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New APPLE Music Download Service Coming (1 Viewer)

MarkHastings

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The web is sorely lacking a place for high quality music videos. I often wondered why there weren't more out there.
The Sorensen codec (For QuickTime) IMO is far superior to anything I've seen when it comes to delivering high res video, virtually on demand :emoji_thumbsup:

Apple's done a great job in making it a standard in QuickTime video.
 

Camp

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Major bummer noticed - you can watch the video for "Big Yellow Taxi" but you can't download the song.
That is odd. At first I just thought it wasn't listed since it's a hidden track on the album. Judging by the length of the tracks, however, it's not there.

I'd like Apple to give some explanation as to why some albums are "partial albums". What is missing and why?
 

BrianB

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Yup, good news from eMusic.
And even more good news with the signing of Beggars Banquet & their associated labels... Lots of great British bands from the likes of 4AD, XL & Wijja. All of the Pixie albums! Tindersticks! Peaches! Transglobal Underground! I'm getting to replace /lots/ of old tapes left behind in the UK & I'm loving it :)

It seems like they're adding more to the Beggars catalogue from them every day as more keeps popping up in the searches... How cool would it be to have the full 4AD collection available?!
 

Ken_WI

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iTunes Music Service and emusic are just stepping stones on the way to a fully functional service. For me to participate, it would require:

1 - a full selection. Not just 250,000 popular songs, but millions of recordings, everything that can be found and digitized. Also historical recordings, speeches, audio books, etc.

2 - delivery in a full-quality format. I'm not interested in paying for a song that won't hold up to critical listening. If it's music I like enough to buy, I want it in the best sound quality possible. Lossless encoding is OK to ease bandwidth. An open format like flac would be ideal.

3 - Metadata. I should get, imbedded within each music file, album graphics, complete ID tag information, and synchronized lyrics.

4 - reasonable price. I'm thinking maybe a range of between 5 and 25 cents for a song. Maybe $3 for a full album. Older stuff with little market could be offered for 5 cents. It's better than not having it avavilable at all, which is the case today for a lot of material.

Better still might be a system where content owners could upload their music and set whatever price they wanted. It would allow content owners to experiment with pricing. A song might only sell 2000 copies at $1 a copy, but maybe 100,000 copies at 10 cents. And pricing could be used promotionally - "download the new Madonna single, only 2 cents!" - knowing that maybe 15% of those who download will end up buying the whole album.

5 - of course, no DRM or other usage restrictions. If I want to make copies for my house, car, laptop, and beach cottage (yeah, I wish), I should be able to. I paid for the rights to play that song.

I'm sure there would still be file trading, but it would be significantly reduced. A lot of people who have no qualms about uploading music to Kaaza to "screw the RIAA" would take the attitude of, "Hey, why should I share my music with people who are too cheap to even pay the small cost to fairly compensate the artist?

In short, we are still far from a music download service that offers true value and flexibility. I applaud the efforts made so far, but have no interest in them as a music consumer until the business model is refined and fair use is preserved.
 

Camp

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2 - delivery in a full-quality format. I'm not interested in paying for a song that won't hold up to critical listening. If it's music I like enough to buy, I want it in the best sound quality possible. Lossless encoding is OK to ease bandwidth. An open format like flac would be ideal.

3 - Metadata. I should get, imbedded within each music file, album graphics, complete ID tag information, and synchronized lyrics.

4 - reasonable price. I'm thinking maybe a range of between 5 and 25 cents for a song. Maybe $3 for a full album. Older stuff with little market could be offered for 5 cents. It's better than not having it avavilable at all, which is the case today for a lot of material.
Wait a minute. You want a "full-quality format" yet only expect to pay $3 for a full album? Paying $11 for a CD must kill you.
In effect, you're asking for the ability to download the exact copy of the CD for $3. Not gonna happen.

Your metadata request would be cool but that's more than you get from most CD purchases.

BTW, have you guys seen this new service: http://www.puretunes.com/
I haven't tried the free trial yet but I like the offer so far.
 

Camp

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Brian,

I'm testing it now...I'll let you know what I find. Their pricing plan sure looks good (assuming they have decent content):

Puretunes is the most exciting and complete digital music service in the world. Puretunes offers access to hundreds of thousands of songs, all in high quality MP3 audio files of at least 128KB.

