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MP3.com Removes "High-Bandwidth" Streams
mshiltonj writes "I noticed today that mp3.com no longer offers high-bandwidth streams for its genres or stations, although it looks like artists' playlists and individual songs are available in high bandwidth. mp3.com has lots and lots of free music that was free and legal to listen to online, and a good number of my "music bookmarks" were on mp3.com. I'll live (I've still got my favorite stream), but I don't think it's a good sign. Is streaming music doomed to die, not because of RIAA litigation, but because of expensive bandwidth costs?" I don't think bandwidth will be the determining cost - that's a price that has been falling and will continue to fall. But are things like iTunes store the future, or is it streaming?
Of course bandwidth has a cost and sometimes it's just too much for a site to bear. A popular service can be punished by it's bandwidth costs. How many times do we see/hear of a site going down due to the /. effect...and probably a lot of them are due to bandwidth caps rather than fancy content delivery systems hogging CPU/drive.
Of course it's not a problem if they have a *real* revenue stream for their service as they should then be able to *pay* for their bandwidth needs.
I just think it's a sign of the times.
I have recently been listening to Shoutcasts at work (of mostly live, allowed, recordings). The three major ones I listen to are at 128k. 1 of the shoutcasts boasts a # in the 100s at 128k. They also offer a bunch of live shows for shoutcast at 128k in addition to their random one.
I find that the server is CONSTANTLY having me rebuffer the stream making it increasingly difficult to listen to (I have a broadband connection at home and at work).
I switched to a shoutcast stream that has only 10-15 people at 128k and it seems to handle it much better.
Radio doesn't sound like 128k to me, what's the difference if MP3.com isn't offering that to it's listeners?
But are things like iTunes store the future, or is it streaming?
There's this really weird mindset that seems to take hold in techie circles that there's only one given solution to an issue...that aside, why is only one of these going to be the future? Christ, AM/FM survived alongside records, cassettes, and CDs...why's the Internet going to be any different?
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I used to be CTO of a now defunct online radio service in the UK (puremix.com), way back in 2000/2001 and worked at various radio stations before that.
We streamed 64K Real Audio and it sounded great. The secret to making it sound good is audio proecessing, just like an analog radio station does. I am not advocating New York style maximizing of loudness at all cost, but any signal needs some work.
That work is missing on most not only amateur, but also professional streams or it is done by very bad software solutions. Online music services are often created by people who love and know their music and are geeks. Few of them are actualy audio wizards. (Even at radio stations, engineers are often under valued because the "creative" people don't understand what's involved) The result is that even peak signals are below maximum modulation and missing (multiband) compression and limiting makes sure there is no consintancy in quality and loudness between songs, which brings out encoding articfacts much more. And that is a real shame.
That's not a useful comparison. That's like saying "Is Stop & Shop (a supermarket, for those of you outside the northeast) the future, or is it farmstands on the side of the road?".
They serve two different markets. Streaming is totally different from purchasing a song and burning it to CD. Also, I believe MP3.com did not cost money. So if you're talking in the short term, yes, for-profit business are the future compared to those losing money. However, comparing free streaming to the iTunes music store is like apples and oranges.
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