Do you guys buy MP3s?

BiscLimpkit · Post by **BiscLimpkit** » 04 Apr 2006, 21:51

As in legal MP3s? How much is it per track and do you get to keep them? What are the best sites? I don't understand iTunes?

romerojpg · Post by **romerojpg** » 04 Apr 2006, 21:54

Buy them

its pathetic that they sell them and people pay more than an album price, I know crazy dicks that pay 8 pound an album to download it in crap quality MP3 format! thats just sad as hell when I can get the REAL CD for 5.99

downloading is a joke, dont do it unless its the illegal sort.

A lot of places where you download them are crap anyway, if you PC goes and crashes you may not be able to get your licence for all songs back, hence you wont have that music anymore

all fun stuff really.

Yi-Long · Post by **Yi-Long** » 04 Apr 2006, 21:57

I wont buy MP3 either. I'm not all that into music anyway, but of I want something I'll download it (music, that is) for free.
I'd probably buy SOME CD's in the store, were it not for some of them having OTT copy-protection, which means I cant play them on my PC or (if I had one) in my car.
So I'll just download the music I want.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 05 Apr 2006, 11:11

ITunes is just a website like MSN Music, Yahoo music etc . . . It has it's own software but then so do those others too (MSN uses WMP). You DON'T need an Ipod to use it.

I guess you're interested so I believe it's about 50p per song. My brother uses MSN Music and likes it. I bet they're all about the same. He didn't realise but his mp3 player can't play drm encoded wma files so he has to rip out the drm before he can transfer them to his mp3 player.

Buying singles actually makes sense when you consider a CD Single is and always has been an extreme rip off. 50p to download vs at least £1.99 for a CD. Buying albums on the other hand you can buy CDs for £6-7 so no thanks.

As for me I download the odd track (via P2P) but we're talking extreme an rarity as I like albums. It's a known fact singles are mostly for the teenage market, people grow out of them and get albums.

Albums are decent value for money now so I just buy the CD.

I DO NOT legally download music because:

1. DRM - I fucking hate copy protected music. I understand why they've done it but it makes life so much harder to transfer music I'VE PAID FOR. Many MP3 Players can't play DRM encoded WMA files. It's a right pain to remove the protection. The protection is actually very well made.

2. The quality is usually low. WMA was designed from day one for low bitrate music. Not what you want for High Fidelity sound. I use WMA but only on my 6Gb MP3 Player

3. It's just easier and quicker to extract from CD. I can choose my own bitrate and keep the quality.

I don't download albums (via P2P) because CDs are reasonably priced I know the quality is going to be consistent and it's frankly much quicker. The amount of time I've wasted downloading the wrong song because it's been named incorrectly or downloading a song to find it breaks up part way through or it will have some other form of problem.

romerojpg wrote:A lot of places where you download them are crap anyway, if you PC goes and crashes you may not be able to get your licence for all songs back, hence you wont have that music anymore all fun stuff really.

If I were to do this I'd immediately remove the protection to get around this very real problem.

You CAN'T actually remove DRM but there is some excellent software you can download that plays the DRM WMA file through WMP but at the same it re-encodes it into MP3/Non-DRM WMA etc . . . using your sound card without adding DRM.

It works really well. I can't remember what the software is called until I get home. I paid for the music I should be allowed to do what I want with it.

This isn't illegal afaik as it only works on "the" pc you download/paid for the music on.

Yi-Long wrote:I'd probably buy SOME CD's in the store, were it not for some of them having OTT copy-protection, which means I cant play them on my PC or (if I had one) in my car.

This copy protection is very basic. It has to be as copy protected CDs were an afterthought.

I've always managed so far to extract these to my hard disk. Some have been harder than others but they've not stopped me yet.

Technically these aren't CDs as they contained data and therefore don't meet the Redbook standard. No one has but you could sue the distributor.

Yi-Long · Post by **Yi-Long** » 05 Apr 2006, 12:02

bradavon wrote:
Yi-Long wrote:I'd probably buy SOME CD's in the store, were it not for some of them having OTT copy-protection, which means I cant play them on my PC or (if I had one) in my car.
This copy protection is very basic. It has to be as copy protected CDs were an afterthought.

I've always managed so far to extract these to my hard disk. Some have been harder than others but they've not stopped me yet.

Technically these aren't CDs as they contained data and therefore don't meet the Redbook standard. No one has but you could sue the distributor.

Perhaps it is easy to get rid of the protection, but for me, it's just too bothersome to even waste time on, so I'll just download an album I'm interested in from Bittorrent.

Only when I was using Kazaa I occasionally had files that werent the ones I wanted, because of wrong names and such, but now that I use bittorrent I hardly ever, if ever (cant really remember any occasion that it happened) get the wrong files.

Also, many times the filename says how high the quality will be...

So for me, I'm sticking with just downloading it all for free...

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 05 Apr 2006, 13:15

It's actually much easier than you think. Generally:

1. The protection doesn't actually work and I've ripped it fine
2. I copy the CD to a CD-RW which takes minutes and then rip that.

I've only had 1-2 which have been more troublesome. Much better quality output as I pick my own bitrate and quicker than downloading.

You're probably right about BT, it's just for me I no longer trust P2P music.

Besides many CDs don't have protection at all.

Anyway each to his own.

romerojpg · Post by **romerojpg** » 05 Apr 2006, 17:03

The fact you dont own anything and the fact you cannot sell it on is bollocks really.

Why anyone wants to pay for some bits of data, when they can gave a real cd and packaging is way beyond me.

You try taking your downloaded shit down the market to sell, or stick them on Ebay, good luck.

Downloading is making the record companies billions! they do nothing at all in any way, yet get all the cash! at least with cds they had to pay to make them and I feel I own something then, something I can put my hands on and use.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 05 Apr 2006, 17:28

For singles like I said earlier it's much more worthwhile (considering we're talking about 1 song) than paying £3.99 for the CD Single. A CD single is really annoying as it's over barely after you've put it on.

You may say but what idiot would pay £3.99 for 1 song (oh plus those god awful remixes) but many do. I did when I was a teenager.

romerojpg wrote:You try taking your downloaded shit down the market to sell, or stick them on Ebay, good luck.

I bet if you did do that and put it on CD it would sell

but that wasn't your point though I know.

romerojpg · Post by **romerojpg** » 05 Apr 2006, 17:32

I cannot say many singles cost £3.99, if you shop about esspecially in the 1st week anything can be got for £1.99 and I have never seen a single with 1 song on before, all the ones I get have loads on and songs ussually not on the album so they are worth 1.99 thats for sure.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 05 Apr 2006, 17:36

Maybe not anymore I don't know but 5 years + ago when I was interested they were for sure.

I didn't mean literally 1 song my bad I meant 1 decent song and 1-2 remixes which I despise but yes those with rare tracks for £1.99 are decent. In that case I'd opt to download the rare track though.

gasteropod · Post by **gasteropod** » 05 Apr 2006, 18:52

I don't like the way that the bitrate varies with all these legal mp3s. I once had a free trial of the legal Napster, and the sound quality on some albums was proper shit, I couldn't believe they'd be able to charge people to download mp3s of that quality. In order to get an mp3 sounding indistinguishable from the CD, a VBR hovering around the 220kbps mark is required. (Creative MediaSource 100% quality VBR MP3 encoder does this).

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 05 Apr 2006, 19:50

Well exactly. I've seen that too some are as low as 64Kbps.

I'm actually happy with 128Kbps MP3 but if I'm paying I want higher.