Poll: What is the most you would pay for uncompressed songs from iTunes?

[MacRumors]

Vote: Poll: What is the most you would pay for uncompressed songs from iTunes? (http://www.macpolls.com/?poll_id=370)

[idkew]

i really don't see the point. i have nice audio equipment, but the acoustics of my place would make a high bit-rate aac and a loss-less song sound about the same.

now- if i could get a 256kbps aac, i would like that, and maybe pay a small bit more for it.

[bennok]

I put $1.25 a song. But an uncompressed song would be huge and less appealing to download. At that size (500-700MB per CD), I'd rather go to the record store and buy the CD.
I like AAC 128 though. I realize I'm getting a smaller quality file that I can't increase when I buy from iTMS, but usually I can save money on my purchases there, or I'm buying something exclusive.

[oldwatery]

I can see both points.
However, I am an audio idiot and I would really like the option to have full fidelity. So far I have not purchased any songs for that reason. I also put $1.25 but I'm not sure it's worth that much more as it gets to be cheaper to buy the actual cd. Bottom line..at around a buck I'd be hooked.

[winmacguy]

Paying more to download an uncompressed song would defeat the purpose of iTMS. iTMS is designed to stop people pirating and downloading songs illegally that would have already been ripped to .wma format with varying results on quality of the files ( PC people) hence the .99 cent price tag for each track.

These people are/were more concerned with increasing the size of their MP3 collection for FREE than paying full price from a CD store to get their songs in the original format and CD quality

These people were never going to PAY for the songs or CDs in the first place and had only downloaded a song or songs at a lesser quality of compression.

[chmorley]

Once you get a little over $1.25/song, you quickly surpass the price of a CD. I'm willing to pay the same or a little less than a CD for a lossy format, but I'm not willing to pay more for the same quality as a CD. If I'm spending that kind of money, I'd rather buy the CD and rip it at whatever rate I choose.

Chris

[Nermal]

I'm still waiting to be able to pay 99c for compressed AACs! Having said that, I voted for $1.50, but now that I actually think about it, I should've chosen $1.25.

[Doctor Q]

I'm not an audiophile. I would only need excellent quality for select items, which I'd probably buy on audio CD instead of online.

[Sabenth]

may as well buy the cd and rip the tracks

[mac15]

whats wrong with 128kb AAC?

[KC9AIC]

Now if we could just get sound files of higher quality than CDs (like 24 bit sound, etc), I would love that!

[adt]

so true KC9AIC, either a stereo track straight off the digital mixing console into 24-bit/192khz, or just give me the tape looms to play back on a reel-to-reel!!!

i believe both .wav and .aiff are available in 24/192, as their top level of quality.

wouldn't that be nice to play back over the 'right' system, in the 'right' room...

[nagromme]

I'd pay a lot for ears and equipment that would let me tell the current AACs from CDs :)

[kettle]

The Music has to be worth it. This shouldn't be market research into how much can be rung out of a product, it should be an acknowledgement that if some pieces of audio can command a higher price because of the quality perception of that audio file then it should be allowed to ask for more. On the other hand this shouldn't give record companies the right to price every piece of crap at a similar high price.

I would like a proper market where people vote with their feet. If the record companies abuse that then people will find a way to duplicate the data and listen without financial credit to any of the products creators.

On another note I think CD's will recover when record companies start releasing a wider variety of music. They all seem to want to follow a high profit approach that has taken about ten years to die on them. When the new knowledge hits the idiots who decide what popular music should be, they will start experiencing natural "pop stars" who come out of no where, not a record company test tube.

Good news if there was a much larger number of smaller record companies. Not so much fun for shareholders, but you know what, the only collum suffering in big business seems to be quality.

So the answer is, lossy or not, if it is crap music I won't buy it, if it's nice and cheap I might try it.
Don't try the "we want to control the music industry and if you won't let us no one else will have it!" approach. I don't want the business to say - no one is interested in buying music, they're all theives. We have licenced all music, so if you hear any, it's illegal and we are going to have you all put in prison.

you can come out now rant over.:)

[virividox]

if i wanted non-lossy i wouldnt be using my computer

[MattG]

I wouldn't pay any more. For that price I might as well go out and buy the CD!

