Deutsche Grammophon now sells about 2400 of its classical music albums online, some 600 of which are no longer available on CD. The price is 1.29 € for a single title, albums cost 10.99 € on average, and 11.99 € with a digital booklet. Only credit cards are accepted at the moment.

The files are encoded as 320 kBit/s MP3s, DRM-free, because Deutsche Grammophon thinks that fans of classical music have higher audio quality standards.

The shop will be available in 42 countries.

Deutsche Grammophon Webshop

At 320kbps, why not just offer them lossless? Classical music often gets 50+% compression ratios.

Plaudits for the effort, anyway.

Maybe they think only old people listen to classical and would not figure out this "new-fangled-lossless malarchy."

Kudos for the effort though. If I can't find certain symphonies I know where to go.

Sure, who wouldn't love to have that 3-SACD Abbado/Don Giovanni as lossless DSD
The website looks very well done and seems a great step forward in online music delivery.
Any features missing ? At first sight I can't find any (apart from lossless formats).

I still think that with a bit of clever shopping it's possible to buy the original cd for less than € 10.99
For example, Abbado/Beethoven9 is €11.99 at DGG online whereas the cd is € 4.99 at Amazon (without shipment).

Nevertheless: well done DGG
and thanks for the info, Engywuck.

Kees de Visser

Any information on the encoder used? I could buy a song just to try and find out, but maybe somebody has already done that.

Single track prices depend on their length... I paid 3.49 EUR for a 10 minutes track. Anyway, good to have the service.

True, classical music compresses great. Maybe it is because the world out there doesn't know lossless compression in general...

I think it has more to do with everybody knowing, understanding and being able to play MP3s. If they are compressed with a good encoder they should be completely transparent at that bitrate, shouldn't they?

I am so afraid they haven't chosen LAME, though.

Yes, but it's better to have the "original" (to be precise: the maximum available quality) e.g. if there's need for transcoding.

I think we are getting slightly off topic... but I want to join in anyways.

Completely agree with you on this. And it is like what I said, they think only old people that wouldn't figure out this new-fangled lossless malarchy will use their site. Also, if they used FLAC or Vorbis this site would not have to give Fraunhofer-Gesellshaft some of their profits for using MP3.

I just sent them an email telling them about FLAC (and asking for additional payment methods... not everyone has a CC)

I too just sent an e-mail applauding their effort but lamenting the lossy encoding. I gave them the example of Linn Records where you can get mp3, FLAC, WMA lossless and "Studio Master" versions of a recording. I hope that someday these companies will see the light but until then I will buy CDs and encode myself.

John

DG seem to use a webstore service from Fresh Digital (http://www.freshdigital.co.uk/index.html).

That service provider has also some other interesting customers, like ZTT: http://ztt.freshdigital.co.uk/

I'm excited to see them release DRM-free music, but the MP3 compression is unfortunate.

I've ripped a few hundred (I think close to 500, I'm too lazy to run grep | wc) classical CDs. Even with 320kbps MP3 I've found occasional artifacts, one reason why I use FLAC instead. (The other being that disk space and bandwidth are Cheap, there's simply no excuse for using MP3 for home audio storage.) Not very many artifacts and not often, but enough that I noticed it--first at 192, then I tried increasing bitrates with little or no improvement. I'm reluctant to spend money for lossy music if I can buy the lossless version on CD and rip it myself... the other advantage to owning the CD is, of course, that it's a convenient backup.

The irony from my perspective is, if they'd released them as 44.1khz/16bit FLACs I'd buy a very large chunk of their collection just out of principle. Heck, they could charge twice as much for the lossless versions and I'd still do it.

At first it looked like a blank yellow screen to me. But then I don't surf with JavaScript or other active content habitually enabled. After awhile I saw a tiny text-link telling me I could "skip" to some content, so took it. Don't know what i missed -- probably some ghastly flash intro.

Once past that page, it's possible to browse the site without turning on JavaScript, which is good. You do get a note:



But there are valid uses of scripting to check fields on input forms and the like. So that's fair enough.

If you look at the page source, you'll see they've used access keys. That's a tricky area: some experts think they do more harm than good, since they can change expected behaviour in a user agent. But it does, indeed, look like DG have taken some care with this site.