Puretunes offers a variety of low cost subscription plans:

-8 hours @ $3.99 (8 solid hours of unlimited access)
-1 weekend @ $9.99 (48 hours of unlimited access)
-1 month of unlimited access @ $24.99
-3 months of unlimited access @ $59.99 ($19.99 a month)
-6 months of unlimited access @ $101.94 ($16.99 a month)
-1 year of unlimited access @ $167.88 ($13.99 a month)

Access includes unlimited burns and unlimited transfers.

There are no restrictions on the song files. You may use them as you like. You own them: you are not "renting" them. Quality of files is 100% guaranteed.
I'm guessing Spanish intellectual property laws are quite a bit different than what we're used to.

Well, the 25 free downloads appears to be for real. You need to download their install app and create an account but you don't enter credit card info until after your 25 free downloads.

I just downloaded a track from The Matrix: Reloaded soundtrack. It was a little slower than a download from the iTunes Music store but not bad. It's a properly tagged (no cover art) 128 kbps MP3 file. Sounds fine for 128kbps. They also have a lot of Beatles (all of Abbey Road) and Radiohead...both are hard to find on other services.
 

Ken_WI

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Wait a minute. You want a "full-quality format" yet only expect to pay $3 for a full album? Paying $11 for a CD must kill you.
Paying $11 for a CD doesn't kill me, but a download is a different product. Once the files are on the server, they can be copied forever for the cost of bandwidth. No stamping of CDs, no printing of booklets, no packaging, no chain of middlemen each taking a slice. No trucking of physical product to every town, no required retail space in stores, etc.

And $3 was merely an estimation of the level that prices might eventually fall to, given the economics of scale and the tiny costs of distribution. Didn't the RIAA do a study concluding that 30 BILLION files are traded every month? What is the profit potential if even 10% of those songs are paid for? 3 billion songs at 25 cents a song is $750 million a MONTH, $9 billion a year.
 

Camp

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And $3 was merely an estimation of the level that prices might eventually fall to, given the economics of scale and the tiny costs of distribution.
Fair enough. But until I see a breakdown of how much of a CD sale goes where I won't totally agree :) . Unfortunately, the record industry would probalby tell us it's $11.
 

Ken_WI

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Fair enough. But until I see a breakdown of how much of a CD sale goes where I won't totally agree . Unfortunately, the record industry would probalby tell us it's $11.
I have seen the price of a CD broken down. It's true that the disc, booklet, and packaging amount to less than a buck. It's also true that the artist/performer/band usually gets only 25 to 50 cents in royalties per CD sold. The rest goes to distributors, retailers, payola to radio stations, promotional budgets, yachts for record executives, etc. The big costs aren't in recording the music or paying the performers, but in distribution associated with physical product.

In the streamlined distribution model of digital downloads, once a recording is made, the cost phase is essentially complete and the recording can immediately begin paying for itself via downloads. It doesn't cost much to host a file on a server, and the cost of bandwidth used to transfer it to consumers would be more than offset by the price charged.

A lot of artists would jump at the chance to sell an album for $3 if they got to keep $1.50 of it.
 

David Lawson

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And even more good news...
You aren't kidding! I need to keep a closer eye on the "New" section. Mull Historical Society, Jay Bennett & Edward Burch, The Cult, Red House Painters, Mojave 3, Buffalo Tom, Dot Allison, Peter Murphy, The Delgados...damn. I'm going to have to stay up late tonight to get all of this stuff downloaded.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled 99 cents per song.
 

BrianB

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"We have a different interpretation of the law," says Javier Siguenza, Puretunes' attorney. "According to Spanish law, there are a lot of rights, and we believe this is legal."
They don't actually have deals with individual labels, instead they have some sort of agreement with Spanish singer/songwriter organisations.
 

Camp

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I just realized, that "CD Sales Breakdown" doesn't list what the artist gets. Odd.
 

Camp

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I thought that too at first but that seems awfully low, don't you think? I guessed "Band Fund" was more like petty cash for equipment, living expenses, drugs and whatnot.

I wonder if it's not included in the "Record Company Profit" portion? -or, the fact that it's from Maxim may mean it's not accurate at all? ;)
 

Yumbo

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Chris Caine
is there anyway possible for those without US based credit cards to download tracks?
 

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