Hi folks,

I have been reading this site for a number of months and I must say this site rocks! I have learned a lot in a short amount time and I am glad to be a member- thanks.

Getting to the point! I am currently on a project to develop a legal music download website dedicated to independent artist and DJ's- this is a pay per song website like iTunes without Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, and company. Nothing wrong with them, but not my market you know what I mean.


I wanted to get an opinion from anyone who purchased music over the Internet and not downloaded a file using bit torrent or P2P websites. I know there's alot stuff out there for free and some purists definitely think it should all be free, but that is another debate altogether and could possibly be discussed at a later date.

So my question is, do you think there is a market that would be willing to purchase a song or album in a lossless format flac, Ape, etc. as an alternative to MP3 or Ogg Vorbis?? The benchmark price is .99c for a typical MP3 that is about 5-6 MB, and lets assume encoded at 192 vbr for most download sites, except I belive iTunes is different. Would you pay double the price for lossless in FLAC, or Ape?? Or is there no market and I should just stick with the standard formats because of its wide use and popularity.

I would like honest opinions and the truth about what poeple think about legal download websites. If there is anything else, feel free to comment further and we can turn it to another direction.

Thank you for your participation.

Lossless is the ONLY format I would spend money on. I don't buy from iTunes because the quality is inferior to CD. If they had lossless avaiable I would buy. So my answer is yes.

I am interested in lossless music. Actually I am only interested in lossless downloads if I am to pay for it. Have a look at Magnatune (info page). I think their approach deserves an applaud. Many of us HA users don't buy albums before they hear it first, so magnatune is quite good in that aspect too. Also I'd recommend WavPack be included instead of APE as it fares better in many aspects (see comparison of lossless codecs). Another item on my wishlist is the option of downloading single file images with embedded cuesheets. Another one is inclusion of all album artwork as a separate pdf file.

There iis someone that has attempted to do big label Lossless: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=34529

I have already bought Autechre's Untilted album in FLAC format from Bleep, and I'm a little surprised that they haven't released more albums losslessly. The price is $14 for 8 tracks and 70 minutes which IIRC is pretty steep ($1.75/track), since I'm missing out on the album art and physical medium. OTOH, the track offsets are perfect, and I was able to listen to the album 5 hours earlier by buying it at work instead of waiting to drive to the store

I would not pay $2/track unless it was one or two specific bands. Assuming a decent preview system like Bleep's where I have a really good bead on what I'm downloading, I could justify $1.50 a track.

Now, one thing I WOULD shell out the bux for are esoteric editions, such as high resolution (ie 24/96) original digital masters, the direct mixdown outputs, etc. I admit that I still wouldn't be interested in all but a few bands, but for those, I would not have a problem spending $3/track for what are effectively the digital masters that come straight out of the studio, representing the artists' and producer's original intent. There is a large market on HA for relatively unprocessed and dynamic music that could be rather easily filled by offering multiple versions of the same album. And really, the only way you COULD release stuff like that is through lossless downloads, unless you want to do a lot of horsing around with DVD-A which hardly anybody listens to anyway.

Same as tev777 and atici. Will buy music on line only if at least CD quality, i.e. lossless.

This is not because I can tell a 44.1 Khz 16bit PCM from a proper MP3 or AAC encoding, but because I don't know what format I will use 5 or 10 years from now. I want, at that time, be able to re-encode my music without any "generation loss".

Having the possiblity to download album art and other information too will be a BIG plus, for me.

Sergio

Why not offer both?
MP3/AAC/Vorbis (cheaper) for people that just don't care and lossless (more expensive) for the purists.

My 0.02

I too would only buy lossless online, not because I have great hearing but because having to eventually transcode with loss is not acceptable at 99c/track.

CDs have already established a minimum price and quality. the physical CDDA disc is not great for ripping but pressed CDs are pretty good for backup, so the download should be cheaper than CD. this is compensated for anyway by the much cheaper cost of delivering a FLAC than a CD.

Josh

The only way I would ever spend money on a download would be if it's lossless. So my answer obviously is yes. However I would not pay double the going rate (which is $1 per download in this scenario I would assume) as I think this is already too much to ask for something that is essentially very low quality (lossy). It's like paying gourmet prices for fast food. I especially would not pay for lossless downloads that when added up, cost more on average than buying a physicial CD, which has no DRM (most of the time) and includes nice packaging (I like having covers and what not). The most important thing is freedom to do what I want with my downloads, ie: play them on any equipment I own (PC, DAP, home stereo, car stereo, etc).

