If you've listen to Squarepusher or Aphex Twin (or have seen some twisted Chris Cunningham video renditions of their music), chances are you might have heard of Warp Records. In 2004, Warp Records released Bleep.com to distribute their artists' music in high quality LAME format, and some of the releases are also available in FLAC. Though the tracks are slightly more expensive (single track: $1.39, full album: $9.99, double album: $12.49, all prices in USD), it is not locked by DRM. No, this is not another one of those Russian con-artist websites. Bleep.com is totally legitimate and it done by a well-known record label in England.You can read more about it on wikipedia here.
5 comments:
The problem with LAME/Flac is that you can't play it on the iPod (unless you want to use Rockbox Linux I guess), which is still the only mp3 player that doesn't suck in some fundamental way.
Then again, I never buy anything in the iTunes Music Store b/c of the quality issue. I've stuck with ripping my own CDs with the AAC encoder's quality settings jacked up.
it's not so much the legitimacy of the mp3s on the russian websites that I'm concerned about. By legit, I meant that they're not going to take your credit card number and make purchases other than the mp3s that you bought from them. There have been cases where people lost several grands by purchasing the some mp3s from the Russian sites, which their numbers were used to buy other stuff that, well you know... I don't know if that's true or not, but considering it's Russia, scam is a common occurrence over there. I wouldn't put it past them.
Well, not being able to play audio formats other than mp3/aac/wav/aiff/apple-lossless isn't really a problem for most people. Only commies (i.e. OSS hippies like RMS ;-)) use stuff like flac/ogg/shn anyway :-P So I don't think the inability to play these formats to be makes the iPod suck. Just not as good as it could be.
As far as issues concerning the RIAA, I'm more annoyed with a legal system that makes it possible for them to so easily bully people (especially considering often they have egg in their face when they sue grandmothers that claim are out downloading Metallica and Eminem mp3s). On other hang, I hate pirates and their apologetics (I'm looking at you Corey Doctorow over at Boing Boing) who they claim the RIAA is out suing music fans that they should actually be appreciative of--if you're hitting up Kazaa for your music, you're a tool.
But yeah, whenever (if ever) Apple releases a firmware update so I can play flacs on my ipod, I'll quite happy to upload my huge collection of (taper-friendly) Phish shows that I don't want to convert from flac.
I think to generalize that all people who download music are simply tool is a bit dramatic. I noticed that people like to download music when they want to listen to the whole album before going out buy it. The problem with a lot of the music stores (iTMS, Amazon, etc) is that they only give you a 20 sec clip, if you're lucky. I would like to listen to the whole song, the whole album, before deciding to buy. I remember liking one particular song and went out and bought the album, only to find that the album for the most part, sucked. I've lost 14 dollars when I could've very well purchased that one song for a measily 99 cent just to satisfy my whim at the time.
RIAA isn't just an issue when it comes to suing minors and grannies. They represent the interests of the recording industry. (Please see: Recording industry on Wikipedia)
The artists also has a coalition to prevent the RIAA from ripping them off, and the two groups are constantly at war with each other (Please see also: Recording Artists Coalition) Artists get very little for the albums--if any--they actually sell through the recording industry, so conversely you can also say that one is a tool for the RIAA by purchasing albums that artists will not see a penny from. That's why there are companies like Warp Records and WaxTrax! (both not from the US) that ensures that the artists will be paid for their work.
Interestingly enough, Metallica is not on the list of artists under the Recording Artists Coalition.
Re: Illegal downloaders being tools.
I wasn't thinking of the people sampling as much as the majority of my friends (or anybody else I've talked to) who haven't bought a CD in years, or only buy a minority of the albums they download.
Re: RIAA
Yeah, I understand they represent the record labels, not the artists themselves. That being said, I hope I'm not generalizing too much when I say that without the record labels life would be much harder for music fans who don't want to devote an unrealisitic amount of time locating and obtaining music. Artists are good at making music, not so much at the business of getting it out there, though the Internet is making that less true every day.
Re: Steve Jobs Halo Effect.
I completely disagree that the ipod if "seriously flawed." Like any actual implementation, it has it drawbacks. It's all about tradeoffs, i.e. biggest customer bang for the engineering buck. I personally put off purchasing an ipod for years because I was hoping for format capability. I looked into other mp3 players, but they all seemed so much worse than the ipod in terms of physical design and user interface. So, I don't think I'm being a fanboy as much as somebody that appreciates (what I think is) a very well done product.
Re: Drag and Drop sound support.
I'm assuming that you're lamenting the inability to simply mount the ipod as a filesystem and poor songs into directly instead of going through the itunes software. AFAIK, one can mount it as a filesystem itself, though not to put music on. Once again, this appears to be an engineering choice, in order to make the system the most reliable and usable for the most people.
Re: Misleading about user's needs
I don't think that I was misleading about the majority of people's needs regarding an mp3 player, much like I don't think most people have a problem with Windows. I think we CS/geeks/whatever are simply a (very) vocal minority.
Having used Linux for 6 or 7 years at this point, I still don't think it's better than Windows for the majority of people. I myself use Windows for day to day, non-CS/development purposes because I spent too much time with Linux keeping everything working through upgrades, kernel compiles, and all sorts of other bullshit.
The only real problem I have with Windows is that it seems most people seriously hose it because they don't possess the knowledge needed to keep it (relatively) secure and free of malware. I know I have to completely reformat my folk's PC every time I visit, despite setting up anti-virus, firewall, automatic updates, firefox, etc. Of course, I've tried setting them up with the more user-friendly Linux distros, but it's usually an issue of it being so foreign and not being able to run the software they need.
I would love to set them (and me!) up with a Mac and Mac OS X....if we could afford it. I plan on "switching" as soon as I can afford a decent Apple machine. I know my parents will never switch because they are the type that will never spend more than $1000 on a PC system.
Okay, I'm done, I swear :-)
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