[Einherjar]

Originally posted by nagromme
I'd pay a lot for ears and equipment that would let me tell the current AACs from CDs :)

LOL, the quality on a lot of songs is absolutely terrible. Like, for example just about any song from the 80's. With the effects they put on the music during that time, everything sounds all warbly and stuff. The only songs I buy on iTunes anymore are songs and albums that are all taken entirely from old analog tapes and weren't really remastered when they made the transition to CD, IE, stuff like Fela Kuti and some of the more obscure Bob Marley albums--stuff that is either hard to find on CD without paying like 25 dollars on Amazon and wouldn't benefit much from a higher bitrate anyway, even on my l33t setup. Hell, most Fela Kuti stuff sounds fine as 96/112k mp3's, with little depth added at higher bitrates.

Examples of some of the worst audio quality on iTunes: Look at anything by Skid Row, Quiet Riot, or Van Halen. Most songs from any of these three bands sound have absolutely piss-poor sound, on ANY speakers. I wanted to buy Diver Down on iTunes, and was about to hit the buy album when I remembered how much Van Halen mp3's blew at anything below 192k with all the effects and everything. God, Van Halen songs sound the absolute worst at the current AAC bitrate. Needless to say, no Van Halen was purchased. :-P

[slowtreme]

If it's going to end up costing me the same or more than a store bought CD and I STILL don't get access to the CD jacket and extras inside, it's not worth one penny more for a file I'll just reconvert.

[Fender2112]

Well it seems most folks feel about the same as I do. I don't see much logic to this. The only practical use I can come up with is if I wanted to mix a CD of select songs. AIF files are too big to be used in place of MP3 or AAC as a portable library. As soon as you download and burn to CD you'll have to delete the files you just spent $15 on or else your hard drive will fill up fast.

And as some folks have mentioned, eventually it will get compressed to another format anyway. However, downlading an AIF does give the option of compressing to the format of your choice. Which may allow songs to play on all types (brands) of players.

So to answer the question: I would pay 99¢ whether it be aif, aac, or mp3. If it's wma, you better be paying ME to take it off your hands. ;)

[~Shard~]

I definitely wouldn't pay more, that's for sure. I think this would kind of defeat the urpose of iTunes though - the whole premise of it is immediate gratification, and having a song within a couple of minutes. Downloading a raw AIFF file (or whichever format) in the 10s of MBs would defeat that purpose, as you would have to wait quite a while, especially to grab an entire album!

Plus, even if there are iTMS users out there on fast connections with bandwidth to burn, they would still be bottlenecked by the iTMS and how fast it could dish out the song.

The quality would be better, yes, and that does make a difference to a lot of people, however I don't think that's who iTMS is geared towards - it's geared towards people who want songs fast, dirty and cheap, so to speak. If there is an audiophile out there who wants the utmost in quality, then he'll probably just go and buy the CD ultimately.

[~Shard~]

Originally posted by nagromme
I'd pay a lot for ears and equipment that would let me tell the current AACs from CDs :)

1. get your hearing checked
2. get QUALITY sound equipment

:cool:

I admit, I am a musician, so my ears and "hearing skills" are exceptional, but I think I can speak for the non-musicians here as well when I say that you don't need ear training, orchestral experience, etc. like I do to be able to tell the difference. Are you one of those people who can't tell the difference between WAV files and MP3s either? ;)

As for not having equipment that can discern between CDs and AIFF, I would recommend purchasing a sound system that is actually high quality and NOT a piece of crap, because the one you have now is obviously not very good at all! Hope you didn't pay a lot for it....

Of course, if you don't have the ears to tell the difference, I guess the quality of sound equipment wouldn't make a difference either.... :cool:

[bennetsaysargh]

let the music do the talking, not the bit rate.
as long as it's not a crappy quality, what is the big deal? 128 AAC is fine with me and will be fine with most consumers. if you want loss-less quality, them why don't you go hire the band to play in your living room?

if you're that crazy about the quality of the file and not the song, then don't use iTMS. clear and simple as that.

[jrv3034]

Originally posted by Doctor Q
I'm not an audiophile. I would only need excellent quality for select items, which I'd probably buy on audio CD instead of online.

