Re: (313) Digital Downloads
For the digital downloaders, I just found this database of labels whose releases are available online. pretty useful for me and maybe you too. http://www.beatmatcher.net
Re: (313) Digital Downloads
one thing not mentioned so far: hard disc failure! a hard disc failure in your head might lead to some failure of your external hard disc you use to store your music data! Indeed. Think how much 3000 wavs would cost you to buy though. Some maths: roughly £1 per track, 80MB per track, that's £3000 per 250GB hard drive. A USB2 or firewire external drive costs £80 for 250GB. So buying two so you have redundency isn't that over the odds compared to the cost of the contained tracks. robin...
Re: (313) Digital Downloads
I've only bought stuff on line from bleep. I don't have an iPod, and I won't ever buy a DRM-protected player. 99% of my digital music listening is at work, from my linux work computer. The reasons I buy on line 1. I can shop at work, and listen immediately. 2. Having something digitized already makes it easier to work with in Ableton or Traktor. 3. I can find stuff on line I can't locally. Everything I can buy locally I do, especially since I've been buying from the same couple of shops for going on 20 years, and I want them to stay in business. As for sound quality, you need better equipment and/or ears that haven't been to as many loud shows as I have to tell the difference between 320kbs MP3s and uncompressed 16 bit audio. When I make MP3s of my own stuff I'm going direct from 24bit masters, and as long as I stay with medium-to-high quality VBRs or 320kbs fixed rate MP3s, they sound the same. I still buy CDs and vinyl, but I'm pretty choosy -- I have an embarrassing amount of CDs and vinyl and I don't listen to even a fraction of what I own. I have to really want something in order to want to store it as a physical object. Ultimately, I think CDs and Vinyl will become even more marginalized, and downloadable formats will be the rule rather than the exception. CDs and Vinyl just don't have the information density modern listeners demand. The issue of artists getting paid for their music is an ongoing problem, back to cassette trading 30+ years ago. I don't think DRM is viable because if you can listen to it, you can defeat it. At some point, artists are just going to have to depend on goodwill and a sense of fair play from their fans in order for them to get paid. There's no way to lock music back into a physical artifact, the way that vinyl and CDs do, and enforcing laws against copying music just amounts to treating your customers like criminals, something that has never worked. And really, the RIAA and MPAA are taking things to a ridiculous extent. No one pays to hear music on the radio, and no one pays to read a book from the library. I've never spoken to an author who didn't want their books in libraries. Having some of your audience get your work for free is just part of the game, isn't it?
Re: (313) Digital Downloads
one thing not mentioned so far: hard disc failure! a hard disc failure in your head might lead to some failure of your external hard disc you use to store your music data! from my personal experience: when i upgraded to tiger on my ibook i had some trouble with photoshop which i thought back then resulted in some missing os9 partition on my hd. stupid and impatient as i am i had the idea to install this os9 part on my external 250 gd hd which left me with a non-accessable disk!!! after searching for help in all macuser forums i finally bought "data rescue" and "disk warrior" for about 100 $ us each... disk warrior helped me recover the files and now i have three quarters of the files with proper names like they used to be an one quarter named like: M01215.mp3, M01216.mp3, M01217.mp3... and whenever i have some spare time i spend it on putting the proper names to the files... still about 1.500 files to be checked... lucky enough i never sold the vinyls and cds - so in the end i'll suceed. got me some 2nd hd for backup in the meantime... you don't usually have those problems with vinyl! regarding the fact that not every one's as stupid as i am (lucky enough) this might be just a small aspect of the discussion. one last off topic remark: it's moodymann on the 7th, akufen on the 8th and a m-nus night on the 22nd of september over here - just in case you're planning some trip cheers roman/berlin Am 22.08.2006 um 20:43 schrieb Jason Brunton: yeah, it may well be a generational thing- my gut feeling is that vinyl will always have a "cool" factor that will