Editorial: 5 Years After Launch of iPod, Music Industry Tries MP3

[Audioholics]

In an amazing act of ingenuity, daring and trend-setting acuity, the Music industry is starting to experiment with... wait for it... selling MP3s online direct to consumers. Yes, the same industry that wants to sue little old ladies for downloading MP3s over the Internet are now taking a half-decade-too-late crack at actually selling MP3s to consumers. This incredible use of brainpower, aside from being over 5 years too late, is yet another indication of the rapid series of nails being placed in the coffin of traditional music publishing and purchasing. In an article published in the Mercury News (speaking of industries heading downhill fast) it appears as if some of the online storefronts, such as Yahoo! Music are all but forcing major labels to reconsider their perpetual aversion to online distribution of music.

[Read the Editorial]

 

[silversurfer]

I wish they would sell lossless formats.

 

[westcott]

I wish they would sell lossless formats.

You nailed it on the head. Who cares about MP3 versions of 2 channel stereo music. One can hardly ever find even CD quality downloads for most music.

I agree with Clint. Sales would skyrocket if CD's were made obsolete. Too easy to copy.

DVD Audio would put many a smile on fellow audioholics!

 

[racquetman]

"This isn't brain surgery people. Only the RIAA thinks that a CD can compete with a multi-track surround sound 4-hour DVD that sells for $15 at Wal-mart."

I saw Terminator 2 Extreme Edition (the one with the high def version on a separate disc for computer users) at Best Buy for $4.99 yesterday. Meanwhile, every CD I look at is $13.99, $14.99, maybe if you're lucky you'll actually find something you like for under ten bucks. Good luck. The music industry isn't getting any more of my money. DVDs are such a better value and so much more entertaining. Plus, I know what I'm getting for my money. A respectable, if not excellent, anamorphic transfer with a DD 5.1 track at minimum. That would be enough for me, but then they throw in some decent extras occasionally as well.

 

[furrycute]

$15 for a CD is just plain robbery, when you can get some really decent DVD's for under $10.

That's why I usually join Columbia House or BMG Music club when I want to purchase CD's. You pay less when you buy in bulk.

I still like the audio quality of CD's, better than the compressed mpeg-2 audio on DVD's. True DVD-audio have better than CD audio quality. But it's been out for a VERY long time now, along with SACD. It just hasn't taken of.


And oh, I would never pay for a lossless format like mp3's. It's just not the audiophile thing to do...

 

[supervij]

I'm no audiophile, but I'd never use a lossless format. It would take up too much space in my iPod, and I wouldn't use that for serious listening anyway. Serious listening is for CDs, DVD-As, and SACDs. mp3s are for my iPod, and that's about it.

So I don't think I'd be in line to buy the lossless formats. Hell, I'm not even in line to buy the mp3s. I'm in line at the used record shops, where used CDs are nine or ten bucks (Canadian), tops. At a lot of the used places, you can find them for five ($C) and less. And the used DVDs are mega-cheap too. That's where my dollars go. There and the used CDs/DVDs on Craig's List, which in general are even less expensive.

I'm sick of buying over-priced CDs. I just borrow music from my friends, and they borrow from me. Way cheaper that way.

And I agree with alandamp -- DVDs are a much better deal for my dollar, entertainment-wise. For a lot less cash, I get a movie, I get surround sound with better-than-CD sound, and I get lots of cute little extras. Too bad the music industry can't take a page from the movie industry's book.

cheers,
supervij

 

[silversurfer]

I'm no audiophile, but I'd never use a lossless format. It would take up too much space in my iPod, and I wouldn't use that for serious listening anyway. Serious listening is for CDs, DVD-As, and SACDs. mp3s are for my iPod, and that's about it.

Storage space is getting cheaper and cheaper every day. For portable MP3/iPod players, I too would not store lossless files on it, but I do on my PC and play them with a Squeezebox. CD quality audio(I use FLAC), and I do not have to mess with the discs.

If the CD was available via FLAC files, I'd buy it.

 

[furrycute]

The audio tracks on ordinary DVD video discs are compressed (I don't remember if it's mpeg-2 or 3), so they are below CD quality.

The audio tracks on the special DVD-A, and SACD discs are high definition, better than CD quality.



If I understand correctly, with haddrive based mp3 players, the built in buffer is not large enough to load one single song encoded in lossless format in its entirety. So the player has to constantly spin the harddrive in order to continuously access the song. Spinning the harddrive eats up your battery like there is no tomorrow. That's why you see a sizable dip in battery life when you play songs encoded in lossless formats on your portable player.

I'm not all that savy about the technical details, but I think a pure flash memory based portable player maybe able to handle lossless encoded files better, giving you more or less the same battery as if you were playing mp3's.

