about the reasons, why - on iTunes - i do have to worry how much the artist will get. The only thing which counts for me - as a listener - is that i can be sure, that a large amount of the money will go to the artist.

This is what i was claiming - i wasn't claiming that iTunes is ripping off artists - i was claiming that i can be sure that on magnatunes, the artist will get 50% - while on iTunes i cannot. (except of manually investigating it for every damn album).

So, technically and theoretically you may be right.

But fact is:
- on iTunes most artists will get nearly nothing from the money, because they're in the grip of a major label
- on Magnatune, i can be sure that the artist will get 50%

With all your reasoning and valid points, you still couldn't prove the above two points to be wrong.


About rights and licences - you may want to take a look at the creative commons licence which is used at magnatunes.

EDIT: However.... you were right that it was unfair to include the fact in the comparision, that on magnatune as a record label, artists keep the rights to their music.

- Lyx

anyone knows if napster uses wma9 standard or pro?

I don't know, but the Heise.de news stated that they even have some files that were encoded with WMA 8 and 7.

Speaking only for myself, it will be a pleasure to see this 'new Napster' flop like a fish out of water. What a complete piece of crap.

Highly doubt it's WMA Pro.

Here's a list of supported players according to M$ for the WMA based services (Napster, BuyMusic, etc.).

Emusic


99% of their downloads are now recorded with Lame VBR and alt--preset standard switch.

Nice selection of jazz classics and classical music. Best online music downloads, imho, for my musical tastes. It's still no good for serious home listening of course (classical music at any compression is a joke to my ears) but it's bearable for passive/quick listening with computer headphones or my car MP3 player.

-------
Todd Wideman
President, Indiana Association of Jazz Educators

I'm waiting for a solution that offers FULL WAV bit-for-bit accurate rips of songs right off CD's and I'll pay 99 cents for each one. But I want them just like I own my CD's now (I own more than 2,000). I don't want compromised quality. I don't want DRM limitations. I want the file (and it would be nice to offer them in whatever format I want with a lossless format and decoder offered to make downloading faster), the rights and no limitations.

When that happens, and I'm not holding my breath, they will have a slew of happy customers. Plus it still works. An album of 18 songs will still run you $18 just like it does for a CD now but instead, I'll finally be able to get missing songs from my collection or broken ones without being ripped off or having to spend a millenia in used CD stores.

Could you please provide some evidence for this statement, in order to comply with HA terms of service #8. Perhaps some ABX results comparing an MPC --quality 7 compressed file vs. the original.

I like the idea of magnatunes, but frankly their music selection sucks, and none of the artists sound good. I think Emusic has an infinitely better selection of music (mostly underground stuff) and IMHO is the best online music service right now.. iTunes would have been good if it did not cost as much as a CD.

Actually, he said any compression meaning lossless too.

#8 says...



So... what's the problem? Pre-existing data only says Lame VBR pst is near transparency, not transparent. You don't know what I hear. I can't tell with rock, rap, or most jazz. Classical (90%) is pretty easy FOR ME to pick out any compression (other than lossless of course) even on good equipment. Every individual has different hearing and different training - some of us have perfect pitch. Even the best testers here ranked the different samples in different orders on the newest 64k and 128k tests. Because ITS A MATTER OF OPINION.

Of course for some quick support you can check out my listening today: Bartok Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Esa-Pekka Salonen conduting the LA Philharmonic. This one is so bad even an average listener could pick out - the second movement, Allegro. The strings, right away are so dull (lack of high end and resonance, missing higher harmonics) even at preset extreme; which is what I use unjless its downloaded from Emusic. Then about 2:30 in, the xylphone is a dull thud, and the snare drum accents behind the strings is so far off, it almsot doesnt sound like a snare drum. Bass drum is not the sound of a concert bass drum, and there's more... but thats plenty from just one recording... need more? That was the CD compared to Lame 3.90.3 pse, ogg highest, and WMA vbr highest. WMA gets the closest on the string sound, though.

I did not mean to include lossless and my only point was to offer an alternative to Napster/ipod/etc that does have a decent encoding process that makes most music enjoyable to listen too, at least passively. I love MP3 - instead of having 30 CD in my car - i have 5 or 6, but, for me, its not for serious listening or listening for study - only good for cars and headphones. If you can't tell on most classical music, great - but I can.

