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Topic: Why is there NO un-compressed music download sites ? (Read 47670 times) previous topic - next topic
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Why is there NO un-compressed music download sites ?

Reply #100 –
Quote from: LosMintos on
In general, it should be much more easier to buy (legally) lossless music online without any DRM. There are no contra agruments since bandwith cannot be an issue (think about movies or television via internet).


Since you want thinking, think about the fact that bandwidth *is* always an issue and the appeal to consider delivery of video content is an irrelevance, because that needs must have the bandwidth despite the expense or there's nothing to watch or nothing worth watching.  By contrast, since most people are -- apparently -- satisfied with medium bitrate downloads there's simply no need to squander expensive bandwidth.  And most people must be satisfied: witness the success of the iTunes store; witness illegal swapping of files, not presumably, judging by the music industry's complaints, a negligible quantity of material, and not all of which can be, one assumes, high bitrate files.

And there's no "should" about it.  If and when there's a market for lossless downloads, someone will offer them.  That's all there is to it.  There's already a niche market -- hence the offerings from Linn and Magnatune.  It's obviously worth the additional expense to those small players to get that niche market.  I'd say there's evidence that small players like that are prepared, in other ways, to go to greater expense in order to grab niches: notice that both Linn and Magnatune offer multiple formats.  The bigger players -- e.g., Apple, Amazon -- don't.  They're not interested in, so to speak, saying to their customers, "Do you want MP3, or AAC, or WAV because you're an obsessive, or Ogg Vorbis, because you once dated Richard Stallman, or this, or that ...?". They have one-size-fits-all downloads: it's less fuss and must be cheaper to maintain.  IMO, you won't get lossless from the major players unless and until a really significant number of the buying public finds it's not prepared to settle for anything less.  I can't see that happening right now, although if hard drives keep getting bigger (which they will) and if people get persuaded that they need lossless downloads -- for example, because journalists come to think they do and give that opinion in newspaper columns -- I can see it happening in time.