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The Perfect Online Music Store?
brace asks: "With the proliferation of online music sales, more and more companies are jumping onto the bandwagon and trying to sell you downloadable music. Some of them do a good job, some of them are just bad at it. The question I have for Slashdot readers is essentially 'What would the perfect online music store offer you?' Should it have OGG and FLAC tracks, as well as MP3? Would you rather pay per-song or per-month? Would you want the option to purchase hard-copy as well (like the actual album, or even band merchandise)? Should the song samples be 30 second downloads or full-song streams fed on-demand? Is a radio station important for an online music store?"
"Personally, I'd like to see a store that has a 24/7 internet radio station, on-demand streaming, $0.99 downloads (and $9.99 album downloads), links to purchase actual albums or merchandise, and with MP3, OGG, and FLAC support. I'd also like to see the artists being paid more than 10%..."
Personally I think it would be great if a music store kept the files in wav format and encoded them on the fly so you could choose any format you like (caching the popular options). Sure they would probably have to charge more, but I think it would be worth it.
Oh and no DRM please, I like my music without bullshit.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
allofmp3.com is already amazing. super low prices and i can get most of the music in ogg q5. :)
After 3 years of boycotting music and not buying any, I finally started using iTunes 4 months back. Since then I've purchased 10 albums. I tried MusicMatch and looked at Real, but honestly iTunes is the most user friendly.
Look at it this way, there are two groups of replies to this:
The Slashdot Crowd...
They're going to demand support for all of the Ogg contained codecs.
They're going to demand no drm, even optionally, so while you'll probably see AAC as a general format, you wont see fair-play.
You'll see the classic mp3, of course.
The price is going to have to be far less than 99c, since so many people here resent all things associated with the Apple store. I'm thinking what, 30 pence will please you guys?
The Normal Crowd...
For everyone else, you know what the perfect music store would be? The iTunes music store with basically a few additions:
There should be some ability to purchase at least some songs (i.e. certain classical pieces) at a higher bitrate.
There should be the ability to purchase files for more than one player, so that may mean something like WMA.
There's probably more, but I think these are the key points...
"Stumble before you crawl"
http://www.magnatune.com
I'm not affiliated in any way other than to love what they do. I've listened to lots of stuff, including their streaming mp3s of entire genres. I have bought a couple of albums from magnatune, and still listen to it today. It's been a long time since I've been into music this much.
-Jim
Celebrate Excellence!
Give me a choice of Ogg Vorbis or FLAC, give me the choice to pay an "all you can eat"-type periodic subscription, or a per-song price (with a discount for an "album's" worth of songs). I'd like to see this store backed by artists who actually get a large chunk of my change, not by huge music conglomerates. The obvious one: I don't want any DRM on the files themselves. A supported Linux client is a must, of course (or a web interface). 30 second preview clips are good enough for me to decide if I like a song enough to buy it.
So, as you might guess, I'm not buying any online music anytime soon...
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
Guaranteed sound quality, and the ability to re-download any track I've ever purchased. (Ya just never know when ya might lose it.)
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."-THG
That is it off the top of my head.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
When I find music worth buying, I seek it out in my local, privately owned music store. These little stores are often owned by people that love music and they really need help to keep the money in the local economy.
After I purchase my real, shiny CD I rip it to MP3 and stick the CD on my shelf. If my hard drive crashes and burns, I've got my hard copy right there, waiting to be re-ripped.
I just don't see the appeal in buying music online in the way proposed. My idea of buying something involves actually having a physical end product, otherwise it's just called 'renting'.
No fucking way am I gonna pay a buck a song and ten bucks an album for downloads unless I really like the work and can get pristine quality. Thus far I would say Magnatune does it best: you can listen to anything they have (and you can actually hear it because the quality doesn't suck) and, if you want to buy it, you can set the price and download it in high quality formats. I've bought a few albums there and have actually found myself going back to buy a work again because I decided I liked the work more than I thought and I felt bad about being such a cheap bastard.
if the record companies would trust people to do the right thing and stop calling us all thieves they could make a LOT more money. If I can buy a used CD for five bucks, rip it and get the quality I want, why the fuck would I pay twice that for the download? Magnatune gets it... the others don't.
Magnatune is incredible -- if only they also had Opera, I'd never have cause to listen to anything else.
I listen to the New Age and Electronica shoutcast stations from Magnatune on Rhythmbox petty much all day and night.
For people who like new music -- and it's *good* music, too -- Magnatune is probably the best Internet resource.
You choose what you want to pay for an album ($4 minimum, $8 suggested, the sky is the limit) and 50% goes to the artist. You can download full-quality WAVs, MP3, OGG, FLAC, AAC, and I think there's one more. You can also download all of the album art in PDF format, so you can write your own CDs as they would be from the store, minus the DRM.
I usually get the WAV zip file, then compress it to OGG/Vorbis for my computer and write the WAVs to CD for my car.
-Jem
Magnatune.
MP3, Ogg, FLAC, you name it. Listen to entire albums before buying, if you like. Most artists allow some discretion in how much you pay, depending on how much you like it and/or how much you can afford. Artist gets 50% and, IIRC, they retain full copyright.
I'm not affiliated with them in any way, but these guys really do Get It. Give 'em a whirl, they deserve it.
Asking Slashdot what the perfect store to buy music should be like. It's like asking the American Cancer Institute which cigarette has the best flavor.
Since some of my CDs are nearing twenty years, and I am encoding all of them into Apple lossless, I'd like to think a decade out. Much of my music has never been really used until I have been burning them into iTunes, and while lossless is great, the availability is probably more important. Digging through a couple of thousand CDs prevents one from using the music. I will likely re-encode all of the CDs (3 of 12 boxes to go) into 256 AAC when the variable bitrate version is out with quicktime 7.0. This will give me about 120 gigs of compressed music, which will be usable on whatever Pod is around in 3 or 4 years. 128 AAC or 128 LAME is just not good enough.
So, before I begin purchasing music online, it has to be at least 256 AAC quality, reasonable (meaning easy to disable) licensing or non-restrictive DRM, and a better selection of music. Until then, I'll buy CDs, burn them and give away or sell the worthless shell to somebody else.
I do have to say that most people do not purchase as much music as I do, and that a certain amount of it needs to be freely available at lower bitrates. Streams are great, but smart playlists loaded on demand (RSS-ish) would be great. They could simply be automatically disposed of afterwards.
If I purchase an album digitally, I'd still like to download a PDF/Flash/something of the album art and liner notes. It's important content that the artist (or perhaps the label) feels complements the music, and that's why they are sold together. Although I'm puchasing music in a different format than a jewel case, I still want the same experience.