Buy CD or high res download?

[manicm]

Seems like some want to have their cake and eat it. If some people, like LHC and Fr0g, believe that the majority of music consumers only listen to music through earphones (read portable players), or are not interested in spending more than say 300 quid in total for any audio equipment, then what incentive do record companies have, as evil as I think they are, to offer better mastering?? Then their plan to offer higher priced hires audio seems justified doesn't it?

Also I don't believe it's just a case of better mastering, as many studio masters of new recordings are in higher resolutions.

In 14 years Apple still only offers iTunes in 256kbp AAC, you need to ask why? If there was a demand for higher res would they not have offered it?? I'd like to see what the new streaming service offers.

 

[BigH]

As for the record companies, I'm not sure which format leaves them better off, or worse off, depending on your view. When you'd got fed up of a CD, tape or record you could give it to your mate or hand it in to a charity shop. That didn't do the record co's any great favours because they'd prefer it everyone bought new copies, but at least they knew you didn't have any simple method of mass-distributing it illegally. With downloads, you can't hand-in unwanted/inherrited downloads at Cancer Research, but what you can do is give ten of your mates bit-perfect copies on any old memory stick, and they can do likewise with ten of their mates at anfinitum, and the thousandth copy will still potentially be a bit-perfect copy of your original, providing no-one's c*cked about with it inbetween time

Maybe they should remaster all their albums for decent sound quality with good dynamic range, just think they could reissue them all and make even more money.

They're doing that, slowly, using the excuse of hi-res audio.

But are they though, some of those hi-res albums are just the same ratings, even some HDTracks are around DR 4 on DR database, I think a lot of it is a con.

I've perhaps just been lucky. Admittedly I only have one album (Hotel California) but it is comfortably better than my (much older) CD release of the same album, presumably because of either technical advances in ADC conversion, or the extra care taken to master it from high-quality early-gen tapes, or a combination of the two.

Yes some are well remastered and are no doubt worth having, I ws referring more the ones that seem to be the same apart from its 24bit. If you look on DRdatabase you will see many are no more dynamic than the 16 bit. But cds vary quite alot depending on where and when they were made, same as vinyl.

 

[BigH]

Seems like some want to have their cake and eat it. If some people, like LHC and Fr0g, believe that the majority of music consumers only listen to music through earphones (read portable players), or are not interested in spending more than say 300 quid in total for any audio equipment, then what incentive do record companies have, as evil as I think they are, to offer better mastering?? Then their plan to offer higher priced hires audio seems justified doesn't it?

Also I don't believe it's just a case of better mastering, as many studio masters of new recordings are in higher resolutions.

In 14 years Apple still only offers iTunes in 256kbp AAC, you need to ask why? If there was a demand for higher res would they not have offered it?? I'd like to see what the new streaming service offers.

They are no doubt correct, headphone sales in UK were equal to all hifi sales in 2013. HArdly anyone has a hifi system yet most people play music in car, headphones or cheap music system/player. Hardly anyone can see the point of a decent hifi system.

 

[Al ears]

Buy the CD.....

Support the CD format. Own it!

If you buy a download, you own the track. You can even burn your own discs with tracks you've downloaded.

Not too sure about this. There is no point in burning a hi res download to a disc as many players will not be able to play them. You could save them to a USB stick if you have something that will take them.

As has been previously stated you might have it but you cannot legally sell it on so you do not actually own it as such. You simply have a right to listen to it.

Until the cost of true hi res downloads becomes a lot less than the cost of vinyl then it isn't worth approaching unless it is the only format you can get it in.

 

[manicm]

Headphone sales equal hifi sales? That by itself is utterly meaningless, unless you derive the average spent, and also what is spent on the source equipment. So to say that it is correct could be a thumb suck. And Beats are not cheap...

 

[BigH]

Headphone sales equal hifi sales? That by itself is utterly meaningless, unless you derive the average spent, and also what is spent on the source equipment. So to say that it is correct could be a thumb suck. And Beats are not cheap...

It shows just how small the hifi market is at around £150m.

 

[manicm]

That still didn't answer my question. Also, if people are spending tons on headphones, that tells me they do care somehow about quality.

 

[SteveR750]

That still didn't answer my question. Also, if people are spending tons on headphones, that tells me they do care somehow about quality.

Or image.

I'd guess that the big growth in music use is via smartphones, so hi res is unimportant for the two reasons of hardware limitations, and memory space. Spotify premium is where a lot of the kids are at, a quick straw poll amongst my kids group of musically savvy friends reveals either complete ignorance or disinterest in CD quality streaming (eg Tidal) let alone enything higher. None of them use, and most don't even own a CD playing system of any kind.

 

[MajorFubar]

Also I don't believe it's just a case of better mastering, as many studio masters of new recordings are in higher resolutions.

