mrkgoo said:
Great points. I don't care much for lossless, but I'm not in the same group as you. I think it's probably, as you say, just a bandwidth and convenience issue. I don't think it's an issue of idealism. Very few people would bother with the lossless download if it cost too much more. That said, 22MB isn't really that big a file anymore, so who knows.
I didn't know iTunes ever had 192kbps MP3s.
They have a tiered pricing structure now. $1.29, 99c, and 79c (I hardly EVER see 79c songs). It was part of the deal with the music companies to go DRM free - Apple finally backed down on that one. The tiered pricing isn't for quality, just popular vs. normal songs.
Also, just to note, movies have gone down that path. When you buy an HD movie, you get an SD version to put on your mobile device. I would like, as you say, system that ranscodes it during the time of import too, or at least the option to operate this way (actually, the iPod shuffle had that option - to convert songs that synced to it as 128kbps aac, I assume because the storage space was so small for that).
Also most movies in iTunes aren't currently in full 1080p HD, atlas for sale. I assume that 20GB files aren't ideal for the same reason.
Regardless, go get that beer! *cheers*
Yeah, 192 kbps mp3 versus 128 kbps aac was kinda a joke, not even worth talking about really, Apple's AAC
is a good codec, I'd say the standard 128 kbps AAC was easily on par with the 192 kbps MP3 and the only thing your extra 30 cents was buying was the lack of DRM, but good to see that's in the past.
I know I sound like a music snob, I don't view myself as one but I guess it does sound that way. For most modern music I actually find the 128, and definitely feel the 256, kpbs AAC formats are pretty damn accurate. I mean, 128 kpbs really isn't close in a way, but it's only apparent on certain songs and even then, unless you have the original to compare it to at the same time it's not even noticeable. Especially if your primary method of listening to music is on an ipod or similar mp3 device. But music playback becomes a really sticky subject because not only a some songs perfectly fine in 128 kpbs but it's also heavily dependent on the source as well. The SACD format was superior to standard CD audio yet some SACD's were inferior because the masters had degraded or been lost and the new source they used wasn't on par with the CD(why not just use the fucking CD as the source at that point?(actually why release a SACD at all if it physically can not be better than the CD and all SACD players could read CD's?)) or because the person doing the remastering got a wild hair up his ass and decided to fuck shit up. You even see this on new CD re-releases now where they're basically just upping the volume of everything killing the more subtle sounds so the CD just sounds louder and "better".
I think the whole industry is moving away from really detailed sound, much to my chagrin at times, but I think that it's unfortunately what people like. I also think how people listen to music has changed. I'd be a liar if I said I don't do my listening on my computer, but my computer happens to be hooked up to my stereo with an optical cable(why can I not rip a SACD into 5.1 FLAC God?? Sony, release a PC SACD drive) and I have to admit that if my choices were lossy audio all stored on the PC or lossless CD's where I had to thrumb through my booklets to find the ones I want to listen to I would choose the computer, I think most would and have. But I can afford to be picky, the iTunes price of a CD wasn't too much cheaper(sometimes not at all) than the actual CD and I can just rip it into whatever I wanted, so I sat the online music store scene out. I tried them all and outside of Emusic or whatever, iTunes was the best, technically it was always the best since Emusic's selection paled in comparisons to iTunes even though it was DRM free, and Apple's DRM was fairly lax for the time period. But I wonder if this isn't a cyclical, it's true most people probably are not listening to their music on a good home stereo anymore but media streamers are becoming more and more common and decent home theater setups are becoming common thanks to people wanting surround sound for their movies, I wonder if we wont again be at a point where we all sit and complain about how we allowed our music to be such low quality when we play it on our 600 dollar home theater in a box setups and wonder why it doesn't sound like we expect. That's why I'm against allowing an online store become a replacement for my CD shopping, if it was lossless, if I knew for a fact that 10 years from now, or 5 years from now that what sounded the best on my ipod also sounded the best on my home stereo I would be all over the online music scene but it's not like that. With iTunes you're trapped, yeah it sounds good on your ipod, it osunds fine on your computer speakers when you're hosting a party or cleaning the house but it's not really that good on your stereo and if you want it to sound good on your stereo then you gotta go and buy the fucking CD again and you've saved no money in the end. So even back then I wanted quality to be first, if the song called for a 16 mb 320 kbps variable AAC then I'd have liked it to be sold at that bitrate, damn the convenience, because if we go for convenience at the start like we did with music we lose convenience and flexibility in the future.
But anyways, back to codecs, I think the concept of even labeling them 128 or 256 kbps is funny. Some songs are just fine in 128 kbps putting them in a 256 kbps is just a waste of space, let alone some giant lossless format. Thankfully, the concept of compression itself ensures that no two songs the same length are actually the same size in the first place and most modern, pretty sure all of Apples AAC's modes at least, are now variable bit rates instead of a constant bitrate. I'd have just preferred that from the onset that each song got whatever was necessary to sound good but their codec and their store has been a work in progress, even the plain old 128 kbps standard has grown in quality and the same happened to mp3 and it's encoders over the years. Like I said though, 256 kbps is really fucking close, real close. I probably own a handful of albums where I could tell the difference between lossless and 256 kbps on my home stereo and I know I can't tell the difference on my Ipod with it's headphones. I can actually *live* with 256 kbps AAC.