Exactly. It's just music, folks. If there's something out there that you desperately need in uncompressed, I know of places that actually sell CDs! Yeah, who'd have thought there's a market for it? ;)

Seriously, I know there are people that need the absolute best quality. I don't, but that's just me. I feel the iTMS isn't the right avenue for that limited market. iTMS is for the masses that were downloading music for free at terrible quality. I don't see how anyone can complain about AAC.

[Stella]

Stuff the poll.

I'd like to be able to buy from the iTMS in the first place!

[Spades]

Paying more for a higher quality track sounds like a good idea. I've heard 20-bit and 16-bit versions of the same song before, and the 20-bit was clearly better. If iTMS sold music at HIGHER quality than a CD, I'd definitely be willing to pay more for it.

Otherwise, I can rarely tell the difference between aac and CDs, so I wouldn't pay more.

[Mudbug]

I can see both sides of this - but I think for the most part, people who want music from iTMS are getting what they're paying for with 128 AAC. On a car stereo, or from the earbuds of an iPod, you can't hear much of a difference either way, and that's how most folks listen to their iTMS music. If you would rather have the uncompressed version, then just go to your local record store and buy the original version on a CD. For most standard listeners though, there's no difference in quality. Sure, the audiophiles will complain, but thats probably just the way it should be. ;) It gives them something to post about in the forums. :D

[johnnyjibbs]

Since getting my Mac last September, I've moved from traditional CD-listener (with no MP3 collection) to avid iTunes user. I never use my CDs any more. Any difference between quality that there is I could hardly notice before, now I definately can't since I'm used to AAC.

By the way, I always import at the standard 128kbps AAC - I can't really tell the difference between that and higher bitrates so I'd rather save the disk space.

[wdlove]

On this one, I'm don't really understand the question. My first thought was, to wonder if Apple is sending out a trial baloon to see if it can raise the price for its iTMS.

[michaelrjohnson]

i dont think so.... not so fast!

i think the $.99 is the perfect price point, and apple should just offer higher quality songs. nobody should be willing to pay that much more for single songs because (as stated before) you would quickly surpass the cost of the cd (which is realy as good as most people want/need)

heck, i dont' even think i'd pay $1.00 for a song!




...it was a joke, people :D

[mrsebastian]

i wouldn't pay anymore. for 99 out of 100 people (including me), the quality is good enough as it is. anyone who is a true audiophile and owns a $10,000 cd player, where you can actually hear the subtle differences, isn't going to be dl'ing from itms anyway.

[michaelrjohnson]

Originally posted by mrsebastian
i wouldn't pay anymore. for 99 out of 100 people (including me), the quality is good enough as it is. anyone who is a true audiophile and owns a $10,000 cd player, where you can actually hear the subtle differences, isn't going to be dl'ing from itms anyway.


that's a great point. what market is itms directed too anyhow? is it really FOR the high-end audiophile? my guess is no.

if there is to be any change, the quality should be upped for NO price increase.

[idkew]

Originally posted by michaelrjohnson
that's a great point. what market is itms directed too anyhow? is it really FOR the high-end audiophile? my guess is no.

if there is to be any change, the quality should be upped for NO price increase.

but- apple could also go for the high end market. there is no reason there can't be two available options. creating a loss-less version is easier than a lossy version. i don't think apple would need to charge more for the song, just more for the 10x larger bandwidth. not sure what that would cost though.

for most pop crap, a higher bitrate means little. most pop listeners do not even know what bitrate means.

the higher bitrates (up to an uncompressed 1411+kbps) would do a lot for high fidelity recordings such as classical music.

[hulugu]

Originally posted by idkew
but- apple could also go for the high end market. there is no reason there can't be two available options. creating a loss-less version is easier than a lossy version. i don't think apple would need to charge more for the song, just more for the 10x larger bandwidth. not sure what that would cost though.

for most pop crap, a higher bitrate means little. most pop listeners do not even know what bitrate means.

the higher bitrates (up to an uncompressed 1411+kbps) would do a lot for high fidelity recordings such as classical music.

