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Out of interest, what FLACs can you buy commercially and where?

Off the top of my head:

Boomkat
Bleep
Bandcamp

They don't have everything as FLACs, but there's loads and loads of stuff (minus the Big 4 mainstream pap) for sale in FLAC (or WAV or ALAC) format.

np: Soap & Skin - Spiracle (Lovetune For Vacuum)

http://bandcamp.com/tags I don't know how big the catalogue is, but I'd guess tens of thousands by now. And, bonus, you're not supporting the RIAA. There are loads of shops that will sell you lossless. Here's another very good one: http://bleep.com/

Bleep.com, run by Warp Records, scores pretty well by your criteria.

* No DRM
* 30 second previews of every track at *any* point of the track in 128kbps - you can listen to the entire track but you'll have to hit "play" again every 30 seconds
* Lame encoded MP3 w/ FLAC available for some releases
* Normal web site interface

I believe each album is its own zip, but I've only downloaded single albums at a time. Don't think there is an API, although they have a html generator to embed preview players in your own pages. You cannot re-download previously purchase tracks.

The major downside is that it's limited mostly to electronic music; but within the genre, it's got quite a good selection, with dozens of labels participating, such as City Centre Offices, Domino, Fatcat, Ghostly, Morr Music, Ninjatune, One Little Indian, Planet Mu, Rough Trade, Skam, Sonig and of course Warp.

I'm a musician, and I've come to terms with the fact that from now on, music is free. I support other musicians by purchasing LPs and CDs and the occasional MP3 of other artists I like, but for the majority of our audience (the public), our music is free.

How do we, as musicians, make money on our works? By doing the same thing that any underground band has known for a long long time: merch. The money is in the t-shirt, the lighter, the sticker, the wallet, etc. People want that.

That, and vinyl will never die. It is definitely a niche. But for one of my bands, we sell a 7" EP and you get a free MP3 download version of it as well. For one price you get the high quality, inconvenient vinyl and the low quality, convenient MP3. Not a bad model, IMO...

I've bought a few MP3 albums off Bleep before they were available in a physical format, but damn it, I wish for my $10 for the MP3 album, I'd get a $10 coupon to buy the LP or CD...

http://www.boomkat.com/
http://www.bleep.com/

i think boomkat do flacs for pretty much everything that they have as mp3s, bleep only for the 'bigger' things. neither are exactly popular music stores but, hey, some of us prefer this stuff. flac comes at a premium too, a quid or two, but it's nice to have the choice.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Bleep yet.

Appropriately for an OT in a Sputnik story, there's a DRM-free music store called Bleep too.

or bleep.com

http://www.bleep.com/search.php?search=Boards+of+Canada

(have also recently discovered redpoint who remind me a lot of BoC and who provide free legal downloads via hiddenmusic: http://www.hiddenmusic.co.uk/news/whyfree/
)

They do a subscription service, which I can understand how that might bug you. But for DRM-free music, since they carry a lot of music I like, the price-point and service style are fine. If I want to pick and chose only a couple of tracks I use services like Bleep, Fintunes, Inertia or even iTunes.

But their model is a subscription service. Which for people like me works (with a booster pack here and there).

And with other resources (Bleep, Fintunes, Inertia, etc) I find my music selection keeps expanding horizontally (and DRM free).

Bleep seems to have got the mix right, they have FLAC and MP3, the prices are good, and just happens to fit my music tastes (Indie UK music, ala Aphex twin, UNKLE, Squarepusher, Autechre etc etc. Nice web design with free inline demos of the tracks.

(I am nothing to do with bleep I just like their spin on selling music so I recommend them where I can.).

Maybe worth a mention for Bleep , lots of big uk indie labels including Warp records, mp3 and FLAC format at decent prices.

A great point, if only it were true:
http://www.bleep.com/ sell DRM-free mp3's, and cover a wide range of independent labels. also selling FLAC-encoded tunes for the audiophile crowd.

Good tip, but imho better than beatport is bleep.com.

The interface isn't built in flash, for starters, so you can actually do things like *gasp* link people directly to a certain release (gosh, who would have thought hyperlinking could be useful on the web *rollseyes*). When I went to beatport a few weeks ago for the first time since last year, I just got an error saying I don't have flash. (I do). bleep does use a small tasteful flash widget for track previewing - which works fine for me on exactly the same system - which is actually rather excellent once you get the hang of it, as it allows you to get a streaming preview of any point in any track, rather than selected short clips.

The fare is a 320kbps MP3s and/or FLACs. No DRM. There are nice touches such as when you purchase several tunes, it can make a zip of them for you to simplify the download, or give you a separate link to an mp3, whichever you choose.

