Slashdot Mirror
The State of Digital Music in 2006
wh0pper writes "Designtechnica has an excellent article on the state of digital music in 2006. Digital music accounted for only six percent of total music sales in 2005. Yet even that is a massive increase over the year before, a whopping 194 percent, which is fiscally valuable as the sales of CDs continue to decrease (although even with digital sales, the record labels experienced another downturn in 2005). While the young, usually the first to adopt and adapt to new technology, have been downloading and swapping music for quite some time, there's been a ripple effect into the older, warier area of the population, one that will only increase. Thank--or blame--Apple and its iPod, or any of the many other makes selling like hotcakes in the stores.
To be fair you can rip using a lossless codec using iTunes, and the DRM it and the iTMS imposes allows you to copy the song to up to 5 different machines. This has been enough for my needs.
This story isn't complete without mentioning MP3 blogs and netlabels. Millions of songs were downloaded last week from the tens of thousands of MP3 blogs and netlabels dishing out free music from mostly non-commercial websites. A quick look at a few of the best ones will reveal that a lot of the music being served up is top quality.
- 3Hive
- Gorilla vs Bear
- Clever Titles are so Last Summer
- Music for Robots
Enjoy some free music.MakePassword.com Mp3 Blog
You need an original CD to rip into Apple Lossless. And if you rip anything from an original CD, there's no DRM whatsoever.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
Both a MPEG and ISO/IEC standard...
g
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Codin
Cassettes sound a LOT better if you only use one side. (Of course albums were almost never sold that way.)
I have to admit, iTunes has temporarily killed my appreciation of music. Making playlists is a tedious task of sorting and searching for songs I like -- which means having to listen to songs I DON'T like in order to weed them out.
I have played all of my favorite albums to death... I don't enjoy any of them anymore.
It's much like a drug or any addiction - once you get all you want from it, then you become numb to it, and you barely enjoy it, and then it's just DULL.
The only way music excites me now is by hearing those songs on the radio, where it's comforting to know that I am not the only loser who loves a certain tune...
I suggest you read Slashdot
It is surprising to note digital music is only six percent of total music sales in 2005. So digital music is just starting and its a good time to come out of the hype see what professionals use.
Everybody now days use mp3. Is that the only music format available? No. There are other music formats available which are far more superior to mp3 but not widely known yet.
Ogg is similar to mp3, but its a completely open and free format. That is, if you want to create audio (eg. Music, podcasts, etc) create in Ogg. You are not breaking the law. The mp3 is a patented technology.
If you are an audiophile, its shame to play mp3 in your HiFi. Consider FLAC. The FLAC is the ultimate audio format, its loose less, high definition and again completely open and free format. There are FLAC players in the market like iAUDIO X5.
I have evaluated the Tomahawk Desktop, its Linux based multimedia OS, you can use it to convert your CDs to either Ogg or FLAC. Its amazing, its just drag and drop! To transfer to your Ogg or FLAC player, its again just drag and drop!
Another advantage of Linux is you can play without getting hit by viruses and worms.