I totally agree, I think there could be a market for Jazz/Live/Classical recordings at loss-less compresions, granted you can just go and buy the CD, but it's possible Apple could offer something more, in terms of previously rare songs, Live versions, etc. For Top 40 it doesn't matter at all, but to get a loss-less version of Miles Davis' Donna for example would be very cool.

[michaelrjohnson]

i also think that having additional lossless songs on iTMS for pros/classical/jazz audiophiles is not a bad idea.

...however, it is still important to realize that iTMS doesn't exactly earn apple much money. (i dont' recall the figures, but i dont' think they are losing money, just they make VERY little) and with the expanding popularity of the service i'm thinking apple will want to make some money off of this before they set out on another risky venture.

[killmoms]

First off, the option of losslessly compressed music seems to have been overlooked in this discussion. Although still large compared to 128kbps AAC files, APE or FLAC offer approximately 2:1 compression on most types of music (sometimes more, sometimes less) in a non-lossy format. These files could them be converted to MP3 or AAC for playback on devices like iPod.

Second, someone mentioned 20-bit vs. 16-bit recordings. Unless you're talking about actual DVD-Audio or SACD (which aren't 24-bit PCM anyway, though DVDA can be), I have a feeling you're referring to the misnamed 20-bit CDs of a few years ago. This is the worst example I've ever seen of misleading nomenclature. A "20-bit" CD means that it has been recorded and mastered at 20-bits per sample, not that the CD data itself is 20-bit resolution. An audio CD is, has been, and always will be a 16-bit, 44.1KHz medium. And, moreover, this use of "20-bit" has fallen out of favor, since nearly all albums now are recorded and mastered at 24-bit, 192KHz in-studio and then downsampled (via very expensive equipment/software) to 16-bit 44.1KHz for CDs.

All that said, the iTunes Music Store, at least with the current climate in the music industry, will not sell losslessly compressed tracks. One of their selling points to the record industry was probably that a "perfect" copy cannot be obtained from them, and re-encoding into other formats as can be done by burning the tracks to an audio CD and re-ripping results in quality loss. Therefore the record companies can feel secure in that their physical distribution mechanism still offers better quality. Once the iTMS sells non-lossy tracks that can be stripped of DRM by burning to CD and re-ripped into the format/quality of choice by anyone, the record companies will have no way to sell CDs.

Just my two cents.

--Cless

[michaelrjohnson]

good point, cless.

[parrothead]

If I wanted the lossless sound and large file size I would buy the CD. The whole point of AAC, MP3, or any of the others is to have a good quality song that doesnt take up much space. Now if we all had drives with multible terabytes maybe that argument would be disproven.

[mrsebastian]

Originally posted by parrothead
If I wanted the lossless sound and large file size I would buy the CD. The whole point of AAC, MP3, or any of the others is to have a good quality song that doesnt take up much space. Now if we all had drives with multible terabytes maybe that argument would be disproven.

that's another good point, part of what has made mp3/acc and other compression formats so popular are the small file size. can you imagine trying to download and store, say 100 albums? even with a cable or t1 line it'd take forever and your hd would fill up fast. at this point i don't think it's even a question of paying more for those files, it's logistically not a good idea to offer hi-fi versions at itms.

[1macker1]

I can't hear the difference between AAC, MP3, and WMA. So i'm not big on uncompressed songs.

[ZildjianKX]

I just rip all my CDs at 320 kbps... the bitrate of iTunes is just too low... why pay almost as much for something that is not as good as the original? Plus you get a hard copy with the original CD in case your hard drive goes.

[Spades]

It was labelled as an SACD. In most players it read as a normal 16-bit CD. In the right player it was 20-bit, and the 20-bit definitely sounded better.

I think this raises an interesting idea. Which would be higher quality? A lossless 16-bit 44.1 kHz file, or a lossy 24-bit 96 kHz (or higher) file? I'm betting the lossy one would sound better, and it would be smaller.

Originally posted by Cless
Second, someone mentioned 20-bit vs. 16-bit recordings. Unless you're talking about actual DVD-Audio or SACD (which aren't 24-bit PCM anyway, though DVDA can be), I have a feeling you're referring to the misnamed 20-bit CDs of a few years ago.