Apple already has an all flash memory based 8gig IPod mini. In the next couple of years, it's not inconceivable that Apple may introduce a 20gig IPod mini. By then, with that kind of storage space, who will want to deal with a loss format anymore.

 

[jcPanny]

CD Costs

"This isn't brain surgery people. Only the RIAA thinks that a CD can compete with a multi-track surround sound 4-hour DVD that sells for $15 at Wal-mart."

I saw Terminator 2 Extreme Edition (the one with the high def version on a separate disc for computer users) at Best Buy for $4.99 yesterday. Meanwhile, every CD I look at is $13.99, $14.99, maybe if you're lucky you'll actually find something you like for under ten bucks. Good luck. The music industry isn't getting any more of my money. DVDs are such a better value and so much more entertaining. Plus, I know what I'm getting for my money. A respectable, if not excellent, anamorphic transfer with a DD 5.1 track at minimum. That would be enough for me, but then they throw in some decent extras occasionally as well.

I was going to point out the same thing. All of the stores had the blockbuster DVDs on sale for $4-5 after Thanksgiving and X-mas and in the same ads they have CDs on "sale" for $10. Blockbuster movies cost 100's of millions to produce and a new CD is a small fraction of that cost. The discs and packaging should even be cheaper.

 

[allsop4now]

I was going to point out the same thing. All of the stores had the blockbuster DVDs on sale for $4-5 after Thanksgiving and X-mas and in the same ads they have CDs on "sale" for $10. Blockbuster movies cost 100's of millions to produce and a new CD is a small fraction of that cost. The discs and packaging should even be cheaper.

Even though "blockbuster" movies are very expensive to make, they have several sources of revenues that a CD usually don't have. Showing movies at theatres is important to make a profit, but so is selling various things to kids (books, games, toys, etc, etc), rental, selling DVDs, and so on. Look at Star Wars, LOTR and Terminator for examples.

Not that I think that CD's are not overpriced in many cases, but small recording labels do not have an easy time making a living.

 

[JKL1960]

Six times!!

Six viewings is supposed to be the rough saturation point for watching a movie. It's the point where most people with most movies never care to see it again. I have several movies that I have watched once, maybe twice, and might never watch again.

Music doesn't have this. I have CD copies of stuff I owned on vinyl 30 years ago and even though I've heard it at least a thousand times I still listen.

Ergo, a $15 music CD is better value than a $10 movie.

I have heard people complain abou CD pricing before (sure, I wish they were cheaper) and I point out that Wal Mart has a giant bin of music CDs for under $5. It always turns out that it isn't just the CD they want, apparently the material on the CD is important.

Anyway, what really concerns me is the possibility of lossless formats dissappearing entirely. SACD and DVD-A are stagnating in the market. The average person doesn't seem to mind poor quality recordings and compressed formats. The music industry isn't even actually exploiting the potential of the CD, instead insisting on compressing music so that the dynamic range is as limited as vinyl was. There are too many poor sounding CDs.

It's a mess and I'm pissed about it.

 

[Buckle-meister]

Whilst I'd quite happy see the price of CDs reduce, I don't consider (say) $10 for a (say 10-track) CD to be a rip-off. Not for the reasons stated by other posters - to be honest I never even thought of those - but simply because I personally consider $1 per song recorded in perfect quality that'll remain that way for life to be an unbelievable bargain.

 

[supervij]

Six times may be the saturation point for movies, but it's much less for the average CD. Granted, the following is based on something I remember reading years ago, but I think it's still relevant.

The average CD gets 1.2 listens. That means if you were to count up all the CDs you've ever owned, and counted up the number of times you listened to any of those CDs, and divided the latter by the former, you'd get around 1.2 as the number of times you listened to any given CD.

When I take a look at my collection, I have to agree. I've bought a lot of CDs over the years, and many of them were listened to once, maybe twice, and that was it. (I always used to get burned buying a CD based on a great couple of singles, only to find the rest of the CD sucked. Or buying a CD based on a stellar performance at a local club only to find that the CD sucked compared to the live show.)

So I maintain that DVDs give much better entertainment value than CDs.

Just my one point two cents.

cheers,
supervij

 

[racquetman]

Six times may be the saturation point for movies, but it's much less for the average CD. Granted, the following is based on something I remember reading years ago, but I think it's still relevant.

The average CD gets 1.2 listens. That means if you were to count up all the CDs you've ever owned, and counted up the number of times you listened to any of those CDs, and divided the latter by the former, you'd get around 1.2 as the number of times you listened to any given CD.

When I take a look at my collection, I have to agree. I've bought a lot of CDs over the years, and many of them were listened to once, maybe twice, and that was it. (I always used to get burned buying a CD based on a great couple of singles, only to find the rest of the CD sucked. Or buying a CD based on a stellar performance at a local club only to find that the CD sucked compared to the live show.)