The catalogue / target market doesn't exactly overlap, I suppose. Beatport seems very strong in house, trance, drum'n'bass and so forth - dj type material. Bleep is strong on the more leftfield fringes of 'bedroom listening' electronica (god I hate that word), with labels like Warp, Ninja Tune and Planet Mu.

Also, obligatory plug for my own band, keiretsu - live drum'n'bass and breakbeat fusion, combining electronic dance music with guitars, 3-piece horn section, electric violin and more. Naturally, we sell our last CD as DRM-free LAME 320s. (And we give away the CD before that - I think of it as the "id software model" ;-) ). This article is badly timed for me to do some plugging, since our new CD (and corresponding website overhaul) isn't out til next month, but nevermind.

On another note, check out The WBC. Nothing to do with me this time - they're from NZ. I happened to run across their alto sax player, I've just taken up the instrument and he gave me some advice on a musician's forum. I checked out his bands stuff and had to buy the full album in MP3s (the shipping and taxes were too high for the CD from NZ). They're sort of ska-rock territory - not an area of music I'm an expert in, to be honest, but FWIW I personally think these guys are pretty good.

Time for the routine plug of Warp Records' music shop Bleep. Warp are a indie label based in Sheffield, England, famed for experimental and avant-garde electronica such as Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin and Squarepusher. But Bleep also sells from lots of other indie labels, covering a very wide variety of music. It's all DRM-free (mostly high bitrate MP3, but some FLAC).

Hey, while checking my link, I notice that The Undertones' compilation is available on Bleep - MP3 320kbps! 99p a track or £8.99 for the full 32 track double album! Result!

Time for the routine plug of Warp Records' music shop Bleep. Warp are a indie label based in Sheffield, England, famed for experimental and avant-garde electronica such as Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin and Squarepusher. But Bleep also sells from lots of other indie labels, covering a very wide variety of music. It's all DRM-free (mostly high bitrate MP3, but some FLAC).

Hey, while checking my link, I notice that The Undertones' compilation is available on Bleep - MP3 320kbps! 99p a track or £8.99 for the full 32 track double album! Result!

So let Jobs and Goldberg put their money where their mouths are - lets have a week (or longer?) where they will only sell non-DRMed. Any record company not willing to go without DRM won't have any sales for that period. I for one would be interested to see what the sales numbers would be.

Personally, I would be willing to pay for non-DRMed tracks (and I do from http://bleep.com/)

It's different because our expectations are different. CDs can't play in cassette players for the obvious reason that they have a different form factor. You point out that recordable CDs were rare/expensive/not yet invented - so literally it was impossible to format shift. However, if you bought a different brand of CD player, all your CDs would still play on it.

Digital audio files are just that: files. We expect that PDFs will be readable on any computer, we expect that pictures will be viewable on any computer. Files have no form factor restrictions, and we expect that they should play on any device that can play digital audio files.

Apple are in a dominant position in this market now. If they want to start selling DRM free music, they surely can demand it of the labels themselves - why are they whining to us? Also, there are a lot of indie labels ( such as Warp et al. ) who already sell DRM free MP3s - does iTunes offer these DRM free?

Check out bleep.com it's 1GBP per track and then there's also eMusic which is a subscription service. Both are DRM free and offer good quality music, you can't offer the prices AllofMP3 offer but you can offer the quality and freedom it offers at a similar price to iTunes and Napster given a bit of economies of scale there's no reason with Major Label backing you couldn't offer the product. The majors will just not accept it, unfortunately.

No-DRM == winner!
DRM == looser!

If you like coffee-table electro then visit bleep.com. Non-DRM'd, MP3'd, cool music from Warp Records and associates. If you like the Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Plaid or that kind of stuff, then consider that link a Christmas present from the Gods!

Merry Christmas all!

DRM'd music? I'd rather feed their bones to pigs...

Who the hell uses 128 kbps MP3 anymore? If you use iTunes, like a sizeable group of mainstream consumers, then you're getting 128 kbps AAC, which is indistinguishable from the source when it comes to loud, over-compressed pop music. When it comes to something like classical, that's when you probably need to move up to 160 or 192 (which iTunes doesn't offer, unfortunately). I don't have a clear idea of wma's quality, which is the other mainstream consumer digital music format. My point is that you probably have nothing to worry about concerning MP3 becoming the standard format, at least through official means of distribution. After all, it's too hard to DRM it and lock your customers into one unshiftable format and player.