I think that's an exaggeration. November 2007 ... It's been long enough coming, surely. And it's not as if there aren't other outlets for music downloads: the iTunes Store, Magnatune, Linn records, Amazon, to name just a few.



Well, yes. Seji Ozawa conducting three Respighi pieces Pini di Roma, Feste romane, Fontane di Roma. That was just recommended by BBC Radio 3, so I looked it up. It's 10.99 in that Toytown money they're using. that's £7.83 in Sterling. Not cheap for a old-ish recording.

If I go to the iTunes Store, I find I could get the famous Fritz Reiner version for £7.99 (although that's not iTunes Plus files by the looks).

And if I go to Amazon UK, I find I could get the equivalent CD -- Ozawa/Respighi -- for £4.36. That means I'd have sleeve notes, uncompressed sound, and the ultimate backup (a hard copy) for less money.



Two cheers any rate. It's still too little, too late. And if the record companies are finally going to offer directly to the public, cutting out manufacturing and transportation costs why still so -- relatively speaking -- expensive? They're also absorbing the shopkeeper's living. One imagines they could sell downloads for less. Yet it seems by shopping around a bit you can buy a "real" CD and still beat the download price.



Yes, of course. I can't be too excited by what's offered by DG, but I'm glad it's there at least.

There's nevertheless a specific point which should catch the attention: 2400 CD from one single label (DG + Archiv Produktion). It probably far from the full label catalog but it's certainly a very important part of DGG modern production. I wouldn't call this DGG music store a technical innovation but it's the first time I see such big label (one of the biggest of the whole classical market) selling such wide catalog downloadable files. I was recently browsing iTunes + eMusic + different WMA stores in order to find some older Harmonia Mundi products and I was very, very disappointed by the lack of references (only few ones). I still wonder why some labels are not exploiting the internet opportunity (the long tail, ...).
Good point for DG and I really hope to see other big and smaller labels (like Naxos, Harmonia Mundi, CPO, BIS...) following the DGG step.

The 2 big disappointments are:
• MP3 format (of course it's transparent but I wouldn't use 320 kbps on my portable player neither transcoding MP3 to MP3)
• Price: DG products are usually expensive and the MP3 version is much more affordable - good point. The bad point is that DGG doesn't segment the digital market. Price for MP3 looks really uniform whereas a part of the DGG CD catalog is very affordable (and sometimes very attractive). Simple comparison on a 8-CD box:
66,9 € for the MP3 version and 37,20 € for the CD box on amazon (and even 30 € on amazon marketplace).

In other words customer should be careful before buying on this store.

In the artist’s endorsement video clips they have e.g. Helene Grimaud say that they offer the technically highest possible quality.

BTW, it’s cute that the sceptical smiley is the first in the palette on HA.

What about mp4 at a target bitrate of 320kbps? AAC is playable on most media devices today (ipod, cellphones). Regards

With CPO: yes, they follow a wrong route. The client based download service (jpc mediacenter) was definitely the wrong way to go. Honestly I've never had a closer look on it, because of the client installation and IIRC they distribute drm'ed wma's or even a proprietary format. However, I liked to buy their CD's. Though there's nothing groundbreaking new currently (their peak was the atterberg and pettersson cycles imo)
But as for BIS.se (you probably know they are in fact a giant with nordish composers): They don't distribute audio files directly, but you'll find all their stuff downloadable in different music download services. Also Naxos.
CPO possibly hates the digital reality. I don't know. I once asked them what kind of audio snippets they allow me to distribute in internet forums: no answer.

@punkrockdude: I don't see need for aac>300 kbps; you could really go lossless then. I personally would be happy if services would offer lame@ v0, nero aac at around 200 kbps and lossless. Or, better, like the allofmp3 devils, i.e. the service has lossless and lets you choose the format.

@42ndSSD: HA would be really interested in your details about artifacts at high bitrates. If you have problem samples, publish them here!
Personally, I only recognized problems with classical/the latest nero aac encoder. With lame @V0 I've never experienced artifact problems.

About Naxos: I read in a recent french magazine (Diapason) a Klaus Heymann (Naxos founder) interview. He said that Naxos will probably offer lossless files in the next future (I had to read the interview again to find the exact words). It's encouraging: at least someone who knows that lossless exists :-)
And if Naxos will distribute his own catalog in lossless, I suppose that Bis, Dacapo and a few others should offer the same (they seem to be digitally distributed by Naxos)

__
Naxos is widely accessible on several eStores (iTunes, eMusic...) but it seems that these stores are expecting their clients to be ignorant about Naxos CD normal Price (here 7 € in France in every shop) and therefore sell the digital version at an uninteresting price (and sometimes at a higher one like 9,90 €... at least in the past).

When DGG decided to offer MP3 as a universal DRM-free format, wouldn't you agree that 320 kbps is highest quality ? IIRC the consensus on HA is that a public listening test at this rate is a waste of time, since it will be transparent to most participants.

I can't help noticing a rather ambiguous attitude on Hydrogen Audio:
First there is the adagium that if a difference can't be heard, an increase in bitrate, bandwidth or budget isn't justified.
On the other hand there seems to be a desire for the best possible quality (e.g. lossless), even if it's not proven that there is an audible benefit.

Should online music providers offer several formats like lossless, high-quality lossy and low-quality lossy ? That would probably require many terabytes of webspace.
If (download) bandwidth and webspace are expensive, perhaps "lossy on demand" might be an option. Select your favorite codec and settings online and the audio is converted for you on the fly.
I have no idea what the financial investment would be and how much extra revenue it would bring but I fear it's not an interesting option for them.

It's not a question of quality, but a question of convenience. Being DRM-free means that you can transcode the songs you bought to any format you desire, wether is for portable listening, or to save space in your HDD, without having to go through any hoop, like with DRM-infested songs, and legally, of course.

Of course bandwidth would be a problem, but they could offer lossy and lossless versions for those with more needs than their usual clients, it's not that everyone is going to get lossless, but the opposite. The live archives of Metallica are offered in MP3 and FLAC at the same time, and the page has a little section telling you the differences between both. I'm sure people would pay a bit more to be able to have lossless copies of the albums they like. Besides, I doubt Deutsche Grammophon site would end creating so many server expenses as, to say, iTunes, and, wasn't a subsidiary of Universal Music? Like Universal was a small independent label

That was more of a nitpick. They could have added “highest technically possible quality ... /with MP3/”. I certainly understand that offering un-drm-ed 320kbps MP3s only is a very clean solution. You offer a one-stop shopping experience. One button, one download. No explanations necessary, no support necessary. The music will play anywhere.

Nobody?

I think I can recall a couple of specific instances and I'll try to dig them up. Lately, for portable listening I've been using Vorbis instead--which has its own set of problems but at least I don't have to deal with potential licensing issues (the player I use is one I wrote, and I may want to distribute it someday).



It's quite possible whatever I was hearing has been fixed, and I certainly ran across more problem samples with modern music than orchestral works. It's been at least three years since I used lame, and I'm sure many of the MP3s I was regularly listening to were created with versions even older than that. If I can find anything I'll try recompressing with the latest version and see if it changes things.

If you sign up you can download one track download free (from a limited "most-popular" list).

The track I chose (from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, K.620 / Act 2 - "In diesen heil'gen Hallen") sounds really good- details are:

bitrate = 320
channels = 2
codec = MP3
codec_profile = CBR
encoding = lossy
mp3_stereo_mode = joint stereo
samplerate = 44100
tagtype = id3v2|id3v1
-----------------------
10904303 samples @ 44100Hz
(rounded samples : 10903872)
File size: 10,338,326 Bytes (9.86 MB)

You missed the most important detail: the encoder

Not that it makes much of a difference, though. While I am glad that they have made a step forward into the digital age and must applaud their decision to eschew DRM , I find it quite a shame that it wasn't a strong enough step for me to find it personally compelling.
First there is the horrible, horrible choice of format/settings that falls into that annoying limbo-gap between portability and archival. Nearly twice as big of what would be transparent, storage- and energy-friendly on portable devices and nearly half as large as would be considered flawless, bona fide archival quality. (Ok, maybe it's not that horrible, but still a poor choice...)
And then you have the price. I'm sorry, but €11-12 for something that isn't even the real thing is unreasonable for me. The expenses associated with digital transmission are negligible enough that asking for full retail price (or even higher) of a physical CD is just inexcusably greedy in my eyes. Set the price at €5 or less and I will listen. Then again, I'm just a poor student and I guess the more mature, deeper-pocketed and less p2p-savvyy primary audience of classical music is likely to shell out at that price.

actually, this is just what foobar displays if it isn't a recent lame encoder (it might be it also recognizes the itunes mp3 encoder, but...)

I believe their offer is designed to especially draw customers' interests into the out-of-print-CD's ...

Most listeners of classical music will continue to buy CD's if these are accessible and/or easily available. For me, downloading MP3 music would be an alternative only for rare and out-of-print albums (and in that case, I'd be willing to pay the price, too).

Edit: typo

I've had a look at a file with a hex editor, didn't find a "lame" string and with a quick view at the beginning and end of file I didn't find any text that pointed me to an encoder... Don't know the mp3 file spec and what to look for though..

Kees: Yes, on the fly encoding is the best solution (for the consumer). And we know, it's possible (allofmp3).

It's exactly what I used it for today. Downloaded Kagel's 'Exotica/Tactil' (70 min) -- 1970s recordings only in print on CD for a few years in the mid-90s -- for $2.99. That's a bargain.

A bargain for sure.
BTW, have you noticed that the price is €2.99 (euro) or $2.99 (us dollar) depending on the country you select. With the actual exchange rate that's quite a difference !

Mr. QuestionMan reports (rather ambiguously) "FhG".

That would mean Fraunhofer Gesellschaft. They have an interesting feature by the way: The MP3 History

probably a fhg encoder since no lame tag and lets be real no one uses xing or anything else. it's fastenc most likely. it's the only used fhg encoder for the past few years that's bundled with most commercial software. for me it's a stupid approach. why not just give people the option to download the original master? ok yes old people can't hear well anyway but it's the perfection that matters. plus you have the flexibility of encoding it any way you like with whatever you like should you wish to do it. still, given that dg is owned by universal music, a major label, it's refreshing to see them move more and more to drm-free music.

I, like many others, am underwhelmed by the opportunity to purchase music on line in MP3 format. Hopefully, DG will rethink their marketing strategy.

In the meantime, discerning classical and jazz music listeners may purchase and download music in Studio Master FLAC (among other choices) from either of these sources:

http://www.musicgiants.com/
http://www.linnrecords.com/

I saw some interesting recordings overthere. But I prefer non-compressed files.

Incidently, you don't need to use any of the lossless compression formats. Simple compress the audio files as the regular data files, with zip or another commonly avaialble data file compressor. That should shrink them by about 50%. Download, uncompress, do whatever you want. I would mind to pay the price they charge - but not for compressed audio.

I don't think you can hear the difference at all. But they are too expensive anyways.



It is easier and more efficient to use a lossless compression format than zip.

LAME is unlicensed, so it's not usually used by legitimate companies. If they used it, they might be sued by Fraunhofer/Thomson. (LAME itself is free and open source, but if you distribute a product based on it you are violating the Fraunhofer/Thomson patents.)

The LAME website states that LAME is to be used for educational purposes. I don't think you can get a compiled-working copy from the official website.... I believe you can only download the (uncompiled) source code (from the official site).

If you distribute the compiled code, you are supposed to pay royalities to Fraunhofer/Thomson. But, I don't know if any companies actually pay. Most of the time when you buy commercial software that works with LAME, the software manufacturer doesn't actually include LAME in the package. They tell you to go download it yourself. I've never seen a "fully licensed" version of LAME included with any software.

Apparently that doesn't work very well. I've never tried it, but apparently the compression algortihms used for text don't work very well for audio. I've even read that sometimes the ZIP files come-out BIGGER than the WAV files!

We pay Thomson to use and include LAME in our software. I suspect that many other of the developers of for-cost audio software who roam this board do the same.

Thank's for that information! It's good to know that there is a licensed version available.

oh they pay indeed. wavelab, for example, is including lame for a few years now and the company (steinberg) pay royalties. if you're selling a commercial product giving the option to encode mp3 files you must pay. of course by using lame you can save money by not licensing the fhg fastenc code, which in recent years has become too expensive for some developers, hence why they opt to bundle lame instead of fastenc. pg, the author of wavelab, has actually stated this when they decided to go with lame in version 4 i believe.

Amazon.com must be quaking in their virtual boots then, as they use LAME exclusively for their mp3 downloads.

If it was in FLAC format I would stop buying CDs and start buying downloads. Still DG are going in the right direction.