Dec 14
11:56 PM
CD Quality Digital Downloads and Beyond
Don’t ask me how but I recently came into a pair of Dr. Dre’s signature headphones, the $300+/pair “Beats By Dre” (actually made by Monster). I was skeptical at first but I have to be honest, I really love these headphones. Incredibly comfortable, excellent noise-canceling, astounding dynamic range, cool looking, excellently packaged — audiophiles, put these on your holiday list this year.
My first test run with the Beats By Dre headphones was listening to a 256kbps Led Zeppelin MP3 I’d bought from Amazon. “These things sound like shit,” I thought. But then I realized it wasn’t the headphones that sounded terrible, it was the MP3. The headphones were actually so good I was hearing the artifacts in the MP3. So I flipped over to The Fireman Apple Lossless files I had on my iPod and — um, wow — was blown away. Next I tried the FLAC files that came with David Byrne and Brian Eno’s Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, using Songbird (FLAC files won’t play on your iPod). This too sounded absolutely amazing. Now I’ve never been Mr. Audio Quality and nor do I think The Masses (TM) will ever prioritize fidelity over convenience, as Fredric Dannen pointed out consumers have chosen convenience over quality since the move to LP from 78. Personally I’ve been happy with MP3s since 1997. I listen to music constantly on computers, iPods, and throughout my house via Control 4. But with these headphones I was suddenly longing for CD quality audio instead of MP3.
Apparently I’m not the only one. With both The Fireman (Paul McCartney and Youth) and David Byrne and Brian Eno records, lossless files were offered at no additional charge (with David Byrne FLAC was offered, and with The Fireman you could choose either FLAC or Apple Lossless format). But due to their large file size and the fact that a lot of folks have no idea what to do with these files, you had to ask to receive them. Still, 12% of all David Byrne and Brian Eno fans took the FLAC option, and 21% of those purchasing The Fireman record direct from TheFiremanMusic.com took one of the lossless options. Those aren’t really apples-to-apples comparisons so I wouldn’t make much out of the difference between the two releases (the lossless choices were much more obvious on The Fireman record and the album was available via iTunes and elsewhere while for David Byrne and Brian Eno EverythingThatHappens.com was the sole place to purchase the album for the first 60 days), but I’m surprised and somewhat encouraged to see such a large number of consumers interested in the lossless formats.
Of course we aren’t anywhere near the first to offer FLAC files for purchase, the live show community in particular has been doing it for many years. But I haven’t seen any numbers on what percentage of consumers were interested in lossless when offered the choice, so I asked the managers of both of these artists if they minded our sharing the number (thanks to both of them for being so open to sharing). I hope you find it interesting/encouraging, too.
These quality-seekers are a small group, but a vocal group that really appreciates the love. We saw a decent influx of traffic to TheFireManMusic.com last week driven by stories like this Slashdot one about the album being available in DRM-free lossless formats. The Slashdot crowd isn’t an easy one to please, so it was heart-warming to read comments like these:
“You can purchase just the digital files, or if you purchase a physical CD or vinyl copy, you are also given access to the digital download. Not only that, but the download is available in 320-kbps MP3, Apple Lossless, or even FLAC format. If you’re interested in trying before you buy, you can listen to the entire album in a Flash player on the main page of the site. It’s so nice to see a big musician who gets it. Bravo, Sir Paul!“
“Just purchased the MP3 version. It is, as claimed, mpga 320K, DRM-free. In addition to the tracks, you get cover artwork and liner notes as jpgs.
The range of purchase options is very interesting. $8.99 for MP3 files and artwork, $12.99 for a CD, $29.99 for a direct metal mastered double vinyl record, and $79.99 for a DVD containing 24bit 96Khz tracks, and a second DVD containing multi-track session files for a selection of the album tracks.
The purchasing experience was flawless: create an account, give a credit card (with optional choice of saving the number or not; I chose not), get a zipfile of the downloads. Not a wasted keystroke or mouse click.
This really is the way I want to purchase my music. Two big thumbs up from the consumer angle. Lots of choices, low prices, immediate downloads, supports the artists.
The perfect shopping experience.“
Offering both FLAC (won’t play on the iPod) and Apple Lossless (less standard, but plays on the iPod) is interesting, too. Takers of lossless files were split 50/50 on this, half taking each. Unfortunately that means there isn’t a clear winner and we’ll probably need to keep offering a variety of files to have a complete offering.
Note our “standard” MP3 format at Topspin is 320kbps, which also sounds damn fine in these fancy headphones, better than what you get from the big digital retailers. It’s also worth noting that in many cases artists may want to charge more for the higher quality audio. White Denim did this with their (excellent) release, for example, and that’s a-ok by us.
Steve Albini, the analog-loving musician and recording engineer whose 1987 CD compilation of classic Big Black EPs was disparagingly titled The Rich Man’s 8-Track Tape, advocates going beyond CD quality 16-bit and into 24-bit audio. In fact, you can buy Shellac’s latest record as 24-bit wav files from Touch And Go’s site (and have been able to since the album’s release more than a year ago). That’s some next level shit. I’m looking forward to an artist who wants to do 24-bit FLAC or even a 5.1 mix for their fans, even though the hardware to take advantage of it is few and far between…
Oh I almost forgot, I have one suggestion to improve the Beats By Dre headphones: they should play The Chronic out of the box, without needing to be connected to anything. How much extra cost/work can it be to put The Chronic in there on a little chip? Whatever the cost, it’d be worth it.