That said, I really like Bleep, which distributes music in non-DRM, high-quality VBR MP3 and sometimes FLAC, both of which create sample-perfect representations of whatever's encoded with it.

Cheap legal downloads with no DRM, MP3 files with VBR: emusic.com, bleep.com. There's a lot more, you search for them.

What material would you like to see?

Some good music, for starts. It's hard to find that from the mainstream vendors, however. Downloadable music has really helped the small music labels get their music out.

Yay http://bleep.com/

• bleep.com
• beatport.com
• trackitdown.net/

Some Statistics

Ok, maybe this isn't something Joe Average does but I have kept a spreadsheet of my music purchases for the last four years. Last year was the first year I ever bought anything online. There where four purchases totalling 50:14 in running time (mostly out of print Detroit electro singles). That was just 1.44% of the 67 albums I bought last year (60:11:46 total run time). This year I'm running way behind that rate (just 29 total purchases with only 29:45:39 total run time. I'm estimated to only buy ~41 albums this year) and only four online purchases but the total runtime is up (1:42:05 for 5.72% of my purchase runtime).

I also keep track of how much money I spent the last two years. Now I calculate how much per actual physical disc I spend a year and measure it against the RIAA 2004 estimate of $12.95 per CD. My number has actually gone up. Last year it was only $11.42 while this year its $13.44. But that doesn't tell you too much. I order a lot of CDs overseas because a lot of stuff is out of print/not distributed in the US and I pay a pretty price for it.

However, if you calculate the dollar per minute I've spent per year over all purchases (electronic and physical) and that number has actually stayed about the same: .2214 $/m last year, .2258 $/m this year. If you estimate that a normal CD is 45 minutes long, then using the RIAA estimate the $/m of a physical CD in 2004 was .2877.

DRM

Now... DRM. DRM actually doesn't play much into my purchases. I buy most of my MP3s from sites that don't DRM (Warp Records massive crosslabel site Bleep.com and ClickandBuy.com which a lot of UK e-tailers seem to use). Of course it might be DRM that keeps me from buying stuff from iTunes and the like. I have an MP4 that I haven't really listened to 'cause it's got that only-just-recently cracked DRM on it... so I couldn't put it on an MP3 data disc and listen to it in my car. Also Bleep is good for just browsing. You can listen to any song as much as you want (tho they cut it into 30 second chunks).

Also I prefer physical media. Why? I dunno. I can pull it out and play it in most anyone else's car, it's not rewriteable so I can take it to work and rip it onto machines in labs and that's much more convenient then YouSendit'ing it to myself. Also I only have to pull a disc from my mail and it can go right in my car. I don't need to find a box, rip and burn, to get to it. That's great if I'm on business travel, buy a disc and want to listen to it right away (which happened last week).

One way for the artist is to create music for people that actually put a value on it and don't want the artist to starve. Physical barriers are not the only things that stop people taking things without paying.

There are plenty of examples of this right now, for instance in the UK Warp Records (one of the bigger UK indie lables with an anual turn over around the $10million mark) have nearly their whole catalog in their online store as DRM free MP3 files (high quality VBR using LAME alt-preset standard). There are also other examples in this list.

Personally, I'm going to have my album downloadable as DRM-free MP3s - it will also be on iTunes for people that find that more convenient (?!) but it'll be more expensive (to make up for apple's cut) and obvious will have iTune's DRM there.

It's happening. It just doesn't have the big marketing dollar behind it. See Bleep (Warp Records) or DGM Live (King Crimson & Friends) for examples. DGM even do lossless, you can buy FLAC files with no hint of DRM - a sure sign that they "get it".

One example is bleep.com, which offers FLAC versions of some releases. I've bought a couple of them, but unfortunately the selection is quite small (all of Autechre and then some). Maybe the transferring of FLAC music to portable device (eg. convert to Ogg Vorbis) is too much of a hassle for ordinary people. Me, of course, have an iAudio player that plays FLAC out of the box.

Other than that, emusic.com provides over a million MP3s with no DRM used, but I won't buy music in a patent-restricted format. And with the superioty of FLAC (after all, I'm _paying_ for the music, I'd expect perfect quality), I'm not sure if I'd pay for Ogg Vorbis songs, either.

http://www.bleep.com/ has been selling unDRMed music for a couple of years now. You can get some greate music from some big acts like Bjork, Autechre, Franz Ferdinand, Royksopp, Aphex Twin, The Arcade Fire, The Strokes, Boards Of Canada, And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead... and lots more... and at high bitrates, and even FLAC files are available.
Enjoy.

"Could you you go without purchasing or even downloading music for 3 months? 6 months? a year? to prove a point?"