Most important is what your target market will accept, and NOT necessarily what this forum's members (personally) think.

Lossless will almost always result in a larger volume of data than lossy, which will result in a lessened download experience for many customers.

Their portable players will probably not cope with the format, meaning they will have to transcode the tracks themselves (which will require a greater competence on their part, potentially reducing your customer-base). You could/should suggest/supply a transcoding application (flac/wavpack -> mp3/ogg) for their use in this case.

Of course, you could target two customer-bases: those who will be content with "good enough" lossy encodes (charge them one rate), and the more discerning (or aurally insecure) customers who want the flexibility to choose their own lossy or lossless formats (and charge them another, higher rate).

If some of the recordings are going to be live-performances, consider whole-album-single-file downloads with a cue sheet (as atici said above). This will assist in the minimization of introducing gaps between tracks. Maybe you would only supply such an option for live-performances.

Downloadable albumart (JPG would be fine) would be nice.

Also, I would consider only two suppliable formats, perhaps wavpack (for flexibility) and MP3 (for compatibility).

Personally, I would pay more for some few lossless tracks, but would be happy with lossy on many more tracks.

edit: Spelling.

This being HA I expect most people here have higher standards in their music. However, as someone who's more interested in the technology, I think my standards are probably closer (hence, lower) to that of the average person.

Having said that, the existing lossless format is good enough. Would lossless format be better? Of course! But the majority of people simply don't care.

It's an unfortunate truth that at least in the tech sector, good enough usually trumps best. If not, 95%+ of the people wouldn't be using Windows, Linux would be 100% POSIX compliant, C/C++ standard conformace among compilers would be a non-issue...the list goes on.

I will never buy lossy music. If I were going to pay for music it would have to be lossless. If a lossless pay service existed It would help greatly if the music was ripped from CD's properly, or taken from the masters. But lossless is the IMO the only real future for music on the internet, aside from streaming/radio.

I would think that potential customers would be limited to some subset of people having broadband access. Someday that may mean mostly everyone, but today the cost increase of broadband over dial-up isn't even a mildly interesting consideration for me nor, I suspect, for a great many other people.

I'm a FLACer, so I'd pay for lossless downloads.

The problem is, if you charge more than $1 per song your getting into the price of just buying the CD. A CD with 15 songs that costs $15 is already $1 per song, and since I'd be ripping and encoding it myself, I can be sure about the integrity of the extraction and encoding processes.

I usually buy used CDs at anywhere from $0.01 to $4.00 each. A downside to that is waiting for delivery instead of having the product immediately as a download would provide. Another consideration is that buying an album may give you some songs you don't care for, but I generally prefer having an entire album just the same.

For me, the essential trade-off would be between extraction integrity and immediate availability. Because of this, my opportunity cost of a losslessly-encoded song would average $0.50 or so. That's the incentive threshold necessary for me to download rather than wait a few days for a CD that costs up to $4 plus shipping and rip it myself.

The only music I've bought online is lossless. I intend to keep it that way.

i would love for there to be a lossless downloading service.

actually, the best service would let the customer choose the codec (whether it's lossy or lossless); choose VBR, ABR, or CBR; and any target bitrate. it would also be nice to be able to just download the original .wav file if one so desires.

price is an issue though. as nero pointed out, it can actually be cheaper to buy the cd in some cases. songs need to be less than $0.99. perhaps there could be a discount if you buy the full album, or maybe a few of the songs could be given away for free.

something my sister would like to see implemented is that with the downloading of songs, you also download ID tags instead of creating them yourself when you rip a cd. if you're going to download the ID tags, then why not put some extra goodies in them? my sister would like to see lyrics to be added in to their respective song. it would also be nice to get artwork with the song. the artwork can be anything from a picture of the album cover to a PDF file to a fully functional flash object.

to tackle the internet speed issue, it'd be awesome if there were music downloading kiosks in music stores where people could plug in their portable player, or have the songs be saved on a cd if the customer doesn't have a portable player.

+1

I would only be happy to spend money on a lossless version.