appeal to people that will help things tick along for a good while yet- for our particualr music and where club gigs are concerned, I still haven't used anything that comes close to the experience of two vinyl decks and a mixer- in a situation like this I'm not particularly interested in endless choice of tracks that MP3 playback systems offer- I'm happy to ride the uncertaintly of having to play with what you've got to hand and make the best out of what I've got and also, for me, there IS a difference in sound quality between MP3, CD and viny. As for home listening there is no denying the attraction and convinience of the ipod and computer based music- I spent ages importing all of my my CD collection into I-tunes but my main computer isn't in my living room so I can only access this music through my ipod and scrolling through loads and loads and loads of artists/albums to find what I'm looking for is a bit of a pain- sometimes its just easier to bung an actual CD in the player and let it go! Very interested in everyones' opinions though and thanks very much for taking the time to let me know what you all think Jason On 18 Aug 2006, at 09:03, Martin Dust wrote: I can see where you are coming from Jason but I do buy a lot of stuff from Beatport and Bleep mostly odd tracks from EPs and Albums where I don't like the full thing and while it may not appeal to heads I know teenagers who don't own a single piece of Vinyl or a CD but do own more than one hard drive with their collection on - I also buy stuff that you can't get on vinyl/cd - DMZ for example. I buy the odd pop track off iTunes but if you look at the charts for electronic music on iTunes you see that they haven't changed for months - Born Slippy has been in the top ten since they started - so that gives you a big clue about who buys there... As for the future, I think there's room for all formats and paying a couple of quid for a wav is a better format than vinyl ;) my 2 cents m
Re: (313) Digital Downloads
yeah, it may well be a generational thing- my gut feeling is that vinyl will always have a "cool" factor that will appeal to people that will help things tick along for a good while yet- for our particualr music and where club gigs are concerned, I still haven't used anything that comes close to the experience of two vinyl decks and a mixer- in a situation like this I'm not particularly interested in endless choice of tracks that MP3 playback systems offer- I'm happy to ride the uncertaintly of having to play with what you've got to hand and make the best out of what I've got and also, for me, there IS a difference in sound quality between MP3, CD and viny. As for home listening there is no denying the attraction and convinience of the ipod and computer based music- I spent ages importing all of my my CD collection into I-tunes but my main computer isn't in my living room so I can only access this music through my ipod and scrolling through loads and loads and loads of artists/albums to find what I'm looking for is a bit of a pain- sometimes its just easier to bung an actual CD in the player and let it go! Very interested in everyones' opinions though and thanks very much for taking the time to let me know what you all think Jason On 18 Aug 2006, at 09:03, Martin Dust wrote: I can see where you are coming from Jason but I do buy a lot of stuff from Beatport and Bleep mostly odd tracks from EPs and Albums where I don't like the full thing and while it may not appeal to heads I know teenagers who don't own a single piece of Vinyl or a CD but do own more than one hard drive with their collection on - I also buy stuff that you can't get on vinyl/cd - DMZ for example. I buy the odd pop track off iTunes but if you look at the charts for electronic music on iTunes you see that they haven't changed for months - Born Slippy has been in the top ten since they started - so that gives you a big clue about who buys there... As for the future, I think there's room for all formats and paying a couple of quid for a wav is a better format than vinyl ;) my 2 cents m
Re: (313) Digital Downloads