That's because they're recorded that way. This is not exactly the most accurate of analogies but in the same way you only round-down your maths equations to e.g.: 2dp in the final answer so your roundings don't affect the outcome further up the equation, so it makes sense to mix with as high a bitdepth as you can and with the highest bitrate, and only render it down to the lowest resolution on the final master. And as you infer in your next sentence, you can take a take a top quality HD master and reduce it to a 256k AAC lossy file and most people will be unable to audibly discern between the two for a statistically-relevant percentage of the time. There's no real question that it's (nearly) all in the mastering.

 

[manicm]

Then it means Apple Music will win the streaming war. They now have both the ecosystem and compatibility to do it.

 

[cheeseboy]

Then it means Apple Music will win the streaming war. They now have both the ecosystem and compatibility to do it.

possibly. The biggest problem apple are going to face is that they don't have a free tier, unlike spotify. Spotify have approx 20 million paying users, yet 75 million free users. Even if apple stole all their paying customers, spotify would still dwarf their numbers on their free tier.

 

[MajorFubar]

There was talk at one stage that iTunes (mis)Match subscribers like myself would get the iTunes Music package as part of the deal, rather than have to pay an extra £10pm. I haven't seen that mentioned anywhere now the service has been officially announced....

 

[SteveR750]

Then it means Apple Music will win the streaming war. They now have both the ecosystem and compatibility to do it.

possibly. The biggest problem apple are going to face is that they don't have a free tier, unlike spotify. Spotify have approx 20 million paying users, yet 75 million free users. Even if apple stole all their paying customers, spotify would still dwarf their numbers on their free tier.

I can't see the free service lasting for too much longer. Indirectly, it's a constraint to some licensing, as it's a low margin, possibly loss making element of their business. The money is in the conversion from free to paid. The subscription ratio snapshot is only part of the story. The other question is, how will android users fit in with the apple model, given the (often unwarranted through ignorance) polarity of consumers. Once Google acquires Spotify, which it surely must, then what?

 

[manicm]

Then it means Apple Music will win the streaming war. They now have both the ecosystem and compatibility to do it.

possibly. The biggest problem apple are going to face is that they don't have a free tier, unlike spotify. Spotify have approx 20 million paying users, yet 75 million free users. Even if apple stole all their paying customers, spotify would still dwarf their numbers on their free tier.

I can't see the free service lasting for too much longer. Indirectly, it's a constraint to some licensing, as it's a low margin, possibly loss making element of their business. The money is in the conversion from free to paid. The subscription ratio snapshot is only part of the story. The other question is, how will android users fit in with the apple model, given the (often unwarranted through ignorance) polarity of consumers. Once Google acquires Spotify, which it surely must, then what?

Google users will fit in nicely with the Apple model since Apple has made it available on Windows and Android, so they have their bases covered.

Also, Google could acquire Spotify, but cash is not the problem. Knowing labels, do you think they'd want to acquiesce to Google????? Spotify is one devil to record companies, Google is quite another. This will never happen soon.

 

[MajorFubar]

Spotify have approx 20 million paying users, yet 75 million free users. Even if apple stole all their paying customers, spotify would still dwarf their numbers on their free tier.

and that's why Spotify are penniless. Nearly 80% of their userbase doesn't pay, and the adverts don't return enough revenue to make Spotify enough money. But it's absurd that there should be a free service away. Why is music seen by so many consumers as such a worthless commodity?

 

[philpot1001]

Spotify have approx 20 million paying users, yet 75 million free users. Even if apple stole all their paying customers, spotify would still dwarf their numbers on their free tier.

and that's why Spotify are penniless. Nearly 80% of their userbase doesn't pay, and the adverts don't return enough revenue to make Spotify enough money. But it's absurd that there should be a free service away. Why is music seen by so many consumers as such a worthless commodity?

unfortunately nowadays people can illegally download music for free, with almost no chance of getting prosecuted. So Spotify et al are competing with a market thats effectively free. Personally i've never illegally downloaded music - TBH im a bit of a dunce when it comes to current generation of I.T, and never really felt the need for it as i own all the music i want. For me i never bother with Spotify other than "tasters" for music, if i like it i then buy the CD.....i would rather buy £120 worth of CD's than "rent" music for a year, mainly because i dont consume enough and tend to listen to the same music more often that not....i suspect if i consumed huge quantities of varying music Spotify Premium would start to make sense.

 

[Dave_]

[
Google users will fit in nicely with the Apple model since Apple has made it available on Windows and Android, so they have their bases covered.

Also, Google could acquire Spotify, but cash is not the problem. Knowing labels, do you think they'd want to acquiesce to Google????? Spotify is one devil to record companies, Google is quite another. This will never happen soon.

Google doesn't need Spotify.

It already has one of the largest music streaming platforms on the planet with a little thing called YouTube...

As for labels acquiescing, they already are with GPM/YT Music Key.

 

[cheeseboy]

Why is music seen by so many consumers as such a worthless commodity?

probably because people have been able to listen to music for free since the invention of the radio.