I am not sure if anyone else has mentioned this. The Eagles' have a new CD, Long Road Out Of Eden. The album, unfortunately, is available in the United States and Canada exclusively via the band's website, Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores. I normally avoid Wal-Mart like the plague, but I bit the bullet and bought the CD from Wal-Mart earlier this morning. Just for kicks, I went to their website and I was surprised that they offered a digital download of the album in FLAC format.

So if there are any Eagles' fans out there with fast Internet connections. . . .

The FLAC album is $1 more than the CD ($13.99). If I was buying, it'd be the CD.

I think thats still a step in the right direction when you compare this to the iTunes music library and it's 128kb/s aac's + mp3's.

Although I agree the FLAC version should be cheaper since they don't have to print the labels and burn CD's.

I wonder if the flac version is still 44.1 kHz ?

I agree with both of you guys. Why would someone spend additional money for something they can do thereselves for cheaper?

Convenience of not having to deal with physical media (storing it or chucking it). And to save time, both ripping and on shipping.

And for me, to be able to buy a track or two to see if I like them before I buy the whole album. Since I can't find the album I'm not sure if that's possible.

But yeah, ideally there'd be a discount for buying a whole album (which Amazon does for mp3 downloads).