Unfourtunately to ppl like me, who live in areas without decent record shops selling current dance/eletronic music, but also enjoy quality in music reproduction, digital music for sale nowadays is still too bad in quality (so I agree with v12 here) and also very expensive (dl a full LP or EP cost almost the same to buying it, discounting the shipping cost, but, as Robin pointed, i would rather stay with the physical object). Actually, I dl a lot of mixes/shows and the odd track from blogs and friends, so digital music is more like a way to meet new music which I will look for on vinyl later. my R$0.02 (even cheaper! hehehe) G On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 08:55:34PM +0200, v12 wrote: > ive heard a lot of those 320 kbps from various sources and decided i wont > ever spend a cent on mp3/ogg etc . > none of the files sounded better than the 192s i made myself. > if it's wav / cd-r sure ,ok. but those "commercial mps3" are still sort of > a joke. -- Guilherme Menegon Arantes, PhD Sao Paulo, Brasil __
RE: (313) Digital Downloads
Probably been said a million times, but mp3's are more like records than cd's because you can get straight to the bit of the music you want to hear...ie dance with your right hand...or left if you are left handed (which 96% of the submerge guys are...Detroit would be a wealthy city if it was off the right hand turnoff past New York rather than the left) Anyway...when is Larry seen not heard going to do some electro...that'd be real nice... -Original Message- From: v12 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, 19 August 2006 06:56 To: 313@hyperreal.org Subject: Re: (313) Digital Downloads ive heard a lot of those 320 kbps from various sources and decided i wont ever spend a cent on mp3/ogg etc . none of the files sounded better than the 192s i made myself. if it's wav / cd-r sure ,ok. but those "commercial mps3" are still sort of a joke. often hammered with some funny loudness maximizing limiters the traks lose at least 50% of its dynamics. (often turning into a "punk-rock remix" of a techno trak) honestly i'd rather get an "illegal" file and send 5 $ directly to the artist. sad thing is - 95% of stuff i got this year is by ..drexciya ;/ /12 This e-mail message and any accompanying attachments may contain information that is confidential and subject to legal privilege. If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this message or attachments. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this message.
Re: (313) Digital Downloads
the sad aspect of it is - ihavent discovered the music "on time" ,so to speak. besides, it was easy to track down the clone and tresor releases,or the abstract thought doublepack but i doubt the submerge/ur or warp stuff could be repressed any soon. and i wont be chasing second hand recs..just because some fu***r got himself 15 copies back in 1995/97.. - Original Message - From: "Stoddard, Kamal" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "v12" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <313@hyperreal.org> Sent: Friday, August 18, 2006 10:32 PM Subject: RE: (313) Digital Downloads And that's a sad thing HOW? Sounds like a proper ratio to me. On a Detroit-not-techno-tip Dilla's new joint is the bomb. The shining. Sampleheads Checka. K mwnb -Original Message- From: v12 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, August 18, 2006 2:56 PM To: 313@hyperreal.org Subject: Re: (313) Digital Downloads ive heard a lot of those 320 kbps from various sources and decided i wont ever spend a cent on mp3/ogg etc . none of the files sounded better than the 192s i made myself. if it's wav / cd-r sure ,ok. but those "commercial mps3" are still sort of a joke. often hammered with some funny loudness maximizing limiters the traks lose at least 50% of its dynamics. (often turning into a "punk-rock remix" of a techno trak) honestly i'd rather get an "illegal" file and send 5 $ directly to the artist. sad thing is - 95% of stuff i got this year is by ..drexciya ;/ /12
RE: (313) Digital Downloads
And that's a sad thing HOW? Sounds like a proper ratio to me. On a Detroit-not-techno-tip Dilla's new joint is the bomb. The shining. Sampleheads Checka. K mwnb -Original Message- From: v12 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, August 18, 2006 2:56 PM To: 313@hyperreal.org Subject: Re: (313) Digital Downloads ive heard a lot of those 320 kbps from various sources and decided i wont ever spend a cent on mp3/ogg etc . none of the files sounded better than the 192s i made myself. if it's wav / cd-r sure ,ok. but those "commercial mps3" are still sort of a joke. often hammered with some funny loudness maximizing limiters the traks lose at least 50% of its dynamics. (often turning into a "punk-rock remix" of a techno trak) honestly i'd rather get an "illegal" file and send 5 $ directly to the artist. sad thing is - 95% of stuff i got this year is by ..drexciya ;/ /12
Re: (313) Digital Downloads
