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Topic: Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29 (Read 21534 times) previous topic - next topic
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Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

A company called MusicGiants are launching an internet music shop for download of music in lossless format.

MusicGiants

Prices are $50 annual fee plus $1.29 a song.

The technology is based on Microsoft using WMA Lossless format with DRM.

Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

Reply #1 –
interesting bits from from the TOS:

Quote
Because the record companies that have authorized MusicGiants to sell Products have different rules concerning how their recordings may be used, your ability to transfer or make copies ("burns") of Products may vary, depending on the rights that the respective companies controlling rights in the Products have granted to MusicGiants. Presently, Products may be transferred only to portable digital devices supporting the Windows Media Audio Lossless format (please check to confirm "Lossless" support, even if the devices says its support WMA).


Quote
Usage Rules.
Your use of the Products is conditioned upon your prior acceptance of the terms of this Agreement.

...

You shall be authorized to burn a playlist up to seven times.

You shall be able to store Products from up to five different Accounts on certain registered portable devices, at a time.

Any burning or exporting capabilities are solely an accommodation to you and shall not constitute a grant or waiver (or other limitation or implication) of any rights of the copyright owners in any content, sound recording, underlying musical composition, or artwork embodied in any Product.

...

You shall be authorized to use the Products on five MusicGiants-registered devices at any time.


Quote
d. You acknowledge that some aspects of the Service, Products, and administering of the Usage Rules entails the ongoing involvement of MusicGiants. Accordingly, in the event that MusicGiants changes any part of the Service or discontinues the Service, which MusicGiants may do at its election, at any time, with or without notice to you, you acknowledge that you may no longer be able to use Products to the same extent as prior to such change or discontinuation, and that MusicGiants shall have no liability to you in such case.

Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

Reply #2 –
and of course

Quote
10. Territory. The Service is currently available only in the United States, and is not available in any other location. You agree not to use or attempt to use the Service from outside of the available territory, and that MUSICGIANTS may use technologies to verify your compliance.
Friends don't let friends use lossy codecs.  (char0n)

Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

Reply #3 –
what are the 5 major lables?
--alt-presets are there for a reason! These other switches DO NOT work better than it, trust me on this.
LAME + Joint Stereo doesn't destroy 'Stereo'

Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

Reply #4 –
This is very interesting news. I always assumed a lossless online store would not happen because you could just remove any DRM on the files by burning them to a CD and re-ripping it. There is no way to ever stop this right?

$15.29 per album though is extremely steep. You can buy most physical CD's for less than that.

Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

Reply #5 –
Quote
A company called MusicGiants are launching an internet music shop for download of music in lossless format.

MusicGiants

Prices are $50 annual fee plus $1.29 a song.

The technology is based on Microsoft using WMA Lossless format with DRM.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=303222"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


What's DRM?  Digital something I guess.  I don't use WMP unless it's online and I absolutely have to.  I suppose there is an input plugin for my alternative player, Quintessential Media Player (QMP) (http://quinnware.com/) (I checked it , but I also like an alternative lossless encoder, FLAC.  Lossless encoders should get something around 40-50% smaller files than an uncompressed .WAV file.

I have my sound card going out to my stereo, and it even does 5.1 surround, although there's some hum and I have to ground my stereo components properly, plus my TV and cable box.

I hope other on-line song download providers follow suit and start providing losslessly-encoded files.  Hardware is getting better.  I read that Creative (Sound Blaster, Audigy, etc.) has developed the next generation of their sound cards' chip, which sounds way better than the current chip.  You can try and look for the recent article here or on extremetech - sorry.

I also found out that, at least, with Audigy2+ cards, there is a sound benefit to encoding at 48 KHz instead of 44.1.  Not sure how audible it is.
<<optimali>>

Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

Reply #6 –
Quote
d. You acknowledge that some aspects of the Service, Products, and administering of the Usage Rules entails the ongoing involvement of MusicGiants. Accordingly, in the event that MusicGiants changes any part of the Service or discontinues the Service, which MusicGiants may do at its election, at any time, with or without notice to you, you acknowledge that you may no longer be able to use Products to the same extent as prior to such change or discontinuation, and that MusicGiants shall have no liability to you in such case.

[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=303237"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Cool. "You pay and in turn own nothing for sure". Sounds like a great deal.
- Lyx
I am arrogant and I can afford it because I deliver.

Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

Reply #7 –
Quote
what are the 5 major lables?
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=303278"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


It's now just 4 major labels:

Sony-BMG
EMI
Warner
Universal

Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

Reply #8 –
Quote
Cool. "You pay and in turn own nothing for sure". Sounds like a great deal.
- Lyx
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=303317"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


Ooh.. it really is "Pays for Sure" not "Plays for Sure"

I like the part where you can play on a portable, but only one that supports WMA lossless... is there such a thing?

Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

Reply #9 –
Quote
I like the part where you can play on a portable, but only one that supports WMA lossless... is there such a thing?[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=303323"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


non

Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

Reply #10 –
I suppose the fact that its lossless means that transcoding into a non-shitty non-DRM format such as ape or flac is as painless as possible

If I payed for it, I wouldn't honestly care about the ToS...and I'm outside their (admirably patriotic) territory, so I'll hop downstairs and enjoy tea and crumpets while listening to the rather delightful FLAC I got from Allofmp3
hi

Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

Reply #11 –
Quote
A company called MusicGiants are launching an internet music shop for download of music in lossless format.

