Lossless or Lossy? You choose? Or do you?

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Pista
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Another thread inspired this, but so as not to derail it, here is a new one.

It's becoming more commonplace to be able to buy downloaded songs (legally) from your favourite bands.
But these people are spending a lot of time & effort making something that is (in most cases) wonderful.
Then what do they do?
They sell it to download as a 192mbps mp3 file :| .
I don't want to get into audio snobbery here (each to their own & all that), but IMHO this isn't right (for the bands either).
We often don't get a choice of what bit rate we can spend our cash on & certainly, it is rare to see bands selling lossless downloads of their hard work.
I was thinking about this recently & as more bands sell their material in this lossy format, the quality of the work in general circulation is getting worse than the quality of a well recorded bootleg.
Perverse or what?
So. Those of you who actually do pay for downloaded music. Would you prefer to be given the choice of format & would you pay a little more for a lossless version of said piece?
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Izzy HaveMercy
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I don't pay for downloadable music. So far.

I do illegal downloads, and if the DLs are interesting enough, I buy the album/cd/dvd. If I don't like them, I delete them.

If said music is not available anymore, I try to illegally copy it from someone who had the fortune to be alive already when the recording was widely available (Blast Prods seems to be a good source nowadays ;D)

Call me old-fashioned.

On the other hand, I would not have problems with selling my music as an MP3 or FLAC. I KNOW it's shoddy quality, but if people are willing to pay for it, that means there's a market for this. And as a musician, I'd rather see some payment for an MP3 instead of no payment at all ;D

And I can only hope and pray/prey that they 'd buy AND the MP3s online AND the full album three years later :twisted:

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I very rarely download legal stuff. I am old fashioned and I'm still attached to the physical product, not just the sound of it. So I still buy CDs and LPs on a regular basis. And I get mad when there's no nice booklet or well-designed cover. :evil:
Boots are a whole different issue though. :innocent:
I don't pay for them anymore, which is a very positive thing IMO. 8)
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smiscandlon
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I'm a FLAC purist really only when it comes to live bootlegs. The quality of a live recording can be problematic enough, without further degradation by converting it to mp3.

With a properly produced album, I must admit I have difficulty differentiating between CD-quality and mp3.

However whether my poor old ears can tell the difference or not, I do acknowledge that mp3 isn't the same as CD quality audio, and for that reason I do feel that (legal) audio downloads should be a lot cheaper than they are. At the moment there isn't a huge difference in price (in the UK, at any rate) between buying a physical CD and purchasing a lower quality digital download of an album ... and that doesn't make much sense to me.
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mh
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I'd rather have good music in poor quality than poor music in good quality. Unfortunately, lossless downloads are still too large to get down in a reasonable amount of time, and take up too much storage, both on my PC (which is not that big a deal as I can always burn to CD) and also on the remote server. In a lossless only world, online delivery of music would be restricted to those who could afford the server storage - not a pretty picture.
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Understand the problem of storage space Michael, but if you had the choice & also the option to chuck it on a disc after downloading, would you opt for a squashed up mp3 or the real deal? You can always delete the files off the hd afterwards right?
Live recording are extraordinary these days, with the growing use of HD recorders too, the lossless versions are the only thing traders will touch really. & that's one of my points. They are becoming better than the crap itunes is selling every day.
& you are right Steven in that these downloads should be a feck sight cheaper, as there is less information on them than a lossless version.
There is a difference (audible too) between the 2. Take a fave song & rip it to mp3, then play the 2 formats 1 after the other. Better still, do it blind & see which one you think is the best.
Then think of the band. If they spend an age in the studio & a shed load of dosh in the process & come up with a masterpiece, offering it up for download at a low bit rate is going to mask the intricacies of the work & risks ending up with non-plussed listeners. Whereas in reality, the piece may be a mindblowing number that should be held in great esteem.
They don't do themselves favours either huh?
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I'm not too concerned about my own storage, cos I can do things about it, but there are those who can't. Storage on the server you download from is another matter though - with FLACs being about 4 to 5 times the size of an MP3, choice would be limited to 20% to 25% of what it currently is, meaning only the bigger selling artists (or those with sufficient financial clout) would get a sniff in.
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I think MP3's were/are a short term solution to slow download speeds.As technology advances and BB speeds increase MP3's should be a thing of the past.
I think a lot of record companies recognise this and see the potential for repeat sales in the future as happened with LP-CD.The differences between MP3 and a HD format will be mindblowing to a generation used to nothing else.
I always go for a lossless format, by the time a HD format rules the roost my hearing should be knackered anyway.
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All other things aside, I tend to view them as the equivalent of cassettes. You know you're not getting good quality, but they do serve another purpose.
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mh wrote:All other things aside, I tend to view them as the equivalent of cassettes. You know you're not getting good quality, but they do serve another purpose.
Nail on the head there, I've always thought of cassettes as disposable.Fine for kicking about the car but no great loss if stolen or destroyed by damp.
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Pista wrote: It's becoming more commonplace to be able to buy downloaded songs (legally) from your favourite bands.
They sell it to download as a 192mbps mp3 file :| .
If it's a free download you can't really complain... saves them some bandwidth, after all. Although I'd prefer to see ogg-vorbis instead of the patented mp3.
For commercial stuff, I'd like to see both options, flac and ogg/mp3. Some people might prefer to download the smaller lossy version, either because of lower bandwidth or to save effort on encoding it themselves for a portable player. Perhaps the lossy version could also be sold cheaper.
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A guy in HMV said "I won't start laughing at you" when I asked if they still stocked cassettes earlier. :oops: In my defence, they did a few months ago!

