@Thataboy: which translates to "i'm just going to use this as an excuse to steal music via bittorrent". unless of course you can point me to a "service" that sells uncompressed music.

firesign

sony will be joining soon look at there music site sonybmgstore.com its run by amazon i bet sony is just waiting for the right moment for them to announce it and there store will probably be selling mp3's.

and there not trying to cater to the people who want high quality files, there trying to cater to the masses who don't give a damn about a 320kp file vs a 192kp file they just want it to play on there mp3 player have it be a ipod, zune, sandisk player, creative etc. and that it sounds good enough for them.

@ KAISER-MACHEAD im waiting for paypal too

utube2007

@King of the Wild Frontier: why? most people cant even hear the difference between 192 and 256. hell, i know a lot of people who are perfectly happy with 128 kbps mp3s on their crappy generic mp3 players.

firesign

Less DRM in this world is a good thing, but for me personally, this is years too late. I no longer buy lossy music from any source.

When Amazon sells FLAC or iTunes sells Apple Lossless, then I'll be back. Until then, I will just have to use services that offer uncompressed music.

Thataboy

oh gush gush gush... like thousands of people actually wrote in saying "thank you for offering me the biggest selection of high-quality, MP3 audio downloads which play on virtually any music device I own today or will own in the future".

Anyone here tell them that?

oh and ""Consumers want flexibility with respect to what they can do with music once they purchase it, and we want them to have that flexibility". They mean "see as how you are going to do whatever you like with it anyway, we thought we would say you could. This hopefully makes us sound cool and groovy".

timtempest

@King of the Wild Frontier: They should've gone "user's choice", incl. lossless, instead a fixed bitrate. Allofmp3.com did it right, even if illegally.

Pixelantes Anonymous

@gokor: Well put sir, well put.

Gann

@Wilson Rothman:

Are you really going to argue about who helped usher something in?

I actually am not arguing anything - I merely spew my worthless opinions on a regular basis and entertain myself by pretending someone cares.

Before the iTunes Music Store, did anyone in the world know what DRM-controlled music was? One could argue that Apple started DRM-controlled content. Personally, I would no more support Apple being the founding father of DRM than Apple being the barbarian that destroyed it.

Monty

I agree, DRM must die.

A horrible, slow, agonizingly painful death caused by simultaneously burning and drowning and starving. With relief just two inches too far from its reach. With people watching, laughing.

RIAA can certainly be next, followed by the FCC.

gokor

The more competition the better. If more legit DRM-free sources are available, I don't really give a shit who ushered what in, so long as it was ushered in in the first place. Now, as for Amazon, bring Paypal support to the mp3 download site, and I'll be a happy camper.

Kaiser-Machead

By the way, If SJ really does ink the deal to bring subscription rentals to AppleTV, I would buy one the next day.

dallasmay2

@Monty: Are you really going to argue about who helped usher something in? I'm happy to engage in a lively discussion about a lot of things, but not this. Steve Jobs' open letter was certainly one of the lightning rods for the DRM-free debate, regardless of whatever populist tidal wave was crashing down on him at the time, so I stand by what I said.

Thanks for the tip on bitrates. For me, the only differences I've ever really heard are at 128Kbps or lower, and that was with a pretty decent set of $1,000 speakers. I worry most about people ripping CDs at low bit rates in any codec, then having to go back and re-rip.

Wilson Rothman

This is exactly what SJ wanted. He doesn't want anyone to use DRM. A world that is protected by DRM is a world that is very dangerous for Apple. Do you think MS will ever release a Windows media player and Plays4Sure for Mac or Linux voluntarily? Don't count on it.And if they were forced to by the EU or the Justice Department it wouldn't work very well.

Amazon is doing exactly what SJ wanted all along. Making music availiable for the Mac.

Apple doesn't care who sells the music, just so long as Apple doesn't have to beg and plead for the rights to play it.

dallasmay2

Great news. More music for us to put on our iPods and iPhones.

Marty_MacFly

Every song on Amazon MP3 is encoded at 256 kilobits per second, which gives customers high audio quality at a manageable file size.

Not very impressed. They couldn't have gone with 320?

King of the Wild Frontier

@EMoShunz: quality-wise, AAC does a better job at low bitrates (128 kbps), but once you get up into rates like 256, there's a lot less difference. And as far as compatibility goes, pretty much everything supports MP3, whereas there are still quite a few players without support for AAC (why, I don't know).

I love Amazon's store, and have been buying the majority of my music from them since it opened. I'm a Mac fanboy but not a DRM fanboy, and as much as I like using the iTunes store (especially the iPhone version), it's too frustrating to wade through everything looking for DRM-free music.

bubba451

@Wilson Rothman: For what it is worth, AAC only sounds better at lower bit rates. If you rip music in 192K MP3 format, supposedly it sounds better than 192K AAC. (According to PC Mag.)

Monty

Apple, which helped usher in the DRM-free music initiative

By that logic, EMI helped usher in the DRM-free music initiative more than Apple. However, reality is that would-be customers continued to 'borrow' music and numerous companies suddenly realized that the only way to stop it was to give customers what they really want. Apple has done some great things, but helping to usher in DRM-free content is not one of them.

Monty

@EMoShunz: From my experience, AACs are about 25% better in sound quality, so a 4MB AAC sounds as good as a 5MB MP3 of the same song, more or less. In terms of hardware compatibility, there is still a sluggish adoption of AAC among third-party hardware, though it is growing thanks to DRM-free AAC from iTunes. MP3 is still universally the widest accepted, hence its popularity. (That is to say, it's not the sound quality, but ripping at higher bitrates, like 256Kbps or higher, should help you.)