With everybody sayin,
ian c rogers
Topspin
December 15th, 2008 at 1:32 AM
Wasn’t there a download store specializing in lossless for a while? Giant Music or Giant something-or-other? I can’t seem to find it now. Defunct?
I think Magnatune has some indie lossless stuff these days.
A few years back I talked to one of our codec engineering managers here at Sony and I asked about “better than CD” and he had some interesting thoughts. Basically he felt that at some point you are no longer trying to save space (via lossy compression) but actually optimizing for the human ear. I would love to see the day when online digital downloads surpass CD in terms of audio quality.
Regardless of whether Joe Blow wants lossless today, I can certainly see it as a marketing advantage in the future for both hardware and content sellers. I can just imagine the Steve-note now.. “And that’s the 100% DRM-Free iTunes Music Store… but, there *is* just one more thing…”
December 15th, 2008 at 8:08 AM
Though it is true that FLAC files “won’t play on the iPod” it is easy to convert FLAC files using free, easily-downloaded software. Once you have FLAC files, which can be saved as your master, CD-quality files, you can convert them to any format you want, from MP3, to Apple Lossless, to AIFF/WAV (for pressing on CD-R). So for “CD quality” FLACs are a very good and flexible solution for anyone willing to take a few minutes after purchase to make the conversions for iPod or any other style of playing.
December 15th, 2008 at 6:12 PM
“they should play The Chronic out of the box” – that is a brilliant idea. man, that record changed my life.
December 15th, 2008 at 8:02 PM
Just to follow-up on Dan Levy’s comment about conversion between lossless formats. On the Mac I recommend “Max” which is free and available at http://sbooth.org/Max/
Allows me to convert FLAC to Apple Lossless which playback on iPhone, AppleTV, etc. Also supports some previously windows-only formats like Monkey’s audio, etc.
On a related note, if you are looking to put DTS 5.1 CD rips (44.1 KHz) into iTunes with proper album art and other metadata, they can be ripped to Apple Lossless as well.
December 15th, 2008 at 10:24 PM
Great blog today, Ian. I certainly understand the “convenience over quality” lifestyle. I worked with Phil Wiser back in the protected AAC Liquid Audio days. Back then, the race was to achieve convenience. But, now we can get both. Woop! woop! Hope to see you again soon. Ciao
December 16th, 2008 at 2:24 AM
[...] Is there a demand for better-quality digital downloads than MP3? US firm Topspin Media says there is, and has stats to back this up. [...]
December 16th, 2008 at 8:01 AM
[...] to centre on claims Apple will introduce more major labels through its iTunes Plus service, a report from Topspin Media suggests the window of opportunity for purchase of a wide selection of music in lossless formats [...]
December 16th, 2008 at 10:08 AM
I definitely believe lossless downloads will take foot, even if only as yet another of the myriad of delivery options we will see over the coming years. Many will discover they really don’t need 10k songs with them at any one time and end up spending most of their time at a desk, in car, in a hotel room, etc, where there are other options for music exploration and less need for compression. What I am interested to see is if/when jazz and opera aficionados embrace digital. These folks are particular about compression and as a buying group, tend towards the more affluent. They don’t like the compression of CDs already, so lossless distribution could provide a huge shift forward for them.
December 18th, 2008 at 7:26 AM
On the super-esoteric end of the spectrum, there is now a sect of people who digitize and torrent their audiophile vinyl collections. For example, in recent years there have emerged a few companies who license classic jazz albums and release them as 45-rpm (much higher resolution than 33-rpm) 12-inch superthick vinyl sets. For those of us who love the sound of vinyl, these releases are spectacular: incredible audio experiences. And now friendly folks are making and torrenting their digital copies, sometimes in 96/24 form. They don’t necessarily sound better than a good modern digital remaster, but they do sound different.
December 19th, 2008 at 4:59 AM
And a propos Cole Marley’s point up above, the great classical label Deutsche Grammophon has started selling lossless FLAC downloads in its online store.
December 19th, 2008 at 9:57 PM
For those who want to play FLAC on your iPod, yes it is possible via the Rockbox firmware on the following models: Apple: 1st through 5.5th generation iPod, iPod Mini and 1st generation iPod Nano. (not the Shuffle, 2nd/3rd/4th gen Nano, Classic or Touch). Go to http://www.rockbox.org . To really get the most out of Dre headphones, the Rockbox is a highly recommended addition as quoted from the Derek Says blog, “There are a lot of benefits to Rockbox over the native firmware including folder browsing, playlist editing, skinning and one the audiophiles will love, a proper parametric EQ so you can even out your headphones’ response.” (http://derek-says.blogspot.com/2007/09/flac-on-your-ipod-with-rockbox.html )
Here’s a step-by-step video on how to install Rockbox on your iPod: http://www.applesource.com.au/ipod/soa/Video-Free-your-iPod-to-play-OGG-and-FLAC/0,2000070791,339287528,00.htm
December 20th, 2008 at 6:27 PM
[...] Not earth shattering, but signifigant and worth watching. Ian tells the rest of the story on the Topsin Media blog. [...]
January 1st, 2009 at 1:13 AM
[...] CD Quality Digital Downloads and Beyond [...]