Rant: the sad state of music distribution

[Tao1]

I have been trying to find new music lately, but I find it extremely difficult to actually purchase any music I want to buy. For example:

Today I decided to do a search for 'symphonic metal with female vocals". I struck gold with this Youtube video:

Top 10 symphonic metal female vocalists! Yes!
...ok lets wikipedia each vocalist and find their bands.
Ok now let's type in their band name into bandcamp.com, hdtracks.com and go to their official sites.


Well...each and every one did not show up on either site (they already 'made it' yet were not main stream enough for hdtracks), and their official store pages either offered to sell me a CD, or pointed me to iTunes (or Amazon). Disappointing. I could not (reasonably) purchase one album! I mean: Really??? What the hell??? By 'reasonably' I mean I am not paying extra to ship a CD from wherever, and not giving money to Apple for a lesser quality copy.

With all of our technology today the only term that can be used is it is a complete 'cluster F..." to buy music these days. I think we really need to make a push as a community to get music distribution out of this dark age.

First off: CDs are dead, yet they are still a primary form of distribution for artists. I have looked up a few artists I had interest in and they only had CDs on their main website store pages. Other than that there was a link to iTunes for a digital download option (more on that abomination in a bit).

The other main form of distribution is ITunes or Amazon, and maaaaaybe Google play. All 3 'vendors' are just not suitable for digital music purchases. bandcamp.com and HDtracks.com are probably the main site for digital purchases. Bandcamp is great....for new artists, but once an artist has 'made it big', they won't use that site. On the other hand, hdtracks.com falls a bit short in its own way. Sure they won't have every artist out there, but it would be nice to search for details other than artist name or music type. Perhaps I am looking for female vocals. Perhaps of a certain nationality. As it is their search function isn't the greatest as it returns a mess of possible hits, rather than something a bit more organized.

Second: .mp3

Let us put music quality to the side for a second...

.mp3 was developed as a digital medium to save space due to the state of storage technology in the early 90s. Today, you can have at least 64GB of memory in a PORTABLE device, if not 128GB. That is at least 64 full, uncompressed CDs plus 30% free space for other storage. .flac can compress a CD up to 50% on top of that. The storage savings of .mp3 is no longer needed.

On top of that, as far as I understand, there are still active patents on .mp3 encoding and decoding technology. Because mp3 is (somehow) still the standard for digital content, it is costing companies and consumers unnecessary extra cost in licensing fees.

So the main advantage of .mp3 has not been needed for a long time, it costs extra to use, and is of inferior quality to .flac, yet it is still the standard format in music and shows no signs of going away. That is just messed up on a whole nother level.

Third: the abomination known as iTunes

iTunes is probably the single most prominent perpetrator of the outdated .mp3 standard. Backing up a bit, iTunes is in itself an abomination of a 'store' or distribution system. It requires its own software to use, perpetuates its own proprietary formats and technologies, and only gives a limited use license that is non transferable and expires upon your death. The music buying experience was far easier in the late 90s by going to the mall and checking out the various music stores. With iTunes, you get a proprietary, controlled environment, that sells predominantly a substandard product (unless something is available in apple lossless codec).

Fourth: Distribution is based on a philosophy that America is the primary/only market

It seems nearly impossible to throw money at artists these days, unless they are in the main stream. Even then it can be hard, since I am in Canada and there are region distribution restrictions.

Let's start with the basics:

Queen: A night at the Opera

There is the original album, plus 2 remastered versions. I found myself missing this album after giving it away during a move years ago, so I decided to buy it again. HDTracks.com: "This product is not currently available due to region restrictions". My only option would be to go to iTunes or to order the CD and pay shipping. Essentially pay a higher price for 16bit/44.1khz than the 24 bit/96khz download....

Ok, let's see how bad this region restriction nonsense is:

I Look up Sarah McLaughlan, a legendary Canadian singer, on hdtracks. "This product is not currently available due to region restrictions". REALLY?? I can't purchase content from a Canadian artist because I am in Canada?

I know it has nothing to do with the origin of the artist, but with what distribution agreements the IP holder has. Essentially these IP holders try and maximize profits by charging different rates for different world regions, but in the end: people outside of the US have a hard time throwing money at content they want to buy and end up pirating the content. Game of Thrones and HBO go is a good example. Canadians can't get HBO go so have to pay $100+ dollars a month for a full cable subscription OR commit fraud by using a VPN to a US server, and paying for the HBO online service....or wait for the dvd or blu ray of the season.

