linky (http://www.trustedreviews.com/mp3/news/2009/03/30/Spotify-s-7-Digital-Deal-Adds-MP3---FLAC-Downloads/p1)
Spotify has made a deal with 7Digital to offer mp3 and FLAC downloads. This will also be available through Songbird, and is to start soon.
About time FLAC went more mainstream. I might actually spend some money, now
cool, i hope their "lossless" files arent sourced from mp3s and other lossly sources like countless alac itunes downloads.
ALAC iTunes downloads? Huh?
I was just about to say the same thing. Apple doesn't offer Apple Lossless (ALAC) files on the iTunes Store. All of their files are either 256kbps or 128kbps AAC. The majority of them are now 256kbps AAC and the entire store will switch to this setting here pretty soon.
I wonder which artists/labels will let their content be added in FLAC.
Spotify has made a deal with 7Digital to offer mp3 and FLAC downloads. This will also be available through Songbird, and is to start soon.
About time FLAC went more mainstream. I might actually spend some money, now
Excuse me for a being an arrogant American, but while this sounds like good news and I applaud the effort to finally offer lossless downloads from mainstream artists you are referring to two European companies here!. 7Digital is good now that they have a beta website for American buyers, but they still half ass it and only offer lossless downloads on some albums when they feel like it and Spotify for reasons unknown to me will not offer there service to Americans (Which is a shame, because they would make a tremendous amount of money in this market). It's there loss I guess!
Well... Usually, we're on the other end. If we for once can get a good service before you, you can't accept that?
It's probably has to do with copyright / distribution laws... That's what we're usually told when we can't access content for Americans.
I won't even begin to explain how copyright laws differ in various European countries, but I would think paying royalties to the industry would be exactly the same. It would be nice if somebody were to explain it to me or could at least find some academic material on how that works in the U.S say versus Britain. I take it you are referring to the last.fm lockout of countries that aren't the U.S and Canada forcing users to pay for material now?. I think that's a sham too. That's the only other example I can think of. One of the reasons that I heard Spotify wasn't expanding to the U.S or Canada yet was, because they wanted to see how well the service would do first before they were willing to commit to allowing other countries to use it. It's not freely available in some European countries now either. In one sense I applaud them for going the open media route. In another sense I really think they should expand to the U.S market.
Moderation: Removed unnecessary quote of previous post.