I'm sure Apple's facing the same issue with movies. I never checked out their movie store so I'm disappointed they don't have 1080p but I bet it'll get really funny if they add old shows(or have they). Even what we consider Standard Def, which I guess is probably 480p is probably too good for an old show like MacGyver or I Dream Of Jeannie but would a consumer bite for something that wasn't even 480p? I admit that a standard has to exist, I just think it should have always been invisible to the consumer, they should just get the best version of what they buy that technology allows for.
Regarding people paying more for a lossless version, I don't think they would now, because 99-1.29 cents has been established by Apple as the price for a single song, it'll be hard to undo that, but what if they had established the price of a lossless at the start at 1.49, would it then be too much(would that lose too much money due to bandwidth)? Is 99 cents what enabled Apple's store to do so well or did the store doing well cement the 99 cents price point? But that musing aside, if the technical realities placed a lossless album download as costing more than the album in the store, then it wouldn't work, the digital version has to either be equal or less than the physical object, whether we're talking books, music, movies whatever, that's how we're trained. If our current infrastructure makes that impossible we need to upgrade that infrastructure.
But I really worry about the book DRM more than I do music because despite being a similar situation I have the option of ripping a CD myself into any format I choose, I can rip it to ogg, flac, aac, mp3, wma, fuck I could put Microsoft's DRM on the WMA and tie my own hands behind my back if I wanted to, but books, I can't really rip a book, so this is actually more important to me than the music scene. I guess I could scan each page one by one, or destroy the spine and run it through a scanner and make a PDF, or maybe run some OCR on it and convert it to a txt file but those are shitty options. I like physical books, I'll probably prefer to buy physical books as my primary choice of the format because I enjoy reading the physical book. For music the format of the music isn't as important as what it's played on, that's what determines my enjoyment, where as a books format is the most important. Put the book on some tiny paperback with too small text that runs too close to the center of the spine and it becomes a chore to read(I'm looking at you Sherlock Holmes the Complete Works!) but get one of those paperbacks or hardbacks with a generously sized font, nice paper, nice spacing and it becomes so relaxing. Ereaders aren't there for me yet, although I have no doubt that they will in fact clearly surpass physical books at one point in readability, what with the option for their own lighting, text size and font options and the like, at that point the only thing a physical book will have going for it is nostalgia and maybe that they work without electricity provided you have a lit area. It's because I know book's days are numbered(not literally but practically) that I want it done right. I want the DRM and the storefront divorced from each other and no longer tied to the device and I want the devices to compete on features alone, not who's got the biggest store. I want to buy a Kindle one day and if Sony comes up with a better ereader 3 years from then I want all my Kindle purchases to work on that and if Apple's the best 4 years after that then I want both Sony's and Amazon's shit to work on it. If that's the route Apple goes with ePub(I'm ignorant on how it'll work for non public domain works) then Apple will get my support on that. I'd like all the estores to essentially be the same as normal stores, in other words they all buy the same file from the publisher but can sell it for what they want. If they want to discount some old vampire ebooks to coincide with the newest Twilight(ugh) release then cool, whatever, so long as they play on everything, what I absolutely do not want is another ipod situation where you're stuck with only one real estore and one real device that can play the shit.
But I understand their fear, books are smaller in size than music and storage wise it's possible for people to honestly fit the entire collection of books they ever
wanted on a portable device, that's still hard for some people with music and still impossible for most with movies. Plus, I don't think that books ever had to deal with piracy quite like music and video did, the demographic is kind of different but the act of getting a physical book onto an easily piratable format was too time consuming for most, unless it was leaked from someone most didn't bother. I mean, who's going to transcribe a book just to upload it online? But if new release books become just as easy to get as music and video then they're really looking at something they never had to deal with before. I also think that since the size difference for storage and transfer is different than music and video that digital books will overtake physical books way faster than music and video once it's "ipod" hits the market. Kindle and nook aren't it yet, but when it hits, or if it ends up being the ipad or a cellphone app(doubt it on the cellphone) then it's fucking on.
So I think print will be in the strange situation of having to switch their prices faster. Clearly what they'd like to do is keep the current pricing model and just transition to digital, make the same they always made in print and make more in the digital world and not worry about which medium is making more or less money, but I don't think consumers will go for that in the end. In the interim I'd like the price of physical books to go up but come with the ebook via some code or some shit, although how to keep some ass from going and activating the code while the book's sitting on the shelf is beyond me, and the ebook. Either way, in the end the digital versions just kinda have to be cheaper, both while they co exist because of it being cheaper than printing and distributing a book and consumers know this and also feel that getting something intangible is worth less than a physical product and also later when the ebooks have overtaken the print because the print books will be rare and not as in much circulation and will be more expensive by default.
But I see how they're all scared shitless that the market for mass electronic distribution that'd warrant true volume prices isn't there but they're being forced to act as if it were to facilitate that market actually happening because it's hard to balance the physical and digital sales. Once it's balanced out and print is all but dead it'll be easier to come up with such a scheme but in the interim it's gotta be scary as shit for them because they don't know what will happen, how many of a book do they print, if they allow the consumer to be trained to buy at 10 bucks on line when physical print is still the main market what happens? Does that shit just sit on the shelf losing money while the guy/girl waits to get an ereader, does the consumer just think it's a rip off and not buy it, do they have to lower the price of physical in line with online just to keep selling even at a loss? It's a shitty situation to be in.