Wilson Rothman

@EMoShunz: PC Magazine did an article a few years back comparing the various formats and basically determined that storing everything in high-quality MP3 is the way to go. That said, you would have to invest in some serious high fidelity equipment to be able to discern the difference between 192K MP3 versus 192K AAC versus 192K WinMedia versus a CD. As long as there is no DRM, it is all good. However, I keep everything in MP3 format (including converting downloaded songs from iTunes) so I am not tied to any particular company.

Monty

can any of the fine commenters out there give me real world opinions on mp3 vs aac? hardware compatibility, sound quality etc. i read wikipedia and such, but it's all so non-personal. up til now i've always just bought cd's and ripped to mp3, but with drm free stuff (and that crap riaa case that says the old couple was breaking copyright by making mp3's from cd's) that may change.

EMoShunz

Beatport is all dance music, and it is truly expensive. But you can get mp3, aac, or WAV -- wav is a $1 surcharge on the $1.49-$2.49 per song already. Not cheap, but at least it is a flexible model.

I'll stay away from isohunt and torrenting that stuff in general -- good to know it exists, but I'm fine with paying for music. Just saying that the Beatport/Russian Site model is what I'm looking for.

Thataboy

@superbad: yeah, but that's not what he was talking about.

@Thataboy: are you kidding me? do a search on isohunt, you'd be hard pressed to *not* find torrents for albums in flac. i'm not familiar with beatport, but the legailty of the russian sites is usually shady at best.

firesign

@firesign:

unless of course you can point me to a "service" that sells uncompressed music.

Yeah, they are called "record stores." And you get a free hard copy backup with every purchase.

superbad

@dallasmay2: lol, keep making excuses for apple. exactly what SJ wants? lol, good, I hope the breaking bundle of iTunes and iPod will make him happy. :)

clevin

When are we gonna see more DRM-free music in the iTunes Store? I don't want any 90s-technology MP3s on my iPod.

Galley

Maybe I look in the wrong places, but I have never seen any torrent or P2P site that has uncompressed music.

Beatport sells WAV and of course there are the Russian sites.

Thataboy

@Monty: @Wilson Rothman: @bubba451: thank you very much guys! so, at this point mp3 looks better simply for compatibility since at higher bit rates quality is a wash (i don't remember 100%, but i think i store them on my dvd-rw's at 320kbps). only thing now though is the wii dropping mp3 for aac, not having both...dumb in my opinion.

EMoShunz

@dallasmay2: "Do you think MS will ever release a Windows media player and Plays4Sure for Mac or Linux voluntarily?"

Uh, Apple distributes iTunes for free, but only for OSX and Windows. Recompiling it from OSX to BSD or Linux would be pretty easy but they haven't done that. It would be just as valid to say:

Do you think Apple will ever release a version of iTunes for Linux voluntarily?

shawn_dude

@EMoShunz: Buying certain CDs from Amazon Marketplace will be cheaper. But I'm still going to buy plenty of stuff from AmazonMP3, if for no other reason than to vote against DRM with my dollar.

dsevil

As an enthusiastic user of Amazon's MP3 store, this is great news!

I can't believe people are complaining about bit rates when 99% of the people out there can't tell the difference between 256 and lossless. it's not like they're issuing everything in 128.

RalphWiggum

Do the "blind test" by playing the exact content across the encodings. Make sure you convert from the same source. Have someone else cue up the cuts. Use the same speakers you'd use anywhere. Use the same earbuds you'd use going portable. The absolute majority of people have been unable to distinguish between AAC and MP3 at the rates offered commercially. Hear why.

Or you could listen to real audio afficiandos (Here's hoping the lengthy URL goes:
[wiki.hydrogenaudio.org]

lianna_g

Since it's DRM free, there's no reason for them not to also allow it to also be sold through iTunes - unless they hope to eventually crush iTunes and then bring back DRM.

NeoPoliticus

Actually, AAC compatibility is almost a non-issue. Practically every new MP3 player out there supports AAC.

iPod - naturally.
Zune - Yup.
Sansa - Yup.

That covers most of the MP3 players out there. Creatives, not so sure... but then again, #1 and #2 are on the list, and the top non-iPods.

Well, what about other players?

Sony PSP - Yup.
Sony PS3 - Yup.
Nintendo Wii - Yup. (You actually lose MP3 playback... grr)
Xbox360 - Possibly with the iPod AAC download (free).
Most phones also support AAC as well.

MP3s have compatibility everywhere, but AAC is also a strong alternative. Funny how that is, given Ogg Vorbis has been around longer, but is still considered a niche format.

The only thing you may have to do is rename the .m4a to .aac to work in some places. Though a lot of players also recognize .m4a as well.

FLAC FTW, though.

Worf

@EMoShunz:

EMO, my professional audio opinion is to not go back in time. I prefer neither MP3 or AAC because it is losing sound quality. But, when necessary to save file space, I don't hesitate using AAC because it has twice the sampling frequency as MP3 is capable of no matter the bitrate. Also AAC is a great deal smaller in file size comparing a 192kbps MP3 to a 192 Kbps AAC.

If you like to listen to your MP3's ... that's great. I think I have some 8 track tapes laying around I could hook you up with.

Effero

For a digital music store still in "beta", Amazon MP3 is starting to look like it might bring in Teh Awesome.

DW

@Effero: the best sound i've ever heard was 'the wall' on lp through a nacamichi air powered, suspended turn table. try as i might, i couldn't mount it in my car :P the closest i've heard to that was dvd-audio.

i had no idea aac had more capability. sucks i didn't read your comment earlier, i just bought a new deck on sale that takes usb, plays mp3 and (shuddering i say) wma. who the hell uses wma...i know 20 times the people that use aac. anyway...thanks for the info.

EMoShunz

Anyone remember VQF files in 1998 that were supposed to be an mp3 killer?

brian1cj