In conclusion:

We really need to get together as a community to deal with the sad state of music distribution, and....well...burn it with fire. We really need to call on artists to STOP using iTunes, and use the variety of online stores out there. We also need to work with stores such as HD tracks to get a better user interface (i.e. a wealth of information tags to search through) and make a push to overtake iTunes as the primary distribution service.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Your mention of GoT stuck a chord - please do visit this link:
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

 

[Tao1]

Your mention of GoT stuck a chord - please do visit this link:
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

Lol

Well at least HBO took the step to get rid of the archaic distribution model of cable tv. Ironically cable tv is as messed up as iTunes and mp3 is to audio. We would need to get rid off the lossy video compression for video downloading/steaming which I guess is another cause to fight for as a community.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

We would need to get rid off the lossy video compression for video downloading/steaming which I guess is another cause to fight for as a community.

Sorry, but this sounds like rubbish to me. What I think your issue is not with "lossy" streamed video, but badly compressed one. Back in the day then I watched cable tv - my local provider used 1080i mpeg2 stream and blocks were often apparent and very annoying. I do know what netflix/youtube video stream gets even more compressed and even more artifacts.
But Lossless video compression are not anywhere near practical, not until home 10gb internet would become a reality.
https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/broadband-progress-reports/2015-broadband-progress-report
53% of rural america lack access to broadband internet... and it's currently defined as 25mbs down/3up and same for 17% of ALL of americans.

 

[Tao1]

Sorry, but this sounds like rubbish to me. What I think your issue is not with "lossy" streamed video, but badly compressed one. Back in the day then I watched cable tv - my local provider used 1080i mpeg2 stream and blocks were often apparent and very annoying. I do know what netflix/youtube video stream gets even more compressed and even more artifacts.
But Lossless video compression are not anywhere near practical, not until home 10gb internet would become a reality.
https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/broadband-progress-reports/2015-broadband-progress-report
53% of rural america lack access to broadband internet... and it's currently defined as 25mbs down/3up and same for 17% of ALL of americans.

Yeah badly compressed is what I mean. Cable tv here is fine, yet places that you would think are major content providers use bad compression (rent a movie on Google play of example). Downgrading the signal for people on a slow conection is also a thing, but having video as small as possible by default is a step backwards from what we already have with cable providers.

The point is: it is possible to have good quality video streamed to the home as cable tv providers have shown. Also the bandwidth is already there. It is just that cable tv providers rather have people pay for cable tv than for internet because there is more money in it for them. Essentially: the infrastructure is already there. We don't necessarily need to 'upgrade' people to 10Gb.

We either need to get cable companies to go to an internet based model, or to stop playing games with cable 'packages' and go to an on demand model.

 

[Irvrobinson]

So, your message is to the content providers is, I want your product my way for a cost I, as a consumer, deem appropriate, without regard to international markets, with 1% level quality (lossless) available to all at about the same price.

I suspect that if a content provider honestly answered you, it would sound something like: "It's legally our content. You don't have some god-given right to our stuff, any more than we have a right to your money, so if you don't like the way we offer it, get your own content. We like cable bundles, and lossless quality streaming costs us a lot more in communications, even for music, most people listen on earbuds and in their cars, and 256Kbps MP3 probably has more fidelity than they can possibly hear in those environments. Have you tried our new vinyl products? We're not all that interested in you audiophiles; there's not enough money in that market. As for CDs being dead, we still sell billions of dollars worth of them at very little cost. CD + streaming is a very nice pair of markets, thank you. As for your Canadian licensing problems, you can thank a lack of a common international copyright law. See you on iTunes."

 

[TheWarrior]

I do my part by continuing to buy cd's. And I happily stand up from my seat to change discs.

 

[Tao1]

So, your message is to the content providers is, I want your product my way for a cost I, as a consumer, deem appropriate, without regard to international markets, with 1% level quality (lossless) available to all at about the same price.

I suspect that if a content provider honestly answered you, it would sound something like: "It's legally our content. You don't have some god-given right to our stuff, any more than we have a right to your money, so if you don't like the way we offer it, get your own content. We like cable bundles, and lossless quality streaming costs us a lot more in communications, even for music, most people listen on earbuds and in their cars, and 256Kbps MP3 probably has more fidelity than they can possibly hear in those environments. Have you tried our new vinyl products? We're not all that interested in you audiophiles; there's not enough money in that market. As for CDs being dead, we still sell billions of dollars worth of them at very little cost. CD + streaming is a very nice pair of markets, thank you. As for your Canadian licensing problems, you can thank a lack of a common international copyright law. See you on iTunes."

