Neowin.net

The Record Label

The RIAA and it's clones.

And this is why ALL musicians need to let their contracts expire and just deal directly with the NON-RIAA organizations and distribution outlets.

Yes, but if songwriters get an increase then what about the performers? It's a careful balancing act. It seems a bit low to me, though I do not know the full dynamics of the equation.

your kidding right? , cause those so called 'torrents' usually have a much higher average bit rate vs itunes crap.

cause if you can find those MP3's that are VBR (vary from around 128-320kbps ... i.e. using EAC + LAME codec) those usually maintain high quality without file size going sky high... usually tends to have a average bit rate of around 192-224kbps (usually 192 but in some case it's avg bit rate is 224) from my own testing.

whats itunes offer? , 128kbps CBR? (even if im wrong, it's unlikely that they would be better quality than the stuff i talked about above) ... cause in my opinion paying for a song i would not even consider it if the bit rate where not AT LEAST 192kbps minimum.

so it's like this... you PAY for itunes and they give u lower quality stuff... you use torrent and you get it for FREE AND it's better quality.... so there's 2 positives for the shady stuff and zero positives for itunes..... heck there's even a third positive in the sense that RIAA etc dont see a cent of your money lol , and i dont think anyone on neowin is going to complain about screwing them over cause there past reputation makes them look SOOOO bad.

so go ahead and keep using your itunes with your overpriced ipod related digital audio player... ill stick with my Sandisk Sansa e250 (running Rockbox , www.rockbox.org ) as it's just as good (if not better) than IPOD's and it's MUCH cheaper... heck you can get one for like 50 bucks or less nowadays... and it has expandable memory AND a 'user-replaceable' battery to unlike IPOD stuff. (no offense to you, im just making some good points is all , if you like itunes then go ahead and use it )

Last edited by ThaCrip on 05 Oct 2008 - 02:10

I honestly don't believe it was a bluff. I hope that Apple would have done it, and set an example for greedy record labels.
Sure, it would have meant business would shut down for a month or so, but it would also provide an excuse to free existing tracks from DRM, and a high-profile re-launch with an improved interface or something.

The anti-RIAA spin on the whole thing would be astronomical, and apple could stand to make a fair chunk of change during the re-launch.

Why would they not shut it down? They operate on a pretty thin profit margin and selling tons of iPods is great, but when you then stop gaining any revenue on whats feeding those ipods....no reason to keep the store open and consumer can go back to ripping music from CD's or downloading music from other stores with no DRM

I assume you'd want it in FLAC?
Because I seem to remember Apple offering DRM-free AAC's at pretty high quality - 256kbps iirc - starting a while back. (And hell, I don't even like Apple...)

256 kbps is still a very degraded copy and nowhere near high. I too wish in the day of massive hard drives we could get away from lossy formats all together. FLAC, WAVPACK, Monkeys Audio, etc.. their are many options and they would compress the file to around 950 kbps give or take which shows how far off 256 kbps really is. The day of quality over quanity should be here....damnit

To be fair, Apple Lossless is playable on iPods, and you can set up iTunes to rip your CDs into that format. It just isn't fesable to do on the ITMS, since 50+MB per song is really too big to provide downloads for, especially with the number of tracks that are avaliable. People would think that the ITMS is too slow, and flock to Amazon for their lossy tracks, because they download faster.

Don't blame Apple, or the quantity over quality people. Blame the state of US broadband, or lack thereof, and the government's lack of direction on net issues, and failure to plan for our increasing broadband usage. Or blame the Telcos, for gouging consumers, and throttling usage instead of upgrading existing infrastructure.

Or move to Japan, where bandwidth flows like a chocolate river, rich and plentiful, and the happy candy downloads surf this river on jetskis, splashing each other with chocolate on their way to your computer.

Viral Fail.

More like G-clef Hummus on Steel Belted Eyelids if you ask me

Absolutely. There's no reason not to buy CD's and hey, you can play them anywhere with no DRM and they are portable! Plus, you can make as many personal legal backups as you want.