So I maintain that DVDs give much better entertainment value than CDs.

Just my one point two cents.

cheers,
supervij

I'm not going to quantify my opinion, but I agree with supervij.

JKL1960, it's great that you get so much listening enjoyment out of your music. However, I think you are in the minority. Most people get sick of songs rather quickly. Why? Because they get beaten to death by radio stations for one thing. At least that's the problem with popular music.

If you break down the per song cost of a CD it isn't that bad. However most of the junk on CDs is nothing but filler that you are going to listen to once or twice and then never again. If you only listen to 2 or 3 songs on a CD then the cost per song doesn't look so great anymore. Suddenly $13 or $14 a CD is outrageous.

DVDs are simple. You know what you are getting. You either enjoy the movie or you don't. There are no surprises. Actually, sometimes there are good surprises in some of the extras or the commentary tracks or bloopers or whatever. CDs are a game of Russian roulette. There is nothing worse than taking a chance on a new CD and finding out you hate everything but one song!!

 

[Buckle-meister]

I'm not going to quantify my opinion, but I agree with supervij.

I totally don't! There's no way on earth that I listen to my CDs on average just 1.2 times.

...it's great that you get so much listening enjoyment out of your music. However, I think you are in the minority. Most people get sick of songs rather quickly. Why? Because they get beaten to death by radio stations for one thing. At least that's the problem with popular music.

Yes, I agree that radio's repeat songs too much, but then you only tend to notice this if you listen to the radio all day. I'd say it's a minority of folk that do. Besides, you can always change the station to one that plays other forms of music if you get sick of the same thing over and over. Unless that is, you only like one type of music, but again I'd say that that's the case only for a minority of folk.

If you break down the per song cost of a CD it isn't that bad. However most of the junk on CDs is nothing but filler that you are going to listen to once or twice and then never again. If you only listen to 2 or 3 songs on a CD then the cost per song doesn't look so great anymore. Suddenly $13 or $14 a CD is outrageous.

Again, I have to disagree. I've bought CDs in the past just for one song! Besides, think youself lucky; $14 is around £8 and you'll never pay as little as that for a chart CD over here.

DVDs are simple. You know what you are getting. You either enjoy the movie or you don't. There are no surprises.

Surprises are a good thing, even if sometimes you have to take the bad with the good.

 

[JKL1960]

JKL1960, it's great that you get so much listening enjoyment out of your music. However, I think you are in the minority. Most people get sick of songs rather quickly. Why? Because they get beaten to death by radio stations for one thing. At least that's the problem with popular music.

Of course I get sick of some music. Of course I have CDs that have only had a few listenings. I'm talking about the music we like. As I said I have many recordings that I have consistently listened to for thirty or more years. There is also some that old that when I hear I wonder why I used like it. I have plenty of music that I could literally listen to daily and enjoy. Try taking your favourite movie and watching it every day. I predict that by the end of the first week you'll be tired of seeing your 'favourite' movie.

Do you play a movie for background while doing housework?
Do you play a movie for background while having a conversation?
Do you play movies to entertain yourself while driving your car?

Music, it's everywhere.

Don't get me wrong I love movies too, but I see more value in a music disc that I may listen to a thousand times (if I like it enough) compared to a movie that no matter how good it is I may not watch more than ten times.

I'm also a bit old school with music. I listen to whole discs generally. I notice that my daughter rarely listens to a piece of music for more than 45 seconds. (In the car she makes me crazy.) So we could be at odds over a generational thing. Luckily it isn't important and no one can be wrong.

 

[stratman]

Six times!!

Six viewings is supposed to be the rough saturation point for watching a movie. It's the point where most people with most movies never care to see it again. I have several movies that I have watched once, maybe twice, and might never watch again.

Music doesn't have this. I have CD copies of stuff I owned on vinyl 30 years ago and even though I've heard it at least a thousand times I still listen.

Ergo, a $15 music CD is better value than a $10 movie.

I have heard people complain abou CD pricing before (sure, I wish they were cheaper) and I point out that Wal Mart has a giant bin of music CDs for under $5. It always turns out that it isn't just the CD they want, apparently the material on the CD is important.

Anyway, what really concerns me is the possibility of lossless formats dissappearing entirely. SACD and DVD-A are stagnating in the market. The average person doesn't seem to mind poor quality recordings and compressed formats. The music industry isn't even actually exploiting the potential of the CD, instead insisting on compressing music so that the dynamic range is as limited as vinyl was. There are too many poor sounding CDs.

It's a mess and I'm pissed about it.

I totally agree with your assesment, a movie can become a classic, but lets face it you can only watch it so many times. Whereas music you can listen to and not get sick of, I have music on CDs that I use to have on vinyl back in the mid 70s that I still listen to regularly, yet for the life of me I can't see JAWS (the original) any more because of overexposure.