Fwd: iClarified - Apple News - On-Demand Music Streaming Up 42% Over Last Year, Digital Track Sales Down 13%

[Owen Densmore]

Yet another fascinating cultural/tech change: streaming music services up, digital sales down.

​    ​

http://www.iclarified.com/42136/ondemand-music-streaming-up-42-over-last-year-digital-track-sales-down-13

​I guess this has a lot to do with great phone apps for streaming music, so owning music must seem like a thing of the past for a certain segment.

   -- Owen​

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

[Parks, Raymond]

  Yeah, we'll all have to start our music collection all over again.  First we collected vinyl, then 8-track, then cassette, then CDs, then local files (MP3 for most but .ogg for me) and now cloud.

  The sad part is that the very folks who think that cloud is cool don't have any idea of what they're missing.  Most cloud MP3 files are lossy - I was listening to Amazon Music's 50 Greatest Jazz songs playlist over the weekend and noticed multiple occasions when the volume faded.  That always happened when a musician hit some really high notes whose harmonics get clipped by the MP3 format.

Ray Parks

Consilient Heuristician/IDART Program Manager

V: 505-844-4024  M: 505-238-9359  P: 505-951-6084

On Jul 4, 2014, at 8:38 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:

Yet another fascinating cultural/tech change: streaming music services up, digital sales down.

​    ​

http://www.iclarified.com/42136/ondemand-music-streaming-up-42-over-last-year-digital-track-sales-down-13

​I guess this has a lot to do with great phone apps for streaming music, so owning music must seem like a thing of the past for a certain segment.

   -- Owen​

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

[Owen Densmore]

I'm interested in the Amazon quality problem.  Here's why:

I use iTunes Match which for <$30/yr stores all your music in their cloud.  BUT they also "match" the music if they can, and if so, gives you a higher quality version.  Indeed a standard trick is to delete the mp3, then download it from iTunes Match, which gives you the higher version.  Alas, no choice in format, its AAC.

For Apple users, Amazon even has an option to auto load its download into iTunes, thus automatically converting to high quality AAC.

I buy most of my music from Amazon in digital format, thus get their mp3 and it auto-converts to AAC.

This is all in Apple's interest: they store one copy, the AAC they get from the music industry, and "share" it with all users of that album/song, vastly reducing their storage requirements.

It would be interesting to see, in fact, if the Apple AAC is really of higher quality than the Amazon mp3.

   -- Owen

On Mon, Jul 7, 2014 at 9:40 AM, Parks, Raymond <[hidden email]> wrote:

  Yeah, we'll all have to start our music collection all over again.  First we collected vinyl, then 8-track, then cassette, then CDs, then local files (MP3 for most but .ogg for me) and now cloud.

  The sad part is that the very folks who think that cloud is cool don't have any idea of what they're missing.  Most cloud MP3 files are lossy - I was listening to Amazon Music's 50 Greatest Jazz songs playlist over the weekend and noticed multiple occasions when the volume faded.  That always happened when a musician hit some really high notes whose harmonics get clipped by the MP3 format.

Ray Parks

Consilient Heuristician/IDART Program Manager

V: <a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-844-4024  M: <a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-238-9359  P: <a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-951-6084

On Jul 4, 2014, at 8:38 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:

Yet another fascinating cultural/tech change: streaming music services up, digital sales down.

​    ​

http://www.iclarified.com/42136/ondemand-music-streaming-up-42-over-last-year-digital-track-sales-down-13

​I guess this has a lot to do with great phone apps for streaming music, so owning music must seem like a thing of the past for a certain segment.

   -- Owen​

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

[Parks, Raymond]

Well, I don't know that Amazon is using MP3.  LIke you, I have MP3s available for the physical CDs and they show up in my Amazon Prime Music Library.  In fact, it is more likely that they are using AAC.  Like Apple and other on-line streaming sources, if Amazon is using AAC they probably are using 96Kbit streams which perform about the same as MP3.  Full "transparency" requires 128Kbit streams and even with those there is some loss.

I noticed the fades during sax or clarinet solos with backup instruments - just the sort of environment that would require high frequencies for good reproduction as the sound waves from different instruments combine.

I haven't tried it yet, but the definitive test is bagpipe music - no lossy codec can reproduce bagpipes accurately.

Ray Parks

Consilient Heuristician/IDART Program Manager

V: 505-844-4024  M: 505-238-9359  P: 505-951-6084

NIPR: [hidden email]

SIPR: [hidden email] (send NIPR reminder)

JWICS: [hidden email] (send NIPR reminder)

On Jul 7, 2014, at 10:37 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:

I'm interested in the Amazon quality problem.  Here's why:

I use iTunes Match which for <$30/yr stores all your music in their cloud.  BUT they also "match" the music if they can, and if so, gives you a higher quality version.  Indeed a standard trick is to delete the mp3, then download it from iTunes Match, which gives you the higher version.  Alas, no choice in format, its AAC.

For Apple users, Amazon even has an option to auto load its download into iTunes, thus automatically converting to high quality AAC.

I buy most of my music from Amazon in digital format, thus get their mp3 and it auto-converts to AAC.

This is all in Apple's interest: they store one copy, the AAC they get from the music industry, and "share" it with all users of that album/song, vastly reducing their storage requirements.

It would be interesting to see, in fact, if the Apple AAC is really of higher quality than the Amazon mp3.

   -- Owen

On Mon, Jul 7, 2014 at 9:40 AM, Parks, Raymond <[hidden email]> wrote:

  Yeah, we'll all have to start our music collection all over again.  First we collected vinyl, then 8-track, then cassette, then CDs, then local files (MP3 for most but .ogg for me) and now cloud.

  The sad part is that the very folks who think that cloud is cool don't have any idea of what they're missing.  Most cloud MP3 files are lossy - I was listening to Amazon Music's 50 Greatest Jazz songs playlist over the weekend and noticed multiple occasions when the volume faded.  That always happened when a musician hit some really high notes whose harmonics get clipped by the MP3 format.

Ray Parks

Consilient Heuristician/IDART Program Manager

V: <a href="tel:[phone]" value="&#43;15058444024" target="_blank">505-844-4024  M: <a href="tel:[phone]" value="&#43;15052389359" target="_blank">505-238-9359  P: <a href="tel:[phone]" value="&#43;15059516084" target="_blank">505-951-6084

On Jul 4, 2014, at 8:38 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:

Yet another fascinating cultural/tech change: streaming music services up, digital sales down.

​    ​

http://www.iclarified.com/42136/ondemand-music-streaming-up-42-over-last-year-digital-track-sales-down-13

​I guess this has a lot to do with great phone apps for streaming music, so owning music must seem like a thing of the past for a certain segment.

   -- Owen​

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

[Barry MacKichan]

Apple claims "all the music iTunes matches plays back from iCloud at
256-Kbps AAC DRM-free quality "
—Barry



On 7 Jul 2014, at 11:51, Parks, Raymond wrote:

> It would be interesting to see, in fact, if the Apple AAC is really of
> higher quality than the Amazon mp3.

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

[Arlo Barnes]

I use Grooveshark and the streaming functionality of Bandcamp, but I prefer to download music (from the source or...otherwise) where I can. I find myself balancing my passion for completionism and archivalism with my low bandwidth, but a high quality file will always be favoured over a low quality one -- I hate the idea of information being irreparably (for me) lost.
My music collection varies as hard drives variously fail and are bought, either by themselves or in a computer (I have been meaning to read up on RAIDs and implement one, but have not yet), although probably much of that data can be recovered - but currently I have a library of 133 files, most from one catalog.

In the light of this thread, I decided to see what filetypes and bitrates I have.
Attached is a textfile detailing that.

-Arlo James Barnes
One month later

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

[glen ropella]

On 07/23/2014 09:59 PM, Arlo Barnes wrote:

> In the light of this thread, I decided to see what filetypes and bitrates I have.
> Attached is a textfile detailing that.
> [...]
> 7 'unknown'
> 34 @ 24 kbps
> 1 @ 127 kbps
> 159 @ 128 kbps
> 4 @ 160 kbps
> 558 @ 192 kbps
> 1 @ 199 kbps
> 5 @ 256 kbps
> 1 @ 320 kbps

Interesting exercise!  I keep a master database on a mediaserver, but have various subsets on various devices for offline use.  I ran a script on the tunes on my laptop and got the following.


19 - 112 Kbps, Variable
1 - 134 Kbps, Variable
2 - 160 Kbps, Constant
16 - 160 Kbps, Variable
1 - 165 Kbps, Variable
1 - 170 Kbps, Variable
3 - 176 Kbps, Variable
1 - 181 Kbps, Variable
2 - 182 Kbps, Variable
1 - 183 Kbps, Variable
1 - 186 Kbps, Variable
1 - 188 Kbps, Variable
1 - 189 Kbps, Variable
27 - 192 Kbps, Constant
135 - 192 Kbps, Variable
1 - 193 Kbps, Variable
2 - 194 Kbps, Variable
1 - 197 Kbps, Variable
1 - 201 Kbps, Variable
1 - 204 Kbps, Variable
1 - 228 Kbps, Variable
1 - 229 Kbps, Variable
1 - 232 Kbps, Variable
1 - 234 Kbps, Variable
1 - 235 Kbps, Variable
1 - 240 Kbps, Variable
4 - 241 Kbps, Variable
1 - 242 Kbps, Variable
2 - 243 Kbps, Variable
2 - 244 Kbps, Variable
3 - 245 Kbps, Variable
2 - 246 Kbps, Variable
4 - 247 Kbps, Variable
3 - 248 Kbps, Variable
2 - 249 Kbps, Variable
2 - 250 Kbps, Variable
3 - 251 Kbps, Variable
2 - 252 Kbps, Variable
46 - 256 Kbps, Constant
12 - 256 Kbps, Variable
1 - 270 Kbps, Variable
1 - 272 Kbps, Variable
1 - 273 Kbps, Variable
1 - 276 Kbps, Variable
3 - 288 Kbps, Variable
49 - 320 Kbps, Constant
1 - 649 Kbps, Variable
1 - 659 Kbps, Variable
1 - 671 Kbps, Variable
1 - 680 Kbps, Variable
2 - 683 Kbps, Variable
1 - 687 Kbps, Variable
1 - 690 Kbps, Variable
1 - 707 Kbps, Variable
1 - 743 Kbps, Variable
1 - 754 Kbps, Variable
1 - 760 Kbps, Variable
1 - 793 Kbps, Variable
1 - 798 Kbps, Variable
1 - 799 Kbps, Variable
1 - 802 Kbps, Variable
1 - 812 Kbps, Variable
2 - 840 Kbps, Variable
1 - 856 Kbps, Variable
1 - 869 Kbps, Variable
1 - 874 Kbps, Variable
1 - 887 Kbps, Variable
1 - 891 Kbps, Variable
1 - 953 Kbps, Variable


--
⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella
And even though I'm sitting waiting for Mars; I don't believe there's any future in cause


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com