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Warp Records Reject DRM, Go Bleep
DJ Phase writes "Warp Records, an independent label for electronic music (featuring artists such as Aphex Twin, Autechre, and Boards of Canada), has made their entire back catalog available thru Bleep, a new digital download service. Individual tracks are $1.35 for those of us in the USA, with EPs and full albums in the $4 to $10 price range. You can download Aphex Twin's rare, groundbreaking Hangable Auto Bulb EP for $4.29. To quote from the FAQ: 'We are at present the only store to offer very high quality MP3 files,' and 'Bleep music has no DRM or copy protection built in. We believe that most people like to be treated as customers and not potential criminals'."
www.magnatune.com
This was even a story on here a couple months ago...
Been reading about this on the IDM list .. and just when I had written Warp of as a bunch of old-timers.
Although I own most of the Warp CD back-catalog already (yes I'm trying to impress all you spotters out there) I look forward to emptying my wallet of cash on all the old vinyl tunes I never bought.
And I can listen on my Mac, my Zaurus, and my linux machine, no need to do the time-consuming DRMBULLSHIT->MP3 conversions!!!
(PS: I get a kick out of the folks who now refuse to buy MP3s because they aren't as "full sounding" as CDs. Didn't we go through this already with vinyl???? I'm happy to listen to MP3s on my shitty MP3 player and shitty headphones, thanks.)
I subscribe to eMusic.com which has independent artists. The use the subscription method, but you get MP3s and most are high bit rate. I also buy electronica music at WombMusic.com, they have up and coming DJs and artists and sell MP3s by the song. The bitrates range from 192 to 320 (plenty for my ears). If you want to know if you like a DJ you can listen to the song or watch them spin live at TheWomb.com. (Or I just open my office window and listen to them from accross the street.) ;)
Okay, so you think it's good because you've heard of it? I appreciate that there are certainly some good, popular, major label bands. But I've found lots of great bands on MagnaTune. I see no reason why Bleep can't do something similar. Non-DRM encumbered music, high quality recordings, and good music are a big draw for me. Being able to preview and play through bands and genres that I might otherwise not hear on the radio is an even bigger draw. Surfing around on MagnaTune is a FUN activity for me - it has brought back some of the joy I used to take in music that has really felt dead to me in recent years.
Nobody has ever heard of most of these artists.
Don't you mean YOU have never heard of any of these artists? Warp Records is, by far, the most influential and important electronic music label on earth. Autechre, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Plaid, Tortoise, Oval, Nightmares on Wax, are all on the top of the pile as far as really good electronic music is concerned. Just because YOU have never heard of them doesn't mean nobody else has... walk through the halls of the school I go to and you're just as likely to hear an Autechre track as you are Britney Spears.
sig.
I really gotta hand it to the folks at Warp for knowing better... the material on their label is not pop. No, you're not going to know every act on their label, and that's the point. They release the best and most diverse electronic type music of any label.
... but Warp is one of those rare labels you can probably randomly buy something out of their catalogue and appreciate it... of course, if you like that kind of music.
Some of their acts may be more well known, like Aphex Twin and The Black Dog (The latter also makes up Plaid with two members out of Black Dog)
Wildly experimental... electronic, blips, bleeps, some dance, some not, highly remixable, highly unsual, not your typical pop formulaic stuff that is structured perfectly into a verse, chorus, verse, chorus, break, chorus to fade type list of things to include in a song. Dare I say... a lot of stuff probably would be considered the electronic equivilent of jazz music.
Highly recommended for those who actually don't mind listening to the atypical electronic stuff.
But hey... I'm excited now, Warp has shown that they're aware of who their buyers are and will treat them like they should be treated: Customers, not criminals. KUDOS!
If anyone's intrigued by this idea but hasn't heard enough Warp tracks to know what's good, I would strongly recommend checking out "Come to Daddy" by Aphex Twin. It's only 8 tracks, so it should be pretty cheap.
"Selected Ambient Works" is also quite good, especially for those times when you want to listen to something subtle but your brother in law has borrowed your whale music CD. Seriously, this guy is very talented. And he drives a tank (no, it's not a joke link - just a strange domain).
Finally, I'm still waiting for the Bleep page to load up, so does anyone know if their artist's videos are alsofor sale? Squarepusher's "Come On My Selector" is my favourite video of all time.
...Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Churchill
...but here it goes again. there is a digital download service featuring independent artists called audiolunchbox that offers DRM free decently high quality mp3 and ogg downloads, it's great and is comparable in price to all the other services so far available. the slashdot crowd needs to pick up on this and fast, we can show the recording industry that this is what we want.
taken from the bleep.com faq section...
Q: WHY MP3 ?