Yes, and I have, but not to prove a point. I don't buy anything the RIAA churns out anymore, because my tastes have changed. The majority of music I listen to anymore comes from northern Europe, written by guys on computers and keyboards.

But that's just me. It's not to say I don't listen to anything from the RIAA, but I don't purchase it (not saying that I pirate/infringe/steal/copy/etc). The fact that I boycott RIAA material is an unintentional side effect.

Of course, I have to do work to get my music, often involving writing to musicians/producers as to where I can purchase. If found that this site, and this one (no DRM, a little more then $1 because of exchange rates), are great resources for the type of music I listen to.

Also, streaming audio works quite well for me. Lots of different content, and no adverts (or very few).

... I do not listen, download or accept DRM'ed music or music that's under 320k quality.

So nothing under 320k (--preset insane), but transcoded music is fine? The last time I checked most of the music on their site was transcoded from a lossy format. Some were from a lossless format, but a huge majority was lossy -> lossy conversion. :-/

I'd like to see more things like http://bleep.com/ for major labels.

http://www.bleep.com/ allows MP3 downloads from some indie labels. So you are wrong.

Ever heard of Warp Records and their music store - http://bleep.com/ ?

If you want to see a real step in the right direction, check out http://bleep.com/, download MP3s for a reasonable price. None of this DRM BS.

all this mention of dance/electronic labels and nobody mentions WARP? BLEEP is a fantastic store that sells both compressed MP3's and lossless FLAC's. when bleep first came out, their goal was to provide digital versions of previously vinyl-only albums, as well as making WARP's entire backcatalog available. they're still not there yet, but they're doing a whole lot better than most labels, who seem to think that buying records is a privilege to be doled out as they see fit.

Other posters have pointed out companies other than eMusic who are selling non-DRM MP3 downloads. Another is Bleep. Originally it was far-out electronica from the Warp label, but other labels are on board now, including stuff that's definitely not electronica.

I'm an Emusic subscriber and love them, but there are LOTS of legal services out there, these days, selling good ol' MP3s (or even FLAC/OGG) with no DRM

• audiolunchbox.com
• mp3tunes.com
• Many record labels like Magnatune and Bleep
• and the somewhat-legal allofmp3.com for the major-label stuff.

We keep a full list of them at cdbaby.net/dd-partners (in 10 languages!). Though that list is meant mainly for our musician clients, it's a good permalink for a constantly-updating list of digital music sellers, with a short description of each.

You can get pure unadulterated mp3s at bleep.com. You have to like music on the warp label and similar, but if you don't, you really should :) Bleep's whole point is not to treat the customer as a criminal.

For me and my state, adding that $.08 to cigarette tax would be much more productive. I wish they would do that instead.

Not an economist, are you? How would removing the tax from one good, placing it upon another, would cause an increase in "productivity"? What kind of productivity? Agricultural? Manufacturing?

Actually, to maintain a tax on one good and introduce a tax on another would create (to a degree) an increase in tax revenue. Shifting tax from one good to another creates a marginal increase/decrease, if any, in tax revenue.

For some reason, my state feels the need to collect on content that didn't originate in the state,...

Taxable goods do not have to originate in the state in which they are taxed, to be taxed. My cigarettes, or the tobacco in them, do not come from NY. You can bet I get taxed.

Of course, I can assume from the last line in your insightful post that you don't smoke. You have one of those "lets tax the bad people who...." don't consume what you consume. Luckily, you're not writing tax codes. If you want some element of fairness, lets have a greater gasoline tax. WHAT??!! I don't drink, let's instead shift this $.08 tax of yours to alcohol sales.

Besides, your little $.08 isn't going to stop you from purchasing more iTunes music, will it? So pay the tax, don't shift it to your neighbor who smokes, that doesn't use iTunes. Or vote with your wallet, and don't use iTunes. Or use a substitue good, of sorts.

But don't jump to the old defense of "tax the X!!!! instead", it's not fair to people of similar economic footing.

Eh? Where the hell does iTunes get their music? It's making the record companies suffer? Using iTunes, Google Music, Rhapsody, Yahoo Music, Amazon, et al, supports the miserable music industry. It lets them think you want 'Fair' content that can only have 5 copies of. That's still being treated like a criminal, just with a bigger cell.

