Get ripped off at iTunes store for low quality 128bit

Sad but true fact, people will pay more for convenience than for quality.

Case in point? The droves of drones paying $1 a tune for low quality songs from Apple iTunes store, with DRM at no extra cost.

This digg that points to a good article at the Guardian on the subject of quality of online songs. You owe it to yourself to read it before you spend another dime for online music.

Low quality? What am I and the writer of that Guardian article talking about?

Have access to a halfway decent stereo system? Try this sometime. Burn a song from a CD you own at 128kb/sec and then burn the same song at 192kb/sec or higher. Play both versions on the same sound system.

I bet you will notice the difference. And really, to get near CD quality with a lossy format like MP3, AAC or WMV you have to rip at 320kb/sec and you still aren't all the way there.

If you are really interested in preserving the quality of songs you rip from CD, particularly if you are archiving the music for backup purposes, use a lossless method like FLAC. You can rip from CD to FLAC and back again and you will get exactly the same music that you started with. Yes, sure, you don't get a file 10% of the original raw audio track, but you will lower it to about 70% of original size.

One interesting thing about the article is that the author talks about several alternatives that are of higher quality than iTunes, for less money at that. One good example is Bleep.com. They sell the music as MP3s that are at a good quality variable bit rate and have no DRM to boot!

The article is wrong about Napster though, at least according to Napster's FAQs. Napster's site says that they offer songs at WMA 128bit.

If you like music and like your ears, you owe it to yourself to stay away from sites that offer songs encoded using low quality formats. Oh, and stop downloading ringtones while you are at it.

Sorry music industry, but I'm not paying for low quality music, and when I do buy music, I'm only paying for it once if at all possible.

To the RIAA, you really want to stop piracy? Offer music at decent prices, high quality and don't charge us multiple times for the same song. While you are at it, revamp the industry so that bands get more of the profits to short circuit that as an excuse for people to download music illegally.

Oh, and DRM does NOT work. Never has and never will. It keeps the people who are already honest, honest and is a minor inconvenience to those who are dead set on pirating your wares.