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I want free 12" Vinyl free with full album download.

I have purchased many Vinyl releases these last few years, LPs and EPs that come with a digital download or the CD as well. I feel these offerings are the best, artist gets paid, cost to consumer isn't too much (~15 - ~30 dollars), consumer gets beautiful physical cover art and in a timeless and lossless format. The consumer gets the same tracks for uploading to thier digital cloud, service, or computer. I did not like purchasing an album yesterday for 10 dollars that I knew came in 12" at the record store. Problem is I live 30 minutes from good record stores and didn't want to wait. I propose that when you download an album, you are offered a chance to pay a little more, and have the 12" vinyl or standard CD w/ wav files then mailed to your home, but given access to digital downloads immediately. I'd probably spend too much money if this distribution model ever came about.
 
consumer gets beautiful physical cover art and in a timeless and lossless format.

I don't know man, I have a feeling a 320kbs MP3 that's been played 1,000 times over the course of 10 years is going to fare better than the LP. (I do like the ritual itself of playing an LP though.)
 
What.

A new music format won't improve quality. Today's formats go well beyond CD quality, well beyond hearing limits in what they support. Now, as for what the hardware and our ears support, that's a completely different question. And the bottleneck.

It's easy as pie to develop formats that handle maximum frequencies up to 96 kHz rather than 44.1 kHz of CD audio. That's why for example AAC already does that.

Today, we even have formats like MPEG4-SLS "Scalable to Lossless". Audio with both a lossy and lossless layer, which can scale depending on bandwidth. And it's pretty tough to beat a flexible format supporting lossless audio.

But maybe they're talking about some random metadata-oriented features here? Music formats with lyrics, lyric timing, separated audio tracks, etc. Problem is: We already have all this too. Modern audio formats have rich and evolved metadata support.

Seems like they attempted to do something like this, aside from lossless, with iTunes LP and give us more than just music. Neat gimmick on the computer, but useless on mobile. Perhaps they'll work on getting something like that to run in iOS. All this talk about lossless is silly. The increase in quality is barely perceptible at the cost of a huge storage footprint. The 128GB iphones will alleviate some of that I guess but like you just don't see the point. I think a lot of these beliefs that lossless, and vinyl as well, are significantly better in sound is just a placebo effect.
 
Turn off automatic music downloads: Settings: iTunes and App Store: Automatic Downloads: Music.

Then remove it from your iTunes purchase list: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6439

Delete away.

It was a joke about how their next step will be for files you delete to repopulate themselves, but I appreciate you taking the time to provide the instructions. I actually like U2 and don't mind having the songs.
 
How so? Sounds great to me. Half the stuff I've ripped in in ALE (since flac does me no good given that none of my listening devices support it).

I am not talking the sound quality. FLAC and ALAC is probably the same in the end. But the fact, they made their own format, instead of using a worldwide accepted format, just "because of reasons" is just pathetic. Apple are just making their bubble even more perverted, when locking out demanded and established (and did I mention free) standards.

The only reason Apple allows MP3 is because that was what everyone one was using once they joined the music distribution club.
 
My interest is piqued…..a reborn Classic, perhaps all-Flash with built-in DAC?
Hmmm, probably not.

I suspect this "new music format that will boost digital music sales" has little if anything to do with sound quality.
A different distribution model maybe?
 
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A proper multitrack format, w/ 6 discrete surround channels for the recording, 2 for the environmental baseline, layered and offset redundancy, lossless w/ data compression, searchable meta & .png hash previews and the works.

All the technology. Just do it right already.

Then build the headphones for it.
 
What is meant by "new format"? Isn't 256k AAC and ALAC (though I don't recall iTunes selling lossless tracks) sufficient? How about some 24/96 or 24/192 tracks while we're at it? I'd rather buy them from iTunes than, say, HDTracks.
 
A new digital music format that will tempt people into buying more music? I'm not buying it. Pun intended.
 
Boost sales...... now....

Oh ya,, don't touch fingers again ....That bit creeped me out.

Just give us a free album every year or two, and we'll all be fine.:)
 
2 lightning connectors ??

Isn't the iPhone 6S+ suppose to have 2 lightning connectors, the second connector to replace the outdated audio plug? It's suppose to work with the new Beats audio format of the future??
(Along with curved edge to edge glass, wireless charging, waterproof, no home button... oops, those were iPhone 4 rumors. Sorry)
 
What "Better" would really mean.

A new digital music format that will tempt people into buying more music? I'm not buying it. Pun intended.

If Apple gets Apogee or TI to provide stereo AD/DA converters, their devices can easily handle high-quality audio -Now just bear with me here: If people get used to hearing up to 24/192khz people will demand this better quality because going back to 128kbps mp3 will be a shock. The reason that most earbuds and headphones are so poor in sound quality is that the average compressed audio file doesn't "challenge the hardware spec". -In pro audio, the quality of recording and monitoring equipment is astounding. See, 4k or 8k video is something you can appreciate immediately, whereas listening to complex music involves time and concentration.

But the inconvenient catch is that we need to be willing to listen to music that is more dynamic and sonically challenging than rap for this quality bump to be easily recognizable. In other words, the jazz and classical labels will have an edge. You just won't be able to fit 15,0000 tunes onto your device all at once.
 
New music format? or new DRM/Software that tracks how, when and where you are playing it and how many people are listening, that then charges you accordingly?...

No. It will not be a format that ONLY holds music. You literally can not improve over Apple Lossless. This new format will hop d data other than music. Perhaps it will hold music AND PDF-like ebooks and vieo and the lyrics and alternative mixes all in the same file. So the file you get from iTunes would have more value

The real problem with the declide in sales is the music itself. Ages ago it used to be all about the music. But now that we have video what matters more is what the artists look like on camera. People don't even really listen any more. Video has killed music.
 
If people get used to hearing up to 24/192khz people will demand this better quality because going back to 128kbps mp3 will be a shock.

The average purchaser of music has no idea what 128kbps even means. This is why I'm not buying this new format. As long as the audio file they purchase sounds like the song they have in their head, quality, as long as it's an acceptable standard, is not that important because quite frankly most people's hearing acuity when it comes to music is not that great. People aren't going to start paying more because the hi-hats and crashes are slightly crisper and the bass drums punchier. If anything I think it's going to be more to do with the music buying experience than the actual quality of sound.
 
BYE BYE beats muppetry

Hello U2 muppetry
Well said.

Clearly the old guys at Apple worship Bono, just like iPhone buyers worship Apple. It's a stark contrast to the Hip Hop culture of DrDre & Snoop. Kanye & Drake, JZ et al.

Apple appears a bit fragmented in its choices. Rather irrelevant in many ways it'll be interesting to see how this shakes out. Apple may look noticeably different in the coming months.
 
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