We are thinking on starting a new CD service where our listeners could download a whole CD album for 1 set price. Our hope is to offer hard to find music by independent artists at a reasonable cost.
There would be a secured download area and every CD downloaded will include the album cover art, all inserts and band promotion material in PDF format.
We are just starting to look into this new service, but would appreciate any feedback. Also, any artists out there what do you expect to receive for payment of a downloadable CD?
We are also committed to having atleast $1 of each sale go towards a yearly scholarship fund for aspiring young artists. Applications will be made in the form of an essay which will be voted on by the community once a year.
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When I first saw this on the community homepage, I thought 'well, it probably won't include liner notes, cover art, etc... so was thinking not more than $10. But if it includes all the liner notes and all, then the main thing I sacrifice in getting something to put in my music rack is convenience. So I'd be willing to pay the higher price for that. Although my prefrence would still be to buy a physical CD. Considering the better quality print, the convenience, and the additional audio quality from not having ever been compressed (presumably to mp3) for download.
So I still doubt I'd pay full price to download it unless it's not avaliable other ways. But since I'd not be losing any content, at least most of that price would not be unreasonable.
I think we would want to have the audio quality at 256k. The format we are going to look further into, but it may not necessarily be MP3 - perhaps MP4 - although not protected.
please not mp3 you loose so much of the highs and lows.... and my old ears cant afford that.... i voted the low price figuring it would be mp3. is there anyway of getting CD quality? i really dont know much about k rates of quality. and would we be able to download single tracks?
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Maybe zipped, or bzipped PCM, like .wav or .au? While not quite as small as what mp3 would be, there would be no worries with signal loss (like with MPEG).
Just a sec and I'll see how big a bzip would be....
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hmmm. looks like this may be easier said than done on that idea. neither bzip or gzip seem to help much. Here are the results with best compression when testing on Renaissance: Tales of 1001 Nights Vol 1
759M Aug 31 19:52 audio.tar <-- uncompressed, raw PCM 684M Aug 31 20:00 audio.tar.gz <-- Gzipped 634M Aug 31 19:52 audio.tar.bz2 <-- Bzipped
I guess some Googling for lossless audio compression is in order. If mp3 can get 10x with lossy compression, I'd hope that a lossless compression could get something like 5x anyway Or at least down to half the size
I guess some Googling for lossless audio compression is in order. If mp3 can get 10x with lossy compression, I'd hope that a lossless compression could get something like 5x anyway Or at least down to half the size
ahhhh yea aaed...... what you said....
i still think it is a great idea...
i hav noticed that when i have winzipped some rather large files not neccesarily music that their isnt really that much of a difference in size. might as well send it unzipped. but alas i have give up trying to understand computers...
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On further googling, looks like Paul may be right. Apparently there has recently been a lossless extention to MPEG 4, which still gives something like 50% compression. Although 300-400 MB is still quite large, it's a lot more practical than 600-700 MB out of these other formats more commonly used for executables.
Well, I am happy to report that we are moving closer to the day when we offer music downloads in our forth coming new estore!
With our new server appearing very stable and secure; along with all of the necessary tools installed for our site we have actually managed to setup the store. The next step is customizing and testing out the music download technology along with security.
Our plan is to have our new store functional by January 2007. Soon we will be contacting musicians........
I would be happy to pay the $10.00 even without the x-tras! I have to travel 40 miles to order good Celtic music in my area. When ordering over the net for $16.00 to $20.00 it is not uncommon to have the CD arrive in a broken case. Some music I have had to order from the Isles and the exchange rate now is a horror! I will be definitely be watching for this feature!
You are offering the BEST Celtic listening on the net!
Slaìnte
Patch
"Beefsteaks and porter are gude belly-mortar."
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