Nah, I download illegally, but try to get the highest bitrate I can. But I do buy lots of LPs, and a few CDs too, because I like the quality and the physical product. Remember, however they try and sell it, a gatefold LP has four square feet of space for artwork, an mp3 does not. ;)
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Free is good...

Good music is worth paying for....


I do download lots, but mostly stuff that you no longer can buy. If I could, I buy it for sure.
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All good points & comments.
So it seems that to have the choice is appreciated & that if artists insist on low bitrate, compressed offerings, then they should be cheaper.
On the subject of art work. How about if you were also able to say, download a lossless version of a CD +++ the artwork in a hi-res pdf or similar?
Just talking CD for the moment, as to press a vinyl at home isn't terribly practical, i guess. :wink:
I hadn't even thought about ogg formats, but they seem to be by far the best of the lossy ones.
& the conversion malarky is something else too (unless you use winamp which plays just about anything afaik).
Those of you who don't pay for the official downloads: shame on you :lol: but in all seriousness, I think that if you are paying for something "sub-standard" that's even worse.
& Michael had an excellent point in that with the bigger files needing more storage space & bandwidth etc, then the smaller artists may find it hard to get in there. I don't know the cost of hosting, but I'm pretty sure the record companies could stump up for it, as it would be a heck of a lot cheaper than pressing thousands of actual CDs.
So mp3 can be a useful vehicle to smaller, just emerging artists (maybe without record deals yet) to demonstrate their work to as many folks as possible & make a few sheckles in the process.
& don't forget the producer (see other thread). He/she has to earn a crust too right?
If the record company isn't going to showcase the producer's work in it's best possible light, that's surely not good for him/her.
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Badlander
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Pista wrote: On the subject of art work. How about if you were also able to say, download a lossless version of a CD +++ the artwork in a hi-res pdf or similar?
Just talking CD for the moment, as to press a vinyl at home isn't terribly practical, i guess. :wink:
Not sure I'd do it anyway. It'd take a very good home printer, which I don't have at the moment. And sometimes it's nice to go to an actual record store (I'm so not talking Virgin/HMV here) and have a chat with fellow music aficionados. Thanks to the Internet, we do have access to insane amounts of cultural products, but it also takes the human factor out of the equation, which is a bit sad. :?
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@Eric
Oh to have a decent record store nearby :roll:
I envy you on that score mate.
When I was in Bristol back in November, I spent the best part of a whole day going to second hand record stores (spent 4 hours in one, as their indexing was, let's say, rather dyslexic). The smell, the atmosphere.
Can't download that for sure.
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Badlander
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There's still a couple in my home town. Beats downloading MP3s any day. 8)
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There's a great secondhand store in a city nearby, from which i bought my VHS copy of Wake, btw, but i stopped going there when they started thinking that any cds by "cult" bands such as Current93 or Death in June are worth their weight in gold.

But i had a lot of fun going through their stuff a few years back.

Point is, record stores are nice, downloads aren't. i'd pay for new official Sisters downloads, though... :roll:
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itnAklipse wrote:There's a great secondhand store in a city nearby, from which i bought my VHS copy of Wake, btw, but i stopped going there when they started thinking that any cds by "cult" bands such as Current93 or Death in June are worth their weight in gold.
I don't like C93 and I don't like DIJ. And I just don't understand why supposedly sane people pay such obscene amounts of cash for such average bands. :roll:
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Badlander wrote:And I just don't understand why supposedly sane people pay such obscene amounts of cash for such average bands. :roll:
Damage Done, anyone? :lol:
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At least it wasn't limited to 93 copies. Bollocks ! :roll: :lol:
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Download for free but buy the hard product, difference it makes is slim however as it all gets played on my iPod when out and about...
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Badlander wrote:At least it wasn't limited to 93 copies. Bollocks ! :roll: :lol:
No. That's fine, you just come out & say what you mean Eric

:lol: :notworthy: :lol: :notworthy:
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