Buy DRM-less independent music if you want to be treated fairly.

eMusic Subcription-based, very cheap, a lot of great artists and indie labels (New Pornos, Spoon, Blackalicious, CCR, Thelonius Monk)

BLEEP A-la-carte, most electronic but has a lot of small labels, some stuff in FLAC (Warp records, Ninja Tune, One Little Indian/Bjork)

AudioLunchbox Subscription and a-la-carte, a little pricier than emusic but has some different artists (Death Cab for Cutie, The Sounds)

Calabash Mostly world and folk music (Tinariwen, reggae)

There are more. Hopefully Songbird will make it easier to access them all through a single interface.

...Apple Computer pushes their own brand, logos, and so on, and are known for that, and justifiedly so. People see a stylish computer and see "oh, built by Apple." People see a stylish music player. "oh, built by Apple." They see a nice web music store. "Built by Apple, of course".

But how many people pick up a Beatles album and think "oh, this was made by that Apple record company, I really need to buy more music from this record label, oh, I so love this record label"?

Record labels don't need their names to market themselves. They can rake in money without making their names hot hot hot - they have the artists to draw the attention. When the spotlight hits them, they can just grin and say "oh, the CDs we made for this lovely band are in stores as we speak, please go buy them!"

Or are they just starting to make a web music store of their own? Heck, just do what everyone else is doing these days: Start a new web music store with a separate, distinct brand.

I have a heap of music here and I can barely remember what record labels made them. Mostly because the record labels in question were major idiots. =)

Not true at all

320bps VBR MP3s:

http://www.audiolunchbox.com/
http://www.magnatune.com/
http://www.bleep.com/, who sells FLACs as well.

There are more.

UK Top 40 http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/chart/albums.shtml/ - link probably only relevant this week, although they've been at the top for a couple of weeks now.

Available,on 192-320 VBR MP3 from :

http://www.playloudershop.com/

Along with likes of Franz Ferdinand and White Stripes, both of whom have enjoyed multi-platinum sales in the UK - although mostly of physical CDs.

OK, so it's not OGG, which is going to alienate some people who won't have MP3 on their machines, but it's proof commercial MP3 can work.

I think part of it is the way Playlouder targets a specific market - http://www.bleep.com/, for instance, appears to use the same engine but is oriented towards electronic music fans rather than indie fans. You might not recognise most of the artists, but the biggest acts in those genres are represented, which makes both sites seem less like 'a list of bands you've never heard of'.

Interesting that it will support Linux, Windows and OS X - is this the only music service that can claim this kind of compatibility?

Bleep files have no 'DRM' or copy protection built in. We believe that most people like to be treated as customers and not potential criminals - DRM is easily circumvented and just puts obstacles in the way of enjoying music.

Interesting that it will support Linux, Windows and OS X - is this the only music service that can claim this kind of compatibility?

Bleep files have no 'DRM' or copy protection built in. We believe that most people like to be treated as customers and not potential criminals - DRM is easily circumvented and just puts obstacles in the way of enjoying music.

Interesting that it will support Linux, Windows and OS X - is this the only music service that can claim this kind of compatibility?

Bleep files have no 'DRM' or copy protection built in. We believe that most people like to be treated as customers and not potential criminals - DRM is easily circumvented and just puts obstacles in the way of enjoying music.

Interesting that it will support Linux, Windows and OS X - is this the only music service that can claim this kind of compatibility?

Bleep files have no 'DRM' or copy protection built in. We believe that most people like to be treated as customers and not potential criminals - DRM is easily circumvented and just puts obstacles in the way of enjoying music.

Interesting that it will support Linux, Windows and OS X - is this the only music service that can claim this kind of compatibility?

Bleep files have no 'DRM' or copy protection built in. We believe that most people like to be treated as customers and not potential criminals - DRM is easily circumvented and just puts obstacles in the way of enjoying music.

It's all well and good complaining when the RIAA start doing things like this, and it's great to inform your friends, to donate to the EFF or contact your Representative (or MP), but if we still buy music from RIAA members, we are in danger of sending mixed signals.

There is a world of great music out there that is NOT published by RIAA members, including many independent labels that really support artists and treat them with more respect than industry heavy-hitters who - despite their protests to the contrary - really only care about their bottom-line.

Compare, for example, independent music retailers, such as bleep who allow unlimited backups (for your own personal use, of course) of their non-DRM MP3 files with today's announcement from on high by the RIAA to see that there really IS a viable alternative to the dominance of the RIAA/BPI and similar organisations - but it will only ever become a true success if we put our money where our mouths are and stop supporting the RIAA.

If you haven't already check out Bleep, the online music store for several cool labels who's artists include Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, and Venetian snares, among hundreds of others.

You can preview any part of any song, choose your download format, and everything is nicely tagged for you. Oh, and no DRM.

And I don't work for Bleep, I've just given them a shitload of money.