We owe them for them acting completely in their own corporate, profit-motivated self-interest?
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iTunes Plus Expanded, Becomes Largest DRM-Free Catalog
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We owe them for them acting completely in their own corporate, profit-motivated self-interest?
I'm very happy about this. WHen the day soon comes that I buy more music, I'll only be purchasing non-DRM tracks, so this makes things easier.
asrai
macrumors member
K, I'll bite, where is this setting exactly? I looked around and haven't come across it.
Thanks.
mkrishnan
Moderator emeritus
Love it! 😀
Just don't make the emo students from the student discount thread start cutting again! 😛
Great news...but too late. I already bought all the albums I was interested in buying this year... from Amazon. 🙁
The interesting thing is that you can still "upgrade" from the 99¢ with DRM to the 99¢ higher quality without DRM for 30¢.
- Brian Allen
- Brian Allen
johnmcboston
macrumors 6502
Glad to hear this. But I believe Apple was the hold-out on these, not the labels. For example, Nettwerk songs have been DRM free on emusic, amiestreet and other places for some time. Am I expected to believe that Nettwerk has been demanding DRM on Apple but plain old mp3 elsewhere???
It almost sounds like Apple went from "Everyone gets DRM unless you negotiate otherwise" to "No DRM unless you specifically request it"
It almost sounds like Apple went from "Everyone gets DRM unless you negotiate otherwise" to "No DRM unless you specifically request it"
Great news another step in the right direction, Amazon's music shop is interesting but rough on the edges. However I don't see Universal signing up to a DRM-free system from iTunes.
Snowy_River
macrumors 68030
This has been discussed in other threads, but I'll mention it here. Do you think that bandwidth is free? If you know that it's not, why do you expect that Apple will spend the money on the bandwidth for you to download the unlocked version of the song, and not expect you to pay anything for it? Sure they locked and unlocked versions are the same price, but if you already bought a locked version and now want to buy an unlocked version, the bandwidth from both downloads still needs to be paid for.
$.30 is hardly exorbitant. And I doubt it will ever be free to upgrade. It might, possibly, drop to something like $.15, but I wouldn't necessarily hold my breath for that.
ok now i want to upgrade for free or cheaper or at least select what i want to upgrade. and not all albums are .99 the gorillaz album that steve likes so much still has all the songs at 1.29.
The particular setup is of great importance. If you're listening to Bose equipment or worse, you might not be able to tell a difference, and I might not either.
But on my cheap system (Apple TV -optical-> Logitech Z-5450 speakers), I can definitely tell the difference between 256kbps and Lossless. Moreso on some songs than others. Songs with applause (I like live albums, particularly by the Doors) or decently-miked cymbals translate terribly to mp3 (you get this wonderful "phasing" [sorta] distortion). I've heard that AAC is superior to mp3 for a given bitrate, but I honestly haven't tried it.
Also, what works for stereo might not necessarily work all that well if you're listening to your music in surround, like I always do. The rear speakers playing an mp3 sound terrible -- more distortion and general cold/dead sound, whereas they sound perfect with a lossless file.
There was a thread around here sometime back where someone posted soundfiles of what various lossy compression schemes take out of the song. It might surprise you.
Disclaimer: I'm hardly an audiophile. *points at his Logitech speakers* And not all of my music is lossless. But I can genuinely tell a difference. That's why I upgraded to lossless in the first place -- because I was unsatisfied with the sound quality of mp3s.
RichP
macrumors 68000
The end goal of all of this for Apple is to have independent studios, using Apple production products (MacPro, Soundtrack, Final Cut, Motion etc) to produce audio and video from artists, upload it right to iTunes and into our ipods. Probably 10 years out.
And I welcome it, most of what the major labels put out these days is garbage, and the processing power and tools are available now to more people than ever.
You only buy albums once a year? You know they put out new ones every Tuesday, right? And some of them are pretty good.
Well, 160 GB Classic...here I come!
Why are many tracks still showing up as $1.29? Shouldn't they have had it all prepped before making the announcment?
irbdavid
macrumors regular
Are you suggesting that Apple has to cough up anything like $0.30 for 2.5MB of bandwidth? I think that decimal place needs to move about 4 digits to the right. The point is, if Apple wants to keep the iTunes store competitive with Amazon, it needs to lower the price of the track itself. If they want to keep a loyal customer base, they need to do that _and_ keep existing customers happy.
Now, if only the Amazon store existed in the UK...
Drumjim85
macrumors 68030
Virgil-TB2
macrumors 65816
I also prefer to actually purchase in lossless format as it seems a rip-off to do otherwise, (by that I mean I purchase the CD's and rip them.)
However, to rip the CD's in Lossless format is a waste of time if you already have the CD. You are not getting any higher quality sound and you are increasing your storage requirements dramatically. A single run-of-the-mill song in Apple Lossless can be 30 Megs or so, the same song in high quality AAC might be less than 5 Megs. 😱
This means that you have to carry around some gigantic brick of a music player to even have a reasonable selection of music at your fingertips. Needless to say this detracts from the entire concept of a portable digital music player.
It's been proven again and again that the average ear cannot tell the difference between an *mp.3 and the original file and that even audiophiles have a hard time if the bit rate is high enough. With AAC, I don't believe there has ever been anyone who has reliably been able to tell the difference between the original and a 256 AAC copy.
If you are ripping music to Lossless and carrying it around, all you are doing is wasting space on your player. Keep the CD's on the shelf at home for safekeeping and rip into AAC and you can't go wrong. 🙂
squirrellydw
macrumors regular
I agree, unless you hook it up to test equipment, most people can't tell the difference. Now 128 to 256 yes, 256 to loss-less not really
lazyrighteye
Contributor
I'm no professional, I have written no papers on the matter, I'm just a regular bloke. And I can hear the differences.
It's like trying to describe a color... impossible.
But, if you really listen, you can hear differences in the high and low frequencies. They sound less crisp (highs) or more muddy (lows) with each level of compression.
more songs with less DRM = always good imho.
Apple needs to continue this push to remain competitive and stay on top.
Apple needs to continue this push to remain competitive and stay on top.
128kb is good enough for most people, and 256kb is going to be good enough for even more people. I doubt Apple has even started to care about lossless at this point.
I will admit that my all-Lossless collection means I don't fit a lot on my iPhone... but as years go by, storage will increase. I am creating a master digital collection. I don't want to deal with CD's, I loathe physical media. I want everything digital and lossless at the press of a button on my Apple Remote.
Honestly though, Lossless on an iPhone just makes you become a smart playlists expert, which isn't so bad really 🙂 Apple could help out by applying the shuffle's on-the-fly transcoding across the board, but god forbid.