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Six Months Later: 'iTunes LP' Format Performance Remains Lackluster
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Look, it's simple. The record companies don't want to change their practices. They want a way to charge more for music, while doing very little extra. If they can make you pay more by throwing in a music video, a menu, call it a special edition, they'll try it - it doesn't cost them very much.
The fact that less people buy music now suggests that it's overpriced, and that their ridiculous focus on just one or two major artists per season is outdated - gone are the days when everybody listened to the records they were told to listen to.
I like buying music. I like paying creators for their art. I wish more of the money went to the small and idiosyncratic artists that I like, but the best I can do is pay for their product and support their releases, tours, websites, etc.
The fact that less people buy music now suggests that it's overpriced, and that their ridiculous focus on just one or two major artists per season is outdated - gone are the days when everybody listened to the records they were told to listen to.
I like buying music. I like paying creators for their art. I wish more of the money went to the small and idiosyncratic artists that I like, but the best I can do is pay for their product and support their releases, tours, websites, etc.
You could simplify that first step by simpling dragging the songs from iTunes to a finder-folder. Then just delete these copies when you've burned your CD.
As for the compatibility: There are loads of stuff that supports AAC, it's just that mp3 is an older and therefore much more widespread format. It's kinda like arguing that blu-rays suck because there are more support for DVD's...
Although someone mentioned the fact that one can't tell the difference with a double blind test between lossless and compressed - for me it is the principle of the thing. It is a bit like getting your house painted then getting told that they used a cheaper paint. Sure the result is the same but at the same time I expect to receive the full product even if I can't tell the difference.
I want the original quality just as I would if I bought a CD - and I want it DRM free. There is a reason why I keep buying CD's - because for the same amount in NZ I can purchase a real CD, iTunes sells in inferior album downloads for the same price. So why would I want to buy off iTunes if that is the case?
I want the original quality just as I would if I bought a CD - and I want it DRM free. There is a reason why I keep buying CD's - because for the same amount in NZ I can purchase a real CD, iTunes sells in inferior album downloads for the same price. So why would I want to buy off iTunes if that is the case?
Very apropos, I just bought my first piece iTunes music this morning (I'm late to the party, I know) and it was an "LP". New Gorillaz "Plastic Beach". Had only a few minutes to play around with the interactive stuff but it seemed cool. I mean I didn't expect much, just as I don't expect much from CD cover art but it was nice. There's art, lyrics, a behind-the-scenes video, lots of pictures and some other stuff. I'm definitely going to go through it in more detail but it certainly seems like a better value to me than a CD with some booklet. That's just me, if I'm going to buy an album in the future I will prefer an iTunes LP over a CD.
My 2 cents.
My 2 cents.
6 mo.
Give it time. Good grief, a band can't even cut a record in 6 mo. Plus it'll be a better experience on iPad.
Give it time. Good grief, a band can't even cut a record in 6 mo. Plus it'll be a better experience on iPad.
$60,000 to produce the interactive album stuff 
Sounds like one of those $500 hammers the Army keeps buying.
The joy of album art and other stuff associated with buying LP's was and is still relevant and I have long wondered why the record companies did not do this as a way of enticing buyers toward full albums.
Sounds like one of those $500 hammers the Army keeps buying.
The joy of album art and other stuff associated with buying LP's was and is still relevant and I have long wondered why the record companies did not do this as a way of enticing buyers toward full albums.
Well, the simple answer to this is that no one needs to go to another lossy format unless they're a studio engineer. If the format, such as 256Kbps AAC, can reconstruct the original analogue information, then all a transcoder really has to do is resample the audio. This can be achieved through realtime playback and resampling done internally in the software and/or hardware rather than the cumbersome process of transcoding to PCM manually and then resampling.
Might there be generation loss? Possibly, but the manual transcoding/resampling method is more prone to that kind of error than internal resampling. Photoshop does the same sort of thing when it uses bicubic resampling to bump up image resolution for finer degrees of editing (not better fidelity than the source) or conforming a layer to another image at a different resolution.
Remember per my earlier comments that the relevant issue is what analogue information can be reassembled from the digital data... If the analogue information reassembled is as much as a human can hear, then any imperceptible information discarded isn't going to be a detriment.
There may be some detriments to internal resampling but they're miniscule compared to external resampling/re-encoding. But a straight transcode from digital format to digital format, without resampling, could introduce frequency sample and quantization errors and the like that could be perceived as aliased frequencies (this term does not mean what 99% of audiophiles think it means) or quantization noise (erratic amplitude). But with most systems today, that's pretty negligible as well.
You'd be hard pressed to find problems during casual listening.
Was excited, still waiting
I was excited about this format and made one for my band when they released the development kit immediately. Now I'm still waiting for Apple to do something with the format.
I am giving our LP away free as a ploy to entice people to pay for the downloads. Apple should open it up to everyone and allow any band to include it for free as an enticement to buy the whole album, and allow us to use them on the iPad.
That would make sense, and boost interest for those of us who care about the graphical and lyrical content.
Also, they should allow artists to submit songs with embedded graphic and lyrical data (as with our download package, similar to the last two NIN releases), because it makes the ipod version that much cooler as well.
Free iTunes LP at thedeadsee.com!
I was excited about this format and made one for my band when they released the development kit immediately. Now I'm still waiting for Apple to do something with the format.
I am giving our LP away free as a ploy to entice people to pay for the downloads. Apple should open it up to everyone and allow any band to include it for free as an enticement to buy the whole album, and allow us to use them on the iPad.
That would make sense, and boost interest for those of us who care about the graphical and lyrical content.
Also, they should allow artists to submit songs with embedded graphic and lyrical data (as with our download package, similar to the last two NIN releases), because it makes the ipod version that much cooler as well.
Free iTunes LP at thedeadsee.com!
thats the only LP I've boughten its quite cool if you need something going on the screen while listening.
Thats fine. I'm with you. Sometimes I want the full-meal-combo with Large Drink, Double Meat Burger, Sonic-size Onion Rings... sometimes: "1 sausage biscuit, please." Both are fine. And choice is fine.
For me, I think it's great that these are being offered and I have one LP that I really am looking forward to getting very soon: Dave Matthews Band's "Big Whiskey (Deluxe Edition). You get something like 22-23 songs and 8 videos for $16.99 + the interactive part of "LP" looks super slick and very interesting. For a band and an artist that is amazing as Matthews and his crew, the LP is a way to showcase so much more. I, for one, am glad that he is one of the lucky few that have been given the extra treatment.
I would bet that once the Beatles come to iTunes, there'll be a very cool LP for each and every one of their albums. My credit card is ready.