Also, current pricing, especially here in the UK, is prohibitive for me. Why should I spend almost the same amount to download all tracks from an album in lossy format for near the price of the CD? Last time I looked it was around 80-90p for one track - which on a 12 track album equates to £9.60-£10.80. I can buy chart CDs online for £8.99!

It's a shame, as I would buy a lot more music if it were more fairly priced, which distribution over the Internet should allow it to be.

We get ripped in the UK anyway.

Well, i'm starting a new distro here in Italy.
My politic is simple: lossy is for promotional purpose (32KHz/mono/vorbis@q0) and lossless (flac) is for selling.

Bandwidth costs are really important, so the better method to tranfer a lossless file is certainly BitTorrent...

Anyway we prefer to sell physical CDs (manufactured on-demand) @ 5 €uros.

Ditto!

I agree with everyone that the only way I would buy music online would if it was lossles (preferably FLAC). $1 a track seems kind of steep though...I can't believe people pay that much for a crappy (more than likely 192Kbs, CBR) mp3.

In my way of thinking, with their being no manufacturing or distribution, other than bandwidth, which can't cost as much as shipping, the cost should be much less than a CD you can buy in a store. Seeing as how most of the albums I buy are from obscure metal labels that sell there CDs for $10-12 with free shipping, paying $15 for a lossless album with no case, booklet and that I would have to buy blank discs to archive would not be worth it.

I'd love for the idea to be fully realized though. Down with the mega-labels!!!

I once used to explain to my colleagues that the highest bandwidth and cheapest data transmission method is... a truck fully loaded of magnetic tapes. Nobody ever proved me wrong on that.

My statement should probably nowdays amended in "loaded of DVDs" or something like that, but the idea remains the same.

I anyway always had to admit that latency of this transmision method is quite high.

Sergio

I would only buy if it is lossless and if at least 30% cheaper than the CD. For long term backup I believe the pressed CD is the best. I have some 18 old CD-s which are still fine. If you cannot provide this you have to drop the price. I know there are suckers out there who buy even WMA with DRM at 128kbit for 1 dollar, but they are just stupid and you cannot base a business on that.

Finally and more importantly if you do not have good mastering (ie you follow the loudness race) then you will not get a penny from me. If I learn that your store has excellent reputation in mastering and create dynamic crisp CD-s I will throw serious money to you.

Even with petroleum prices the way they are?

Well.. I hope in a few (?) years I can amend it again into: "... a clean, environmental friendly, hydrogen fueled truck..." Loaded of what? Blu-ray discs? Holographic crystals? Who knows...

Sergio

This is along the lines of what I think they should do. I think there needs to be a price ceiling per album, like $10-12 no matter how many tracks are on it. This would encourage people to buy complete albums as it would be a better deal, and it would stop the record labels from asking artists to limit the number of tracks to 10 or less because of the flat fee per track deal. Individual tracks would still cost around 99 cents though, and you could "upgrade" to the complete album if you've already bought some of the tracks for whatever the difference is.

I too would only pay if it's lossless, but another requirement I would have is no DRM, and that's just not going to happen. I would be fine with it, and expect it, on a subscription service where you're just renting the music, but if I'm "buying" it I don't want to be limited as to what I can do with it. There may come a day when I will no longer be able to do that (such as will probably be the case with HD movies on HD-DVD/Blu-Ray and the much stronger copy protection), but if I have the option of buying something unprotected or at least easily broken, I'll hold out as long as I can.

BTW, I wonder what they do when there are just a few long tracks on an album. Can you buy "Wish You Were Here" for $4.95 on iTunes, or do they just conveniently not carry it?

while i did not read the whole thread, i'm not really interested in lossless downloads anymore. i used to be, but now, i'd rather just buy the actual cd, and the rip it myself. that way i can be sure of the ripping quality. also, i like seeing the cd insert, and having the original cd as a backup...

LOSSLESS FORMATS SHOW RESPECT

Releasing music online commercially in any lossless format is more than just smart, it's respectful.

And isn't the lack of basic respect the major reason the hopelessly broken major label business models are worth forgetting about forever in the first place?

1------It's Respectful to the artists who slaved to make a high quality product, and now they will know that it's being delivered to the consumer sounding like it is supposed to. Integrity of the content is job one for any music label. And the most evil thing about file sharing is not the loss of artist income, but seeing the fidelity of fine works of Art treated so shabbily in the frenzy of cloning. And seeing them seperated from ALBUM into SINGLE, unlike the intention of most of the original artists who created them.