ive heard a lot of those 320 kbps from various sources and decided i wont ever spend a cent on mp3/ogg etc . none of the files sounded better than the 192s i made myself. if it's wav / cd-r sure ,ok. but those "commercial mps3" are still sort of a joke. often hammered with some funny loudness maximizing limiters the traks lose at least 50% of its dynamics. (often turning into a "punk-rock remix" of a techno trak) honestly i'd rather get an "illegal" file and send 5 $ directly to the artist. sad thing is - 95% of stuff i got this year is by ..drexciya ;/ /12
Re: (313) Digital Downloads
At this point I'm buying at least 40% of my music as digital files (beatport.com, ddv, dancetracksdigital.com, traxsource.com) Many times recently I've bought vinyl in the store for a ton of cash and then found the music online for less. Some of the tracks I've been waiting to show up in the store like Ame's remix of Roy Ayer's Tarzan have been online for weeks. This way I'm saving a few dollars for those releases I can only find on vinyl or classics discovered and undiscovered only available second hand. The wav files are usually a buck or two more expensive than the mp3s and I know I'll run out space really fast with all wavs so I go with 320 kpbs mp3s. Also I've found it saves me a lot of time to just buy a version of the track prepared for digital release instead of spending my time recording and re- recording the vinyl in order to get a good digital file that usually doesn't sound as good as the digital version I bought and already has tags so i can identify the info.
Re: (313) Digital Downloads
I think I've spent at least $150 at DDV. All of the tracks are available at 320 kbps, and a few as uncompressed WAV files. Unfortunately, the site is still kind of buggity, and the updated are infrequent, which keeps me from spreading the word outside of dedicated 313 circles. Still, I love being able to listen to this stuff without worrying about wearing my records out. I've spent a fair bit at bleep.com too. Always avoided i-tunes, because of the relatively low quality, and less than amazing royalty rates (from what I've gleaned). I'd rather support the little stores anyway. I think techno *needs* digital distribution now. There is a big audience out there that doesn't go to clubs and isn't even aware that vinyl still exists, but they love the music when they hear it. While they'll never be hardcore techno soldiers or join the 313 list, they're a valuable source of revenue and word-of-mouth. - bp
Re: (313) Digital Downloads
There was an article about precisely this subject in the technology section of the Guardian yesterday. They've put it up here: http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1851309,00.html Interesting article. My previous reply was written before I read that. I wonder how much the free trials that eMusic give out have contributed to their figures? (Yes I know I'm veering off topic now.) robin...
Re: (313) Digital Downloads
How many people actually buy digital download music whether from more mainstream portals like I-tunes or more specialist ones like Bleep.com?? I've spoken to quite a few label owners (all of them from smaller independant labels) but nobody seems to be making much income from it- any thoughts on the the current, and future, state of the format? What chall think? Well, I had a free trial on eMusic recently which allowed me access to 100 free tunes (thanks for Mr. Dust for the tip off). That's pretty much all my experience of downloading. It has to be said though if I was paying I'd have to have full fat wavs (lossless will do too and maybe at a stretch 320K mp3) simply because you can definitely spot encoding artifacts in lower bitrates. That said I'm also of the generation that still values the physical object when I buy music (as Martin points out it's a generational thing, under 25s have no prob with files). I mostly DJ digitally too but I much prefer to buy vinyl and record my own wavs. Now I might not be representative of the target market for downloads of techno/house etc that you might be aiming at but I suspect I might be. There's also the issue of DRM or not. I was talking to a mate who releases his labels stuff digitally as well as on vinyl and he thinks that it's good to have no DRM and people spread the music around as, if they like it enough, they're a lot more likely to buy subsequent releases (so writes off any 'losses' as marketing). Ken's point is interesting though, if you're going to put something out and just break even and you can do that with either route (digital or vinyl) I think I'd much rather go the vinyl route still. robin...