[zupchuck]

Frankly, the reason I don't buy from the iTunes store is that I cannot buy the original content, only the compressed version. Some of us actually have nice stereos and would like to listen to the unadulterated versions found on CDs. At 99¢ each, this is reasonable considering that you can buy CDs at $12 or so.

I find 99¢ to be too much for the compressed content. But that's just my opinion. You can always compress your content after the fact, you can't turn an MP3 back into the original content.

[MacFan26]

Ok, sorry I'm asking this, but what exactly is "loss"?

[Doctor Q]

Originally posted by MacFan26
Ok, sorry I'm asking this, but what exactly is "loss"? I doubt I can reply before everyone else does, but the "loss" in "lossy" refers to the data you lose when you compress a media file with a certain algorithm. In photographs, a TIFF or BMP or PICT file can be quite large, so the JPEG format was invented to compress the file by eliminating information that isn't important to the visual result. Some information is irretrievably lost when you create a JPEG file, so the image quality suffers. With a good algorithm, if all goes well, you will barely be able to tell the difference. For video and audio, similar principles apply (and, in addition, the sampling rate determines how much data you keep). AAC is lossy, although not as lossy as some competing audio formats. So the question is about whether non-lossy (and therefore larger) audio files are worth paying more for.

Compression doesn't always imply lossiness, by the way. If you use non-lossy compression, such as the way .sit and .zip files are used for compressing regular files, the resulting file will be bigger in general than a lossy compression produces, so the only disadvantage is the CPU power required to compress/uncompress the data.

[MacFan26]

Thanks for the explanation. Maybe it would be nice to offer those files on iTunes, and then people could compress them as they wanted.

[mms]

Maybe it's just me, but I can't tell the difference between AAC and a CD. Also, since higher bit rates would mean that songs would take up more hard drive space and would take longer to download, I would not pay more for better quality sound.

[yamabushi]

I can tell the difference. I would pay extra for sound quality superior to CD audio.

[MacFan26]

As far as importing tracks as MP3's from a CD, would you recommend converting all the files to AAC? Or would it be better to leave them as MP3's?

[bennetsaysargh]

i think it would be better to import them as AAC first because some audiophiles will get mad about you re-compressing ;)

[MacFan26]

Originally posted by bennetsaysargh
i think it would be better to import them as AAC first because some audiophiles will get mad about you re-compressing ;)

haha, good point. I guess I didn't realize that iTunes automatically imports them as AAC.

[MacSlut]

If you are one of the people who can't hear a difference, try playing around with audio for a while. Get yourself a handful of CDs of various types of music...stay away from simple stuff like an acoustic guitar instrumental or "unplugged" versions of CDs. Try to use CDs that you are very familiar with.

Then using iTunes try ripping the CD to your hard drive as a 44.1K Stereo 16-bit AIFF. Plug in a decent speaker system or a really good set of headphones and listen to the difference between the CD and the AIFF. There shouldn't be one.

Next try down-sampling the AIFF to 22K, try 8-bit , you can try even lower sampling rates and bit rates, but you should not only hear a huge difference but you should be able to understand what types of things you should be listening for. Don't just listen to one difference, try to hear all the differences.

Next try encoding the original 44.1K 16-bit AIFF to AAC and MP3. Start off with low bit rate settings and compare them to the original. Again with low bit rate settings 64K or 96K, you should be in pain because the quality is so bad... but endure the pain and try to hear all the differences. Then try 128K for MP3 and AAC. You'll should definitely hear that AAC sounds closer to the original, but at 128K, now that you know what to listen for, it won't sound like the original.

Which brings up the next point. Judge the audio based on "how close it sounds to the original". MP3s and AACs employ methods which may make the audio sound "yummier" than the original since they are removing parts of the audio.

This is a huge mistake that people make. They listen to a 128K MP3 or AAC and get distracted by the yumminess...often never even comparing it to the original let alone judging it on how close it is to the original.

The problem is that the yummy factor tends to be more pronounced on a low-end system. So the person is like, "wow, this sounds great at 128K", but then when they try playing the audio on even a fairly decent system they'll notice how bad it sounds compared to the original.