I was just trying to help by pointing out EMusic offers Lame VBR --preset standard downloads which are far superior (using your pre-existing data) to other dowloadable music sites using 128k CBR - that's all. Thanks for the warm welcome to the forums

Please back up your claim:

"Classical (90%) is pretty easy FOR ME to pick out any compression (other than lossless of course) even on good equipment."

This is an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary proofs, so it will be very interesting to see what you come up with...

You could start by ABXing the Bartok at --alt-preset extreme against the original, and please post your results.

Please provide some evidence to back up your claim. There's nothing warm or cold about this, it's just the way things are done here.

You're first post in this thread didn't make such a clear statement on any particular quality issue, so many members may have let it go (though any who may not aren't necessarily wrong, either).

However, your last post certainly does make a specific claim within the scope of certain types of music, and for certain codecs and settings.

I hold the same position fewtch does...proof, please? ABX results file(s) along with problem samples (<30 seconds) that were tested will do nicely. That way the creators of these codecs can fulfill their goals, to make psychoacoustic audio compression audibly transparent above a certain acceptable bitrate for listeners.

TIA!

Edit: As for the encoding quality of files downloadable from Napster or any other service, if you don't like what you get from any particular seller, then don't buy any more from them. I do like the idea of downloadable lossless files from a music service, however (for purposes of choosing my own encoding format)...I'll have to look into that...

Can you please provide a small sample of this ? (<= 10 seconds or so) Make sure it's from the original recording, in a lossless format so we can rule out an encoding issue.

If this is really "so bad even an average listener could pick out", it should be easily ABXable for many of us.

Once you have this sample, can you also post your ABX results, please ?

If you are right, and LAME really does this badly on classical music, we are more than interested to know, but we need to have solid proof of this. Also, if you simply state that LAME is bad for classical music, PERIOD, then there is nothing the developers can do about it. If you can provide us one sample where LAME fails, at least this can be properly researched.

Emusic rocked... until they changed their policy (as I mentioned before).

I unsubscribed a couple of days ago.

Most of their downloads were indeed encoded with LAME VBR, but I still found quite a bit of albums (that I wanted) that were encoded in 128kbps CBR.

Their 128kbps MP3s are encoded with an old Xing encoder and they sound absolutely horrible. >_<

Time to split the thread...

There aren't many ways to screw up a welcome to this forum. One of the ways though is to make unsubstantiated claims with regards to technical audio.

Welcome to these forums.

By the way, out of all the lossy formats you are deriding, one of them is Musepack, which has proven its mettle with all kinds of music and currently only runs into bitrate inflation with violin and harpsichord samples. It will be good to ABX this too.

Not sure about pure strings, but vorbis increase the average bitrate with harpsichord too (less than mpc, but deviation is consequent too - at least with mid and high bitrate settings).

I'm interested too by a Bartók sample

Hmmm... I'm not a technician/scientist/audiologist or computer guru, just a music lover/teacher/conductor. So you'll have to enlighten me on ABX and uploading samples to the forums. I'm not even sure I can get MP3/WMA/ etc, back into wav format I'll do some searching on these forums and on the web when I get a few hours free to learn how.

I don't know much about that stuff - only what hear 8-10 hours a day, mostly live (in a range of performance abilites) and always active. If you're looking for technical explainations, I won't be able to help. If you want some samples from my listening experience, that I can do - specifficaly the formats I've tried which are Lame, FastEnc (from MM 7+), wma, Ogg all VBR. I only briefly tried CBR with a little luck for personal taste except on some rock/jazz. Ironically, I've used settings and formats based mostly what people recommend on these forums since many here are the "experts." No need to reinvent the wheel.

I have not tried wavepak (?), MPC or any others since I can't play it on the road. And I won't take the time since I have no interest in the technical/scientific apsects of this stuff. My only interest in lossy compression is in its portability, convenience and ease of use. Like I said, I'm not a technician - only a listener. If that's not good enough, so be it, tell me and I'll save my time trying to put together samples. The formats I have tried extensively, mentioned above, I can help with. There is no guarantee you will hear what I do or I you. If some are interested in what I hear - then I'll give some more info on my hearing ranges for reference and try to best describe the undescribable: putting into writing a description of what one hears.

-------
Todd Wideman
President, Indiana Association of Jazz Educators