A: MP3 is the most popular and universal format for digital music. It is the format that people most want, that is the easiest to play freely without any restrictions. We are also considering selling other files formats such as the second generation of lossy formats such as AAC or ogg or even lossless compressed formats such as FLAC or Monkeysaudio. If people are willing to pay a premium for the bandwidth cost they incur, then even 24bit versions of files could be sold.
I clicked on the Add to Cart link for the set (ignoring the preview streams, since honestly, I would buy it anyways), and after checking the privacy policy (nothing will be sold, bartered, sent to you, etc for any reason) I tried to create a new account. I was told my email was already in use, and found out that the old regular warprecords.com accounts were conveniently auto-generated for bleep.com, so I just signed in, passed through the normal checkout stuff, entered in my credit card, and two clicks later I had the option of downloading individual tracks or a ZIP of all the music.
I opened this ZIP and found that they were named "01.mp3; 02.mp3" and so on. Sort of annoying, that. The quality is standard 128-320 kb/sec VBR MP3. Winamp gave the MP3s the following properties:
MPEG 1.0 layer 3 (VBR)
44100Hz Joint Stereo
CRCs: No
Copyrighted: No
Original: Yes
Emphasis: None
The ID3v1+2 tags were entered in fully, and included the following description in "encoded by":
LAME 3.90.3 --alt-preset standard
AFAIK, LAME is the best encoder out there, so Warp apparently knows what they're doing. The MP3s sound great. One caveat--when you buy a song or album, you are buying *that download*. Downloads did not remain in any way accessible after the initial post-purchase links were accessed, so you had better hope the download doesn't get broken or lost.
The Good
--Quality encoding, even if it is VBR.
--No DRM (obviously)
--Fast download
--Easy to use store and site navigation
--ID3 Tags fully filled out
--Album prices are great
The Bad
--Generic filenames
--Downloads aren't held as permissions on the site for redownload later
--Single download prices could be better (blame UK conversion)
All in all, I liked Warp before and that might influence how useful this site is to me, but I was satisfied with only a few very small problems, and am looking forward to more downloads.
okay.. so the single downloads actually have the artist and track title. like this "AFX - Hangable Auto Bulb.mp3"
But the zipped-up downloads aren't the same. They look like this. "01.mp3"
The problem is when you select two different albums you get two different say "01.mp3" files in your zip. If you drag and drop your zip contents into a folder on your desktop the OS doesn't like that one "01.mp3" lands on your desktop then another shows up out of the zip so it asks if you want to overwrite. Thus nuking the first 01.mp3 you had.
If you do the actual "extract" you'll get two folders named ex: WAP66 and WAP67 which is better though not what I would call descriptive (though this might be the warp release #) and the filenames inside the folder are that "01.mp3" style name.
Not so great. but this should be a fairly easy fix and I'd still buy other tracks.
Heil Sig! -Rob
"Why not just a standard HTML page?"
Because it was put together by TDR
If you find anything "standard" after clicking the link I'll buy you a song (just kidding about that last bit btw).
for non-commercial use, and non-commercial sharing.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
I guess that artists are more than happy with such a system.
Want to know how much iTunes gives ?
Let's overcome our weakness.
Okay, I just signed up and downloaded EP7 by Autechre. Very cheap (as a full album purchase), very fast, certainly good enough quality for me and my iPod. I'll be using this service a lot and I hope they really clean up.
For information, payment is either standard cards or Paypal, and after purchase your tracks are made available for a standard browser-based download, either individually or in a zip file. Transfer is very fast (depending on your own connection, natch.)
There are a few oddities with prices - Sabres of Paradise's Wilmot EP is 2.99 complete, which is 1 more than the two tracks bought individually. There are also a lot of small tracks (such as the 'bolts' on Black Dog's Spanners album) that cost 99p for 20 seconds or so. But those kind of tracks you'd only really want as part of the full album, where the average price per track would be far less...
However, given that the selection of tracks and albums is very comprehensive, a few glitches are to be expected, and are easily worked around.
I urge anyone who's interested in online music and hasn't heard of Warp to give the site a try - all the files are available as previews (with fade-outs) and you'll find some wonderful stuff there. Warp's an electronica label, but a very eclectic one. If you don't get on with Aphex Twin, try Mira Calix. If you can't gel with Autechre, check out Sabres of Paradise. If Boards of Canada don't blow your kilt up, listen to The Gentle People. All unique, all worthwhile, all available.
Audiophiles note (because the 'what-no-Ogg' crowd are already in effect, I see) that the FAQ states that Warp are considering offering other codecs, including FLAC, and maybe offering higher bitrates for a higher price. Early days, though - the first thing they need is support. And here's someone who really, truly deserves it for a change.