You're missing the larger point, w-lfs-n. The first copy costs $.30 more than it did before. But how is this different, when I had to buy my first copy as part of a complete CD, back in the day?
And, as usual, all the subsequent copies be free.
Cool. So how can I get iTunes to sell my bands stuff DRM-free? We sell our independently released stuff through iTunes via CDBaby. Now that EMI has proven it's possible, I bet a lot of artists are going to demand the same from their labels/digital-resellers.
5. Floodgates open (?)
-J
You're missing the larger point, w-lfs-n. The first copy costs $.30 more than it did before. But how is this different, when I had to buy my first copy as part of a complete CD, back in the day?
HMMMMM
Looks like the individual tracks will be 30 cents more, but the price of complete albums will stay the same. Sort of a bulk discount, I guess.
1. take away a universally-enjoyed privilege
When did that happen?
I'd just like to ask everyone to take a moment to jeer at Cory Doctorow. Curiously, his ecstatic Boing Boing post about this talks a lot about when iTunes is coming to Ubuntu, but very little about how he wrote a thumbsucker for Salon about how Steve Jobs was blowing smoke up everyone's asses when Jobs said that he would like to see this very scenario play out.
I'd just like to ask everyone to take a moment to jeer at Cory Doctorow.
Only a moment? I've been jeering at him since about 2001. "0wnz0red" did in whatever respect I had for him.
This link seems apropos.
at a higher bitrate (256kbps) than previously
Aren't the cheaper, DRM-free MP3s at emusic at a significantly higher bitrate than this?
Unless they use a fucked up codec, bit rates >256kps aren't going to be perceptively better for most listeners or on most systems.
Aren't the cheaper, DRM-free MP3s at emusic at a significantly higher bitrate than this?
No, they average 192kbps (though they use variable bit rate, and there's a pretty wide range in both directions), using the LAME mp3 encoder.
This seems like a good place to ask about FLAC files -- are they better sound than MP3 or something? I've been downloading Robyn Hitchcock concert tapes from Archive.org and the FLAC files (which format I had never heard of before) are enormous in comparison to the other formats available (when other formats are available) -- the sound card and speakers on my laptop are not really good enough for me to discern any difference in the playback though. But maybe if I got some good headphones, the difference would shine through.
FLAC is lossless, mp3s are lossy.
(Another band with concert tapes up at Archive.org: The Jackmormons.)
FLAC is like zip compression, except optimized for audio.
3 "HMMMMM" s/b "Hidden Massively-Marketable Music Markov Models."
this, from this, has a pretty amazing cello solo. The entire album's excellent, in fact.
And just to say the same thing one more time in yet a different way, FLAC and other good lossless codecs give you exactly the same quality as found on a CD, but at about half the size -- but that's still about 5 times as big as 128kbit MP3 or AAC.
I rip classical music to flac, but I can't, if I'm honest, really hear the difference with non-classical music between flac and 256k MP3s.
I swear to god I can hear the difference between even high bitrate LAME encoding and CD. I would have sworn to god that I was lying about sixth months ago until I got my speakers, but now that I have them it's clear as day.
At this point, I try for things that are LAME APX (which is, oh, ~256 bits, but variable bit rate).
That said, I save my mockey of BoingBoing-ers for Fraunfelder and Xeni (It's easy to be a libertarian when you're hot!) Jardin.
And really I shouldn't mock them at all, given how fundamentally similar I am to the whole lot. If we had more friends in common, we'd be identical.
1. take away a universally-enjoyed privilege
When did that happen?
Don't you remember those heady days of Ponies For Everyone?