MusicGiants

Prices are $50 annual fee plus $1.29 a song.

The technology is based on Microsoft using WMA Lossless format with DRM.


I don't get it. First, they insist that I can only listen to the music if I pay Bill Gates for Windows ("A Computer running Microsoft Windows XP").

Most insulting of all, they want me to give them $50/year for the priviledge of paying more for the music than I do by buying the CD's from Amazon (and don't forget "FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25'). They should be paying ME for saving them the manufacturing, packaging, and shipping costs. Of course, there will be folks willing to do it.

Not to mention DRM. Oops, I just did.  The conspiracy theorist in me sez someone is trying very hard to migrate all music to a subscription model to guarantee revenue streams for the labels. Yea, I know its' o/t.

Mark

Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

Reply #12 –
I like the second half of this line from the TOS:
Quote
Further, there is no assurance that Products will be compatible with any particular compact disc burner, or that any compact discs that are burned will function properly.


Looking at the initial subscription fee, I get the feeling that they don't have much confidence in their chances of staying in business long enough to make money off of just the downloads and want to grab as much money as they possibly can.  I just can't think of any reason why anyone would want to sign up.

Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

Reply #13 –
So in short, its terrible - Amazon and Allofmp3 FTW (Hey, its legal in Russia!)
hi

Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

Reply #14 –
Quote
"Foobar is like the Firefox of audio-players..."

This seems a tad presumptuous. Firefox is cross-platform, running on windows, mac os x, solaris, bsd, beos, os/2, aix, irix, and linux with support for a plethora of languages, from Afrikaans to Welsh.

From their web page:
Quote
Foobar2000 is an advanced audio player for the Windows platform.

I'm not intentionally trying to railroad the thread about this lame (no pun intended) music service nor do I wish to cast aspersions on the seemingly nice product. I just keep seeing your signature and thinking, "Hey, that foobar sounds nice and has a kewl name. Too bad it won't run natively on Linux or Macs."

Mark

Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

Reply #15 –
Quote
Quote
"Foobar is like the Firefox of audio-players..."

This seems a tad presumptuous. Firefox is cross-platform, running on windows, mac os x, solaris, bsd, beos, os/2, aix, irix, and linux with support for a plethora of languages, from Afrikaans to Welsh.

From their web page:
Quote
Foobar2000 is an advanced audio player for the Windows platform.

I'm not intentionally trying to railroad the thread about this lame (no pun intended) music service nor do I wish to cast aspersions on the seemingly nice product. I just keep seeing your signature and thinking, "Hey, that foobar sounds nice and has a kewl name. Too bad it won't run natively on Linux or Macs."

Mark
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=303474"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


It is a loose analogy, but it's all relative.  Shame it isn't open source really  I'll find another quote...something I've written.

Lets see...."Amazing configurability comes at a cost - you actually have to configure it!"

That will do nicely.
hi

Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

Reply #16 –
Quote
Lets see...."Amazing configurability comes at a cost - you actually have to configure it!"

That will do nicely.

Brings back memories of getting gnu tools to run on Solaris and NeXT (BSD) a few years ago...

But it was worth it!

And just to stay on topic: EAC! This LAME music "service" sure got RIPPED with a lot of FLAC.

Mark

Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

Reply #17 –
Foobar2000 is actually way more similiar to K-Meleon - not just because of windows-only.
I am arrogant and I can afford it because I deliver.

Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

Reply #18 –
Quote
So in short, its terrible - Amazon and Allofmp3 FTW (Hey, its legal in Russia!)
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=303447"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


I *am* in Russia.

(you should have watched the movie Blow-Up to understand the joke.) 

Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

Reply #19 –
why are they charging $50 annual fee? this is a good example of poor business model. i would rather buy stuff from beatport, where they give you the option of downloading 320 kbits mp3s or burn the WAV to CD, no DRMs or any of that nonsense.
Be healthy, be kind, grow rich and prosper

Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

Reply #20 –
You can always burn it to a CD (or a "virtual CD") and then re-rip it.
I don't understand the bashing here, if you compare it to similar services, paying 30c extra for lossless instead of 128kbit AAC is a fair deal IMHO.

Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

Reply #21 –
Is it possible to burn a DRM-ed file to a CD?

Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

Reply #22 –
It's definitely a shame they had to choose WMA Loseless over Flac or Wave files...

And that does seem far too steep really, I could buy the CD and rip to whatever codec I wanted for less than that...

I wouldn't have to compete with the DRM Protection either ...

At least it sounds like a step in the right direction, with faster Internet connection speeds, and larger HDDs becoming available, it is inevitable that audio will start to become almost exclusively lossless.

Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

Reply #23 –
You'd prefer wave over wma? 

Music store with lossless downloads for $1.29

Reply #24 –
Quote
You'd prefer wave over wma?  [a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=318403"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


I guess he meant he preferred anything without DRM. Unfortunately, that's unrealistical if you want to run a legal store with tracks owned by the big recording studios.

And WAV is better than WMA lossless indeed, as you can easily compress it to any format in any platform. The downside, of couse, is bigger file size.