I’m by all means not an audiophile, nor a user of Amazon’s Cloud Drive, but this article by Matt Peckham of Techland caught my attention. Matt contends that with “unlimited” cloud based music services like Amazon’s, consumers are forced to use only lossy music files. Just read the fine print:
“To be eligible for unlimited music space, files must be music recordings in MP3 (.mp3) or AAC (.m4a, iTunes non-DRM files) format and must be less than 100 MB in size.”
Matt, like a growing number of consumers, are left to the wayside because they have spent countless hours, weeks, months, even years in converting their music to lossless formats like FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec). For those of you that don’t understand what lossless vs lossy audio means, check out this great post on Music Made Better.
To summarize:
1. “With lossy compression (like MP3) you take the original audio (like a CD) and you use the bits of audio data that are most essential to still retain a good sound, while you throw away those bits that don’t seem necessary.”
2. “With lossless compression (like FLAC) you take the original audio and you use _all_ of the musical data, without throwing anything away.”
With MP3 and AAC becoming the standard for music consumption and playback, we consumers have, in essence, agreed to pay the same for a lesser product. Since formats like MP3 and AAC use lossy compression of audio, we aren’t getting the complete CD audio we were used to before everything went digital, portable, and now virtual. Where is the uproar? I guess the masses are okay with sacrificing quality for portability, simplicity, and increased mobility. Is there any other industry where this is the case? I cant think of any.
I for one still buy CDs because these days you can get them for around the same price as downloading a complete album from services like iTunes, plus I retain the audio quality that I have become used to. Of course, I convert all of my CDs to digital formats with the least amount of compression, but based on these two articles, I may choose a different path – a lossless one – moving forward.
Music Made Better summed it up quite well by saying, “…the industry will try to sell you the worst quality they can get away with, while possibly locking you into their own closed systems. Remember 128kbps songs with DRM? Know better and vote with your wallet. Demand lossless audio in a free format as the standard and lossy only as a convenience download format.”
The catch: a 100% lossless music library is huge, and the chances of me storing my music on today’s cloud? Slim to none. The future cloud? Well, that’s a different story that only time will tell.
What’s your take?
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Music’s new metric: bytes
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I use to be an audiophile … not so much anymore… but I refuse to pay the same amount for a digital download as a real CD. Were talking about 1/10 of the quality… I bought my first full album (Adele) since 2003…and a friend said why did I do that? Why wouldn’t I???? I can rip it at a good bit rate to store on my phone and tablet. But play the true CD thru amazing audio equipment now too…
You can see from the comments on this article what the prevailing sentiment is. As one who likes to hear the little nuances of music, I’m less then thrilled about how music is mastered (compressed ,even on CD’s) now days and with this trend of downloading music without the option of some form of lossless content, the downward trend in sound quality is really sad.
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I am delighted to hear plenty of others are taking my approach to this subject – being ‘old fashioned’ and buying CDs. It’s a bit like the absurdity of ebay, people buying second hand items because they think they are getting a bargain, when you can actually buy the item cheaper new from some reputable sites. CDs can be bought for a song on some sites and actually work out cheaper than many download sites. As for the quality, well as everyone here acknowledges, CDs are so much better and you have the flexibility to then store them in whatever format you want. Ordinarily I always think that you get what you pay for, ie pay more and getter better quality, but in this instance, you can actually pay less and get better quality.