RE: (313) Digital Downloads
Cool article. (I feel compelled to apologise for the shakiness of my writing back there: necessary haste, as ever.) K -Original Message- From: Dan Bean [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 18 August 2006 10:06 To: 313@hyperreal.org Subject: Re: (313) Digital Downloads There was an article about precisely this subject in the technology section of the Guardian yesterday. They've put it up here: http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1851309,00.html
Re: (313) Digital Downloads
There was an article about precisely this subject in the technology section of the Guardian yesterday. They've put it up here: http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1851309,00.html
RE: (313) Digital Downloads
Hello, I buy regularly from iTunes + Bleep.com. Something recent which I've bought from iTunes was the Audion LP. From Bleep, a track from the 'My Sol Dark Direction' LP. For me, it's usually about either sampling the wares before I buy it in a 'hard' format. I did go on to get the Audion LP on vinyl and I will do that with the Suburban Knight LP too. What I've heard from small label owners who either are involved in digital distribution or are contemplating it, is that it's a tricky market to get right. Major benefit: digital offers the benefit compared to vinyl or CD of tiny overheads - assuming you only need to either boost your infrastructure (i.e. increased server space/capacity, etc) or maybe you don't even have to upgrade your systems at all. But major downside: to make it profitable, you have to spend that much on marketing and advertising, that those savings can be cancelled out, and it's possible that such ventures end up not being worth it in the end - meaning that you might as well bite the bullet and go for a hard format in the first place, because digital isn't really a easier option. There is also the idea that with our kind of music in particular, there is a prestige value that goes with vinyl. Digital downloads do reek of 'cheap' no matter how good the quality. It's a consideration when a big 'capital' involved in independent label music is the value which buyers/peers/industry ascribes to the label: whether you want to call it 'cred', 'goodwill', 'quality' or whatever. Just some thoughts of others which I've picked up. I tend to agree but I'm not the best informed. Ken -Original Message- From: Jason Brunton [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 18 August 2006 08:38 To: 313 Subject: (313) Digital Downloads Alright peepz- a quick question for the more tech-savvy minded amongst you: How many people actually buy digital download music whether from more mainstream portals like I-tunes or more specialist ones like Bleep.com?? I've spoken to quite a few label owners (all of them from smaller independant labels) but nobody seems to be making much income from it- any thoughts on the the current, and future, state of the format? I can't actually imagine ever paying £1 for a track in a less than perfect format and albums seem pretty expensive when you compare them to a normal CD which has cover art etc- I'm not totally against the idea but it's not really doing it for me at the moment. What chall think? cheers Jason
Re: (313) Digital Downloads
I can see where you are coming from Jason but I do buy a lot of stuff from Beatport and Bleep mostly odd tracks from EPs and Albums where I don't like the full thing and while it may not appeal to heads I know teenagers who don't own a single piece of Vinyl or a CD but do own more than one hard drive with their collection on - I also buy stuff that you can't get on vinyl/cd - DMZ for example. I buy the odd pop track off iTunes but if you look at the charts for electronic music on iTunes you see that they haven't changed for months - Born Slippy has been in the top ten since they started - so that gives you a big clue about who buys there... As for the future, I think there's room for all formats and paying a couple of quid for a wav is a better format than vinyl ;) my 2 cents m On 18 Aug 2006, at 08:38, Jason Brunton wrote: Alright peepz- a quick question for the more tech-savvy minded amongst you: How many people actually buy digital download music whether from more mainstream portals like I-tunes or more specialist ones like Bleep.com?? I've spoken to quite a few label owners (all of them from smaller independant labels) but nobody seems to be making much income from it- any thoughts on the the current, and future, state of the format? I can't actually imagine ever paying £1 for a track in a less than perfect format and albums seem pretty expensive when you compare them to a normal CD which has cover art etc- I'm not totally against the idea but it's not really doing it for me at the moment. What chall think? cheers Jason