My message to the content provider is that the distribution channels are more prohibitive than they used to be for audio, and straight up a brick wall for video. If I (or millions of people) are trying to throw money their way, but can't, that is a big problem for the content maker. The point remains that moving away from iTunes and mp3s would be inclusive for ALL customers, rather than the current model catering only to those who don't know any better. People would still be able to use iTunes if they prefer it; it just wouldn't be the primary 'go to' place for artists/IP holders for primary distribution.

Like I said the playback quality of mp3 is secondary here. It is the fact that the main benefit of mp3 is irrelevant these days, yet it still probably adds extra cost to use that format rather than switching over to flac.

I say that CD is dead because it adds cost to both sides of the transaction: manufacturing cost and shipping cost. If consumers are still demanding CDs specifically, I can't argue with that, but the question I would have is: Would they be spending money in the modern option of digital media if they could reliably do so? Essentially is it a self fulfilling prophecy? Or are there still that many late adopters out there?

Also I don't think it is copyright law. Copyright law simply assigns the creator with the rights to use, sell, and reproduce (among other things). There will be some nuances to the fine details country to country, but it is universal that the creator has the rights for reproduction. It is the fact that different individuals (companies) hold different rights for different regions that is the issue. That model for sales is obsolete in a global market. The main things keeping it a float are: the established distributors are established for their physical distribution network for physical goods, or needing different pricing for countries with different economies. For example Microsoft Windows is something like $12 in Russian because $100us is just to expensive over there when converted to local currency. This behaviour is described as 'the perfect price discriminating monopoly' in economic theory. (It is slightly different with media since IP holders are competing with each other and technically not monopolies, but they are still clinging onto the notion that markets are still defined by geographical borders, and thus trying to use price descrimination.)

The difference there is that Microsoft has at least taken care of making it easy to purchase Windows in any country, yet media IP holders seem to still be stuck in the old mindset that America is the primary/only market out there and don't put as much attention to the distribution networks elsewhere...other than price is optimized. Many have argued that if this nonsense was dropped, these companies would be making much more money, since it is no longer impeding consumers from actually buying the content.

 

[Hi Ho]

iTunes actually does not use MP3. It uses the superior AAC codec. Still lossy compression, yes, but excellent quality. Music purchased from iTunes is also not copy protected. You can play it on any player you choose.

I was a Spotify subscriber for years and now use Apple Music. It's like having a 30 million song music library for one flat fee and it's awesome.

 

[GO-NAD!]

I have Sonos and I still buy CD's. After I save it to my NAS and a back-up drive, I still have the hard copy. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I like having physical media.

 

[Irvrobinson]

I say that CD is dead because it adds cost to both sides of the transaction: manufacturing cost and shipping cost. If consumers are still demanding CDs specifically, I can't argue with that, but the question I would have is: Would they be spending money in the modern option of digital media if they could reliably do so? Essentially is it a self fulfilling prophecy? Or are there still that many late adopters out there?

I think there are multiple reasons why CDs persist. In no particular order: they are incredibly cheap to manufacture nowadays, they are durable, the cost to store them is minimal (while online storage has an ongoing cost), I know many people who think visually scanning a rack of CDs to decide what to listen to is easier than searching with a little tablet, and a lot of people still prefer a physical media for various reasons. Oh yeah, and they really are nearly perfect uncompressed music for essentially forever.

I've looked into switching to wireless streaming multiple times. I won't do it until I can go completely lossless, and the cost of the equipment and content is silly compared to CDs. And I've got about 2500 CDs. The whole idea of ripping them, or paying someone to rip them, is too inconvenient to think about.

Lately, I'm paying between US$1 and US$3 per CD for big name classical box sets on Amazon. That pricing is simply far lower than any streaming service, and I get lossless quality to boot.

I don't think it is copyright law.

Perhaps you're correct, I'm not an entertainment industry attorney, but I think copyright law is behind that regions nonsense for streaming (and BDs). Your Microsoft example seems unrelated, as MSFT is a single content provider just making marketing and pricing decisions.

 

[Tao1]

iTunes actually does not use MP3. It uses the superior AAC codec. Still lossy compression, yes, but excellent quality. Music purchased from iTunes is also not copy protected. You can play it on any player you choose.

I was a Spotify subscriber for years and now use Apple Music. It's like having a 30 million song music library for one flat fee and it's awesome.

That must be a recent change. Last I saw iTunes it was still using mp3 a couple years ago. I know you can play it on any player, it is just that you have to go through the extra hoops of installing the software, and walking through their walled garden to purchase content.