Blogging since 1998. By David Wertheimer

Category: Music (Page 4 of 6)

Apple’s next step

Great news from Apple this week regarding iPod sales. Following the note on Daring Fireball that Apple is making its money on the unit and not the songs within the iTunes Music Store, I’m offering to Jobs and Co. their next smart move:

Let iTMS buyers select high-bitrate downloads at additional cost.

Think about it: to many people, 128Kbps AAC files sound “fine.” But they don’t sound good. Many people, particularly a subset of devoted music fans, would rather listen to a circa-1985 boombox than suffer the ignominy of lossy 128-bit encoding. I, for example, rip CDs at 192K or better, and I’m debating a switch to Apple Lossless encoding, even though I’ll be able to cart less music around.

Loyalty to quality audio has mostly kept me out of shopping in iTunes. My wife has bought a few albums, mostly pop, where sonic quality matters less; my purchases have largely been dance tunes and single-song impulse buys. I’d rather spend $13.99 on a better-sounding audio CD than $11.99 within iTMS, convenience be damned. (I also retain an affinity for tangible ownership, but that’s another issue entirely.)

Imagine, then, if iTunes offered me two choices: the usual 128-bit download for 99 cents and, say, a 256-bit “high quality” version for $1.49 instead. The cost difference would be minor enough to encourage select consumers to “upgrade”; full albums would still clock in at around $14.99—the same as a disc at retail—with similar audio performance. And the price differential would likely offset any increased server and bandwidth requirements on Apple’s part.

With such an option, I’d be shopping iTMS a lot more often, and Apple could conceivably make even more money while increasing my purchasing loyalty.

Good songs

I dig the return of dirty rock ‘n roll.

~ The Strokes, “Reptilia” (single)

~ Franz Ferdinand, “Take Me Out” (album)

~ The Vines, “Ride” (single)

One must still genuflect to the master:

~ James Gang, “Funk #49

That left-to-right stereo slide of the opening guitar lick is one of my favorite moments in recorded music.

Flashback in song

Got some email today about my In Sweet Harmony music show that I did for dack.com a few years back. Been a while since I’ve discovered much new music—and by the way, after the “oh goody” aspect wore off, wasn’t that new Fountains of Wayne album disappointing?—but I’m proud to note that the In Sweet Harmony mix holds up nicely. A good hook is timeless.

Sadly, the link to the audio file of the show doesn’t seem to work anymore. Feel free to email me if you want to hear, say, Thin Lizard Dawn for yourself. Always good to find new tunes. I have to get back into the business of finding more Beatles-influenced artists, and soon.

Dack, meanwhile, has moved onto angrier things.

An unprovoked comment on MP3 swapping

Long before the advent of peer-to-peer file sharing, I was taping my friends’ LPs and CDs onto cassette to sample in my car. I have hundreds of classic rock albums on Maxell XLII90s in storage in my parents’ house.

I bought a CD burner in 1998 and burned scores of albums in the years since. When Napster hit I had a field day finding music I hadn’t heard in ages.

I am 30 years old and my music collection now includes more than 150 records, 500 cassettes and 1200 compact discs. The vast majority I bought retail or used. I once estimated that I have spent more than $10,000 on music in my lifetime.

Ten grand.

The unquantifiable portion is what I would have spent had I not had free access to music. It easily could be less. Would I have shelled out $60 for the first Led Zeppelin box set had I not taped their studio albums years earlier? Would I own six Morphine albums if I didn’t possess a burned copy of their debut first?

I do not disagree that file sharing has hurt the RIAA’s sales; a 25 percent decline in three years is severe. But the argument cuts both ways.

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