2------It's respectful to the consumer because he can choose the codec of his choice at home to rip to his portable, AND, change his mind and choose another one at a later time by rencoding from his master. He is more likely to archive the music in more than one place at full resolution. (instead of ripping it to his portable, and then losing the CD, etc ) But you still give them the convenience of buying it online. And the interactive shoppng experience, with Query of simular cuts, etc.


One of the best parts for you running an INDEPENDENT label, is that it sets you so clearly apart form the Majors. Because guess what, this is the big fives worst nightmare. They are gonna drag their heels, and I suspect when they do lossless themselves, sabotage the audio in lossless, just to make sure that THEY have a better copy than we do !!

They know DRM is futile. Don't make the mistake of not seeing this youself. Apples iTunes only occurred at all, because a lossy iTunes download keeps them in control of the content, so they can sell it again to everybody who eventually gets a new stereo, and notices how bad Codec audio is. Or, realizes how stupid it ALWAYS is (IMHO) , to buy the single, and so then they come back to get the whole album. They also saw the first experiment was only for MAC users, and no Windows version right away, so the small user base of MAC didn't scare them so bad.

Without selling their catalog lossy, they would have NEVER consented to selling individual tracks on Apples iTunes. As a lossless indi label, You become the new king by being REAL about all this.

Of course you don't sell codeced audio as a product, and treat this as somehow 'Normal". Why would anybody ever want to do that?


3-------THE ULTIMATE RESPECT is to sell your catalog without any DRM.

GET A GRIP. Ignore all the naysayers, and only sign bands willing to sell their music without DRM on ANY format, DVD-A, SACD, CD, etc. Get it in writing. Make it a primary REASON your label exists.

All DRM does, is force the consumer to go into the analog realm to do his copying. That's it, end of story. The rest is just HELL for the consumer Which immediately screws up benefit 1---Catalog fidelity integrity AND sales. You are better than this as a human, and your musician roster deserves it in the end, whether they realize it right away, or not.


4------EVEN MORE RESPECT= Here's is what I would do. Only allow people to buy the whole album at a discount over the individual singles price equivilent added up in price, but only if they accept the full album copy in a Lossless format.

Breaking up albums into singles if a living member of the band never approved this action, is like colorizing a B & W movie....it is just sad. The sooner we all get tired of this idea, the better, IMHO. See point # 1.

I would personally go further, and sell albums ONLY, no singles, but for $5-10 bucks each. But this probably won't go over as easy as dumping the DRM.....so it may be business suicide......


MICRO--PITFALL= No one Lassless Format is even near universal yet. So you may have to post 5 or so different versions in 5 different lossless formats of each piece of content on your servers. Which should not stop you from doing it;; your bandwidth costs don't change, just server space requirements. Just budget for it !! The good news, is that many common mainstream computer audio players players have some form of lossless playback capability built in already. You can start this respectful solution today.

Not if you're Harvey Danger! You can legally d/l their new album here http://www.harveydanger.com/downloads/ at APE 3.90.3 (of course)

users' point of view:

It is easy today to select the Lossless formats of preference:

1. WavPack -x -m
2. Flac -8

Both formats are open source, and so playable on any/most platforms.
Both formats with mentioned settings have very fast decoding speeds, suitable even for portables decoding.
Both formats are "error robust."
Wavpack -x -m has better compression than flac -8, so personally I prefer wavpack -x -m over flac.
So, for Lossless format it is enough, if you just select one of the 2 mentioned.


If you want to sell music lossy:

* for universality: offer mp3/Lame with setting -b 320 / -V 2 or -V 4, dependent on targeted size, see the mp3-lame recommended settings topic here.

* for quality: offer it in MPC format, --quality 7-8 for exceptional high quality,
quality 5 for high quality, but low bitrates/size !
Other settings don't make much sense imo.
alternative would be Ogg in quality 7, comparable to MPC. But with MPC, you would be cool !

And yes, the Lossless downloads (drm free of course) need to compete with the prices for normal CD, the download needs to be cheaper, (due to missing?) artwork, booklet.

I am in the market for lossless downloads of CD's at a price less than the physical CD. I currently buy physical CDs, rip them, and then compress them using flac, but I'm not religious about how or if they're compressed.

I will NOT pay MORE than the price of a CD for downloads, so it seems $2/song is too much.

Mark