A new "Cocktail" – tempting us to full album purchases
 

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Now this is interesting: Apple is working with the music industry to make full-album purchases more tempting. That’s where the margins are – and not in individual track purchases, which is the trend we’re now seeing.

The project is nicknamed Cocktail. Excerpt:

What would tempt you to purchase entire albums online?

-- ArcticStones

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Being someone who has never bought a single track let alone an album from iTunes store, this is yet another irrelevant "feature".

The main issue for me is crappy 128bit MP3/MP4 format with DRM which is pants!
I know this is changing but Apple are draggin their heals ....yawn !

Quality wise i feel that the encoding is poor and for me if an album was about 1/2 the price than a CD i would probably buy something until then i will use other sites that have LAME encoded MP3 at 320kb as a minimum and the option for WAV/AIFF/LOSSLESS.

I couldn't agree more. I have spent the sum total of £2.50 buying stuff from the iTunes store, and £1.50 of that was on a music video (which, btw, was 1/9 the resolution of my HD TV so no more were bought).

Anyway, until Apple - or anyone else for that matter - provide lossless tracks at a price which is less that a high-street bought CD (i.e. £10 for a new album) then I will consider buying my music online. Hell, just offer the 650MB ISO of the CD.

Once the lossless bit arrives, and only then, this new idea will appeal to me. I do like the idea of interactive sleeve notes, etc.,** but that's just fluff until the audio is lossless. Oh, and if 5.1 audio was available, then I'd definitely throw my moolah Apple's way.

** would be perfect on a touch-enabled computer.... Apple: that's computer, not MID.

But here's a better idea for the current situation in my view. Extend the "Genius" bit of iTunes to occasionally play full tracks which you don't yet own that iTunes thinks you will like. That is, your own music is occasionally interspersed with tracks you don't own, but may want to. When such a track is playing, you then have the option to buy it straight away, or save a link to buy it later.

buying the entire album @ a reduced rate say 5.99$$
I know good luck with that...lol

Re: The pricing of online album sales
 

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Simple question:
What is the record company’s wholesale price of a CD?
Anyone know whether it’s 6 bucks or more?

Surely, since physical production, transport and logistics are made obsolete, it makes good business sense for record companies to sell albums online at wholesale prices to the end consumer? Come to think of it, also production and packaging costs should be subtracted.
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Actually, it's already changed. The only stuff with DRM is video now and the AAC tracks are all at 256 kbps.

I have to ask though, are you sure that even 128 kbps is inferior quality? Have you done the blind listening tests to confirm this? The consensus (HydrogenAudio) seems to be that 192 kbps MP3 is transparent and 128 kbps AAC is as well. Or is it an archival issue? Where you don't see the point of buying it if it's not lossless? (I, usually, fall into that group anyway.)

I agree with others, 320kb would be the starting criteria for buying Any music online. I welcome the addition of lyrics and video but I can get most of that now for free.

So is this going going to make free lyrics and apps disappear like the 'pearlyrics' app did? http://www.pearworks.com/pages/pearLyrics.html

I don't buy into it. The real collectors and audiophiles will probably go buy the vinyl record.

I like collecting albums but all of that stuff mentioned you can download for free anyway. Plenty of sites have all the album art, lyrics, and scanned versions of the inserts.

What they need to do, is differentiate the product from a tangible album. Why would I want to buy direct and online? Simply because it is cheaper.

Simple answer "they" all wan't to make as much money as possible and the Music industry feels so hard done by that they will probably never reduce their prices.....even if they could shift more units by competitive pricing.

It still mystifies me the pricing of a crappy MP3, i know their are costs involved as far as "distribution/delivery" but really paying the same for an crap MP3 rather than a CD/Record is madness !

I would prefer overall to see more independent artists going direct to consumers which is happening and they charge a reasonable rate generally. This is a good model for the future....i am not saying that record companies should die away(they have their uses) more that they rethink their digital strategy and adapt to changing markets.....overall their pricing and inability to change their business model has IMHO contributed indirectly to the increased the level of piracy of music.

At the end of the day if they own the copyright on material it has probably paid for itself 1000's of times over already.....

so why not have a pricing structure in place that fits better with the digital model.
ie. £5 for album MP3, £7.50 for Digital Lossless Format and £10 for physical format.
This is just an example.

Yes i do notice the difference. I suppose i have DJ'd & worked in the industry. Compression of any kind does make a difference. Many people master tracks at 24bit/96k and using 24Track tape now but this in turn gets bounced down to 16bit/44k or MP3 etc, this in turn IS reducing the quality and dynamic range of the original master. In our amazing digital age i expect more !

I liken it to recording a radio show onto a TDK tape ;-) obviously MP3 it is better but hey they only delivered 128k mp3 for this long to save on bandwidth, storage, etc. these are not issues anymore for most end consumers.

I would like high quality sounding music and some new standards for digital music, the record is still an amazing format soundwise etc, and i understand that things should move on but not take steps back for convenience to the suppliers.

I totally agree. If there were more reasonable cd, album prices I would buy more tangible music.

Also, how in the world do you preview an album when it is in CD or Vinyl? It is so much easier to do this with digital. You can sort of know whether the music meets your beat so to speak.

IMO, A loss less audio encoded album, of say on average 12 songs should cost around 6 USD. If the CDs cost around 10 to 12 the digital copy should be half.

I can get all the album art and lyrics and inserts for free online and print them out if I so wanted to.

They either need to add exclusive content that is for such digital purchases to make people want it, they need to remove all DRM, and make it cheaper.

Otherwise, I am more tempted to download it illegally then if I like it, go find the vinyl record on ebay or a record store and buy it.

I have about 200 vinyl records, and my collection keeps growing.

This is where the whole cd, vinyl delivery system breaks down and why digital is going to win. Let us say you can get production studio music via SD chip. Would you buy it? I think the people listening to vinyl and tape would go for it. Hmmm, is that why apple is transitioning from cd/dvd to SD.

I think there will be a store for audiofiles that sells lossless audio on SD or 'collections'. Like a whole bunch of rock then buy this 32 GB SD with all rock songs on it.

Then there is always the direct download. Which I will almost certainly prefer.

I don't know man, there is just something about owning a vinyl record that is lost with any new gadget. I think that the younger generations will buy into it, but I would still rather have the colored vinyl, the sleeve, the insert, and toss it on my turn table.

I don't consider myself an audiophile but I do recognize the difference in the sound of digital versus analog, and how I still think that digital cannot reproduce the exact sound a vinyl record makes.

There are bunches of programs/hardware available that simulates the 'vinyl' sound. Neil Young even patented one.

I agree though the 'Album' experience is lost today. I think it is a good sacrifice though as in exchange you get to listen to a ton of music.

Really for me the sheer volume of listening pleasure makes the downgrade in quality worth wile. It would be nice if I had a choice to buy production quality in a digital fashion, but as of today that is not possible.

Back to the volume, It makes senses to me that today I can consume 100 bands a year which is about 1200 songs without spending $2000 (1985 CDs in my town where $20). When i was in a college town I could get a CD for $12. This brought it more in line with with what I could afford but still you had the risk of buying a crappy CD. Then online music came in and allowed me to pick any song, preview it and then buy only certain tracks.

This is a huge appeal no matter the song quality loss. I love listening to a ton of new music. It is fun and way better than breaking out that old vinyl for the 1000 time. My opinion only.

Allow me to introduce you to Nyquist and Shannon ;-)
Digital can PERFECTLY reproduce an analog signal if you sample at twice the frequency. CDs sample at 44.1kHz. As human hearing tops out around 20kHz, you're covered with a reasonable margin for the edge cases. Vinyl might add noise that you're accustomed to and CDs are susceptible to the Loudness War, but the physical design of the media is (hah) sound.

That said, the only album material that I have any sort of attachment to are those featuring more deluxe packaging (Pulse and The Wall Live have book like packaging). And even there my hold is somewhat tenuous. Since originally purchasing, I don't think I've ever sat down and flipped through the books. I'd probably be happy with a nice, high resolution PDF.
The interactive media I've thus far seen on CDs has been pretty lame. It's usually a music video or two with an interface to play the album while flipping through band photos. If Apple can pull off a nicer experience that's nice, but they'll still be lacking in the quality department. Even if I can't hear the difference between 256 AAC and lossless I still want the bigger files in order to perform format conversion without a quality loss.

I am talking about the pops, the whistles and other "textures" of that media produces. There is just something about it that sounds different, that digital can't reproduce.

I used to work with an audiophile and he was rather snobbish (I mean that in an elitist way) about how he ripped his music digitally. He used the highest quality lossless formats that would not let him lose a single quality of the original sound and he would make sure that it has so many tracks of audio and all this other crazy stuff.

My counter point to his method was that when I go rip an old punk rock album from the 70s to digital, it doesn't matter what quality or method I used after some point, since the music was recorded within the limits of the instruments and studio being used. When I compare the likes of the Dead Boys to say Tchaikovsky's Marche Slav, there is no way I need to have the same pitch and tone range with the Dead Boys or Iggy Pop and the Stooges as they did not even enter that spectrum with their music.

There is a viable market for music being ripped and still sounding great at a low bit rate or high compression rate. Then again what do we consider high and low today? What did we consider high and low rates 10 years ago, and what will be the standard 10 years from today?

Analog sound, like a record relies on moving parts to create sound, and I don't think the technology of today can emulate that exact sound of the mechanical machines spinning circular vinyl disks and a needle picking up vibrations and create sound.

While, I am all for technology making our lives easier and better and I work in IT so I am all around technology constantly, I do believe we are on a cusp of technology at the moment. In the past 150 years we have advanced so far so fast compared to the rest of our existence. Our technology still breaks all the time is no where near perfect however we are already starting to show signs of some great technology to come. Many many years in the future when they study us in their history classes we will be known as a time that was transitioning from technology being a burden in some ways still to actually becoming a way of advancing us exponentially.

Look at what the Internet did for information and media? Imagine what other technologies that are due out in the next 50+ years that will change our lives even more?

I am starting to digress a bit, but my main point is that Apple can't market a digital product to someone like me (my demographic - not sure how big it is) in a way where I am going to really want to drop money into it. If they let me pay $6 for an entire album and removed the DRM I would probably spend all my money on Music at the ITMS. However, all the money I spend on the ITMS is for apps and games for my ipod and iphone. I don't ever look at their shows or music because I would much rather buy the vinyl record or go see the band live and buy the CD from them first hand for the same price but get the CD. Tour merch for albums is generally not that expensive, depending on the genre and label of the artist.

I feel like the "CD generation" is the only one which seems to care about high-quality - some would say "sterile" - audio. Older generations that grew up on scratchy vinyl and hissy tape like the "natural" analog sound, and kids used to tinny MP3s like the "free" aspect of their music.

(for what it's worth, I was 14 when I got my first CD player, and place myself firmly in the audiophile camp)

I agree to the extent that digital music needs to offer something far beyond what it currently does to appeal to the analog crowd, and without something tangeable, that may never happen. And as mentioned in my earlier post, even I'm not yet won over by the "digital download revolution."

Now, in my opinion, the "Cocktail" idea will fall flat on its face unless the following happens. The format of an "album file" must be non-proprietary and understood by all media players. That is, if you open the "album file" with your favourite player, it will bring up the interactive stuff and also let you play the tracks in sequence or in any order you wish. Furthermore, apps like iTunes, and devices like iPods, must be able to play individual songs from any "albums" that are in their libraries.

Also, I don't like the idea that the "albums" can be played by themselves (i.e. free of iTunes/WinAMP/etc). That suggests there will be an embedded music player. Apart from the complete pointlessness of this, what happens if the player has a serious security bug? You play the album and your machine can get pwned? Plus, I can't see people going online to apply security updates to their music collection...

When they're offered in 24bit/44.1Kh PCM or WAV format.
Or better.

Until that time, I'll continue to buy CD's or DVD-A's and rip them to the computer to FLAC format.

Absolutely. The inherent problem with our current crop of digital formats is the sampling rate. At 44.1Khz we lose more audio detail than we think we do.
It was chosen as an acceptable compromise between sound quality and size.
For instance, a frequency wave at 22Khz being sampled at 44.1, means that two samples were taken per cycle (wave peak to wave peak). That's at the extreme end of the audible spectrum of course, but the concept still applies to lower frequencies. We're basically getting a stair-step sampling of the frequency wave. Increasing the sampling rate would make the steps smaller, and the reproduction more accurate.

It's directly comparable to a digital picture of an object vs actually looking at that object with your own eyes. The higher the bitrate, the more detail you get, but even the best out now can't truly show as much detail as your own eyes. (excluding macro or telescopic shots of course)

I would like to see Audio formats move on now.....we have been stuck for so long i feel.

24bit/96k PCM WAV or AIF with a decent ID tags built in.

I just chime in to say for me "highest quality" = "most like sitting at a live performance."

Live performances are not perfect. That's why we call it 'art.' ;)

Why don't music players support free open source lossless audio formats like FLAC?

I'm reminded of the old joke:

Music buffs use expensive hi-fi equipment to listen to their music;
Audiophiles use their music to listen to expensive hi-fi equipment.

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I don’t have any problem importing FLAC files into iTunes. Got ahold of a convenient little program called Set OggS -- but it would be nice if Apple made this workaround unnecessary.
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Story with one cello...
 

That reminds me of a story by one of my old teachers. Some visiting would-be connoisseurs were aghast that he was playing an old mono LP of Pablo Casals performing Bach fugues -- whereupon Lloyd blurted out: "You insist on stereo? For Chrissake, it’s one guy playing the cello!"
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Or even this new article, where a teacher asserts that every year, each class has a higher group of people who prefer to hear .mp3 compression than raw audio - because that's what they're used to!
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/03/the...-of-music.html

How you going to play FLAC or OGG on your iPod, Zune, or whatever? Playing it on a media player is not the problem, it is the fact that mobile devices do not support those formats.

Thus, limiting the consumer on what they have to pay for. I am sure you can jail break your iPod Touch and get full support for FLAC, but I haven't google searched it yet.

I bet most likely is because it is published under the GPL and adding DRM is probably very hard or tricky to do since all the source is out there. So, what is stopping hackers from making high quality music for free?

I am simply playing devil's advocate here.

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Well, my primary mobile device is a PowerBook. ;)
I’ll have to check whether an iPod (I’m still using my 1G) will play the file imported into iTunes.
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They don't, from the horse's mouth:

source: http://www.apple.com/ipodclassic/specs.html

iPod touch:
Source: http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/specs.html

They want consumers to buy their products but they don't let consumers control the content. I would be all about just buying a license to an album really for one set price, and that license allows me to own the album for ever and allows me to put it in whatever format I want. Kind of like Burger King and the Whopper, you get it your way.

I generally buy albums over single tracks. While I would like the extra content the main reasons I am tempted to use iTunes over buying a CD are price and convenience. I just wish they had a search by album price option in advanced search. There is the Special Price link from the main window but it doesn't show all the albums on sale.

I'm not that pedantic when it comes to quality. I mainly listen on my iMac's internal speakers while I'm working or burn MP3 to CD to listen in the car. I doubt I could discern any difference in quality in either setting and for the car I like having 10 albums on a single disk so I don't have to change disks while I'm driving.

What a good idea